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 | | ILLUSTRATION: JON KRAUSE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL | | |
| | Week 1: Start with a Walk | | |
| If there is one positive change to my daily routine that has come out of the pandemic, it is the walk. A morning walk has particular benefits. Choosing exercise as your first action means that even if the rest of the day goes haywire, you can still feel good about having checked movement off the list. In addition, the early daylight helps wake us up, suppressing the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin. | | |
| I have incorporated walking into my life in different ways. I think of walks like omelets: You can vary the ingredients to make them fit your needs. Sometimes, I use the walk as a way to connect with people, going with family or friends. A walk can also serve as a decent workout on days when I can't get to a gym. Other times, a walk is a meditation in nature or some quiet time for myself. —Anne Marie Chaker, former reporter, WSJ personal health & wellness bureau | |
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This week's challenge teaches you about: | |
Starting your day off with an energy-boosting walk outdoors | |
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 | | ILLUSTRATION: TAMMY LIAN | Get into the groove | | "Walk" by the Foo Fighters Songs from this band help me get moving. The lyric "learning to walk again" speaks to how we can navigate this challenge, by taking an often overlooked form of exercise and building on it a step at a time. | | | | |
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| | | Get your walking shoes on: You're going for a morning walk every day this week! | | |
| Step 1: | Make time for a walk right when you wake up. | | |
| You don't need to walk for an hour. Even 10 minutes a day is beneficial, says Amanda Stemen, a Los Angeles therapist who specializes in walk-based counseling. Over time, those few minutes will likely build into longer walks. "Set small goals to develop larger habits over time," she says. | |
| Step 2: | Prep for a successful wake-up. | | |
| Stemen tells her clients to put their alarm clocks (or cellphones) across the room from their bed, underneath their walking clothes and running shoes that were set out the night before. The distant alarm forces you to get out of bed to turn it off, rather than pressing snooze and rolling back onto your pillow. Next, find some light. Natural light will decrease the chances you'll go back to bed. If it's still dark out, turn the lights on fully and stay in the well-lit indoors for about a half hour before venturing out, suggests Frank A.J.L. Scheer, a neuroscientist in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Blue-enriched lights such as LED, halogen and fluorescent lights work better than warmer-toned incandescent bulbs, he says. | |
| Step 3: | Get outside and focus on nature. | | |
| Whether you're in the city, country or a suburb, you'll get more out of your walk if you pay attention to your natural surroundings. A growing body of research points to mental and physical benefits from spending time in nature. Even 10 minutes of sitting or walking in nature can decrease a person's heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels, as well as self-reported stress levels. You don't need to be in a forest to notice the natural world. If you can't find your way to the woods, some green space—a trail, a park—can still be beneficial, experts say. "People are way more into walking if there are bits of nature around," says Gretchen C. Daily, a professor of environmental science at Stanford University. Paying attention to bird sounds or finding water along a canal can be beneficial, she says. "Nature can be one tree," she says. Look for any water on your walk, too. It can be any type, as big as a river or as small as a park fountain. Water can help calm our anxiety and rejuvenate us, my colleague Elizabeth Bernstein has written. | |
| Step 4: | Now that your walk has been your habit for two or three days, think about friends or family members who could join you. | | |
| So often we get together with a friend over something to consume: a cup of coffee, a drink or lunch. Walking provides a great way to connect without any agenda, and it's free! It's a ready-made activity that can lessen the burden of having to make conversation the whole time. "For some people, it's really more comfortable to talk when you're not face to face, eyes locked the entire time," says Vaile Wright, a senior director at the American Psychological Association.
Walking can also create stories that fuel conversation. "There's distraction, but in a good way," she says. "You could be mid-sentence and something can catch your attention" that might prompt a laugh or move the chat along. | |
| Step 5: | Try different styles of walks for the rest of the week. | | |
| One way to keep walking is to not think about the walk as only a workout or a chore, but as something that you do every day to suit different needs. I like to make sure I have at least two "talk walks" with a friend or a family member; two "zen" or meditative walks of pure alone time in nature; and two workout walks, where I might strap on ankle and wrist weights and make it extra challenging (and embarrassing for my daughters, who prefer staying home on those days). This helps me achieve six walks a week, and the extra day is just a free-choice kind of walk. | |
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| ✨ Bonus: Add some extra activity. Try a beefed-up workout walk by making a game or challenge out of it. At every crosswalk or stop sign, challenge yourself with squats, lunges, hops: whatever makes sense for the space you happen to be in. On days when I can't make it to the gym I like to set a timer for 30 seconds on these walk breaks and do as many reps as I can. | |
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| ☑️ Increase the likelihood that you will get up and out the door by laying out your clothes and preparing the night before. ☑️ Take note of nature while you're walking. Use whatever is available to you, no matter where you live, even if that just means looking up at the sky. ☑️ Have someone join you at least one morning. ☑️ Add in a few short exercises on your last day's walk to amp up the movement. | |
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| 💡 Coming next week: Make your eating healthier with a few simple, small changes. | |
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| 🥳 Celebrate your wins! Did you manage to do a morning walk most days of the week? How did it make you feel? | |
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| This series was originally published in January 2023. | |
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