10,000 Ways To Improve Health

It's simple: walk 10,000 steps a day! I'd hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but this nice little concept is a great way to keep you off your butt and on your feet more often throughout the day. Taking 10,000 steps is equivalent to walking about five miles a day. As noted in a blog earlier in this month, standing up can help increase fat and cholesterol metabolism because the body releases the enzyme lipase to absorb fat into the muscles for energy. Walking five miles a day has been linked with decreased risk for cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Will 10,000 steps be all you need to shed fat and be fit? Let's not get too carried away here, remember to be physically fit and alter body composition we must eat well and participate in moderate intensity exercise a couple days a week AT MINIMUM.

All body fat aside, there is something to all this walking. During my very short stay in Germany, I quickly realized why people in Europe aren't obese: they walk everywhere! You should see the kind of workout you get lugging home bags of groceries from tram to tram, bus to bus and finally street to street. Public transportation and walking is a much more common practice overseas than here in the states. In fact, if I was walking around the Santa Clarita Valley the way I was in Essen, Germany, people would probably look at me kind of funny. The truth is standing on your feet and walking around burns more energy than sitting in a car, vegging on the couch and sitting on youtube all day. I am actually standing up as I type this blog, so you all have no excuses.

Go buy a pedometer and see how many steps you take a day. Try to increase your daily steps by 500 a day until you get to 10,000. Once you get to 10,000, see if you can do more! Let's all stop being lazy and do the simple things that can help our health!