Walk Talk Series

Day 6 – Splitting Walk Times –

Walking Better Then Chocolate

Splitting Up Your Walking Time

You may not have time to get in 30 minutes or more of walking at a time. Splitting it up into two 15-20 minute segments will still burn calories and reinforce your commitment to walking. For health benefits and to burn fat it is best to lengthen you’re walking sessions to 30 minutes to an hour. But that can come later – right now we want to get you walking and keep you walking.

Today’s Walk

  • 15-30 minute walk at a comfortable pace
  • Warm up with 5 minutes Stretch 5 minutes
  • Now resume your walk at a comfortable pace
  • End with 5 minutes of gentle stretching

If you are an advanced walker, try the Aerobic Threshold Walk. You may do this workout 1-3 times per week, alternating with an easier walk day or a rest day.
The major benefit that comes along with this advance walk is it increases your athletic performance by bringing your body up to the anaerobic threshold, and improves your endurance at speed. The Areobic Threshold Walk is used by race walkers to improve their VO2 maximum (the highest amount of oxygen one can consume during exercise).

Advance Workout

  • Start at an easy pace for 5-10 minutes
  • Stop and do a stretching and flexibility routine for 5 minutes
  • Continue, walking at a pace that brings your heart rate up to 80-92% of MHR for no more than 50 minutes.
  • You can also use the variation below
  • This is a fast pace where you are breathing very hard and can only speak in short phrases
  • End with 5 minutes of gentle stretching and flexibility exercises

Variation (after warm up and stretching)

  • Threshold Workout #1 – Speed
  • Walk fast for 8 minutes or 1 kilometer at 85-92% of your max heart rate
  • Then slow down to an easy pace for 2 minutes
  • Repeat this for 3-4 repetitions

Share Your Goals 

You’ve chosen a goal. It is realistic. You have a way to measure it and milestones along the way. You have written it down. Now find someone to tell about it – a spouse, friend, partner. By sharing your goal you deepen your commitment to it.

Convenience Food

Fitting exercise and healthy eating and lifestyle reflection into each day is a challenge. But convenience foods are a minefield, often packed with fat and/or sugar and low on vitamins and nutrition. It is best to take the time to pack your own healthy meal and snacks such as packages of baby carrots, nonfat yogurt, apples, oranges, bananas. Many fast food restaurants now have salads – a good choice if you go easy on the dressing.

 

Walking better than Chocolate?
Or Sleeping Late?

That’s right Ladies and Gentlemen, walking is not only better than chocolate, but it also beats sleeping late too.  Even though you may not want to believe it, here are the justifications

Walking is Better than Chocolate

  • Burns calories: Walking for an hour burns off one chocolate bar. An average chocolate bar has 350 calories.
  • Burns fat: Chocolate contains fat. Walking burns fat. The fat-burning pace is to walk for a half hour to an hour at a moderate pace where you’re breathing is noticeable but you are able to speak in full sentences.
  • Doesn’t melt: Although walking in the heat may make it seem like you are melting, that is just sweat. Chocolate actually does melt at body temperature. Chocolate melts into a gooey brown mass, whereas you sweat in colorless, non-staining liquid.
  • Getting happy: Both chocolate and walking can release the brain’s happy hormones – endorphins. But after walking you will have fewer regrets.
  • Hypo-allergenic: While many people claim a food allergy to chocolate, allergies to exercise and walking are very rare.

What have we learned from this: If you must have chocolate, enjoy it in moderation and walk it off!

Walking vs. Sleeping Late: Morning walks are a great way to kick off the day and ensure that you have fewer excuses come between you and your walking workout.  It can be hard to choose between another hour of sleep or catching up on chores or email vs. going for a walk.

  • Less Traffic: You may pass one car every mile in the morning vs. a much more regular stream of traffic when you walk in the late afternoon.
  • Cool Summer Mornings: Choose to walk in the cool morning at 60F vs. 80-90F heat of the afternoon sun.  Temperatures don’t go down much in the evening and it’s not as safe to walk in the dark after the sun goes down.
  • Smell the Roses: It’s a great mood-setter for the day to see the flowers in parks, gardens and neighbor’s plantings.
  • Enjoy the Silence: The air is alive with bird calls, but no traffic noise or lawn mowers or construction clatter.  The sprinklers on the ball field and on a few lawns adds a pleasant rhythm.
  • Free Up Your Evening: Having completed your daily walk, you can spend your evening doing whatever you wish.
  • Get the Blood Moving: Get your circulation moving so you can think faster and smarter the rest of your day.  Clear your mind and let new ideas flow.