Normal Daily Walking

[WormChancellor]

I usually walk about an hour to an hour and a half every day, but it's composed of fifteen-minute intervals between classes. Is that okay, or does there have to be a continuous session? I'm worried, since a lot of articles say that you have to keep your heart rate up for at least 20 minutes.

[reinhard]

I haven't read much about this, but I'm sure the 20 minutes is a crude approximation, depends greatly on the individual, and that in any case it isn't some binary all or nothing thing: there's no question that walking less still exercises your muscles, heart and whole body to some degree -- and if you're walking 75% of this somewhat arbitrary amount of time, to some important degree.

My main daily walks (to and from work) are both less than 20 minutes. They've been enormously helpful, both physically and mentally.

I worry that numbers like this are actually bad for people's health, because they discourage them from doing anything. The hardest, most important part is to DO SOMETHING. Going from nothing to something is the biggest productivity jump you're ever going to make, and stepping from something to a little bit more is far easier and more sustainable than unrealistic jumps to too much. Besides the direct benefit of habitually walking short distances, you build the habit of walking, and when longer distances present themselves, you'll be much more inclined to walk them.

Here are some pro-short walk links I found:

http://walking.about.com/od/beginners/f ... ewalks.htm

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _n17215932

Beyond the habit of walking, you're also building the larger habit of exertion, or moving usefully instead of only as part of some artificial dedicated and time consuming exercise. This is the really big difference between us and and our trim ancestors, most of whom would have found the idea of "exercise" absurd. Once you become awake to this, you'll see exertion opportunities all over the place: taking the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, chores in and around the house. Instead of dreading and avoiding them, you'll start to enjoy and look forward to them, and perform them more vigorously. There was an interesting study done recently that showed that merely informing a group of maids that their ordinary work was effective exercise had a dramatic effect on their health and weight compared with a control group of maids that wasn't told this -- not simply from the power of "placebo effect," I think, but because they started to throw themselves into the same old motions with gusto. I bet they were happier and did a better job as well.

http://www.metafilter.com/74384/Exercis ... ebo-Effect

Reinhard

[paulawylma]

Your 15 minute segments are fine. The research for the last several years show that aerobic exercise can be broken up into 10 minute or longer minutes and still get the same results as the longer sessions. You are still supposed to get the 20 to 30 minute total but you can divide it into 2 or 3 ten minute sessions.

[ou812]

I too walk about 20 minutes to work. Somedays I walk during my lunch ususally about 30 min. It is an easy way maintain a basic level of fitness without much thought. Walking to work has become so much of a habit, that it feels wasteful to drive the distance. My coworkers think that I should be Survivor contestant or something because I usually even in bad weather. Society's view of what it takes to survive in wild has certainly become skewed.

[larisa0001]

I walk to work too, and it's about a 15-minute walk for me. I love my commute - I get to walk through a beautiful neighborhood full of gardens and pretty flowers every day. When I was picking a place to live, I drew a circle with a one-mile radius around my workplace and only considered homes within that radius.

I'm not sure that my commute is good exercise, but all these flowers are great for my mental health.