The Most Underrated Exercise

How to improve blood sugar, mood, digestion, focus, etc. with this one movement

WATCH THE TRAM CAR PLEASE.

When you walk down the boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ, you’ll hear that, the chatter of children, and the calls of seagulls who want your french fries.

The tram car is a small yellow and blue train that goes up and down the boardwalk from morning until night, transporting people from one pier to the next. If you dare walk in front of the tram car, you’ll hear “WATCH THE TRAM CAR PLEASE” until your ears start to bleed.

Wildwood, NJ tram car

As a kid, I used to beg my mom to ride the tram car, but she never let us. $5 for a one-way ticket. Why would we pay that when we could just walk?

Now that I’m older, I’m glad she never let us ride the tram car. The tram car is full of overweight (or just plain lazy) people who can’t walk 1.5 miles from one end of the boardwalk to the other.

And, most times, these people aren’t even going that far. It’s less than a half mile between the two most popular piers!

The tram car is a great metaphor for what we are experiencing in America today. People pay big bucks ($5 is a lot for a 3-minute train ride, ok?) for something that is inherently bad for them, just so they don’t have to go out of their way to do what they are meant to do as humans. In this case- walking.

I always get sad (and angry, too) when I see the tram car. The people riding it are the ones that would benefit most from the exercise! Just get off and take the walk! But they don’t.

Walking, such a simple, basic movement pattern has now become a challenge for most of our country. But, if people don’t walk, they are never going to get healthier. Walking is simply a gateway to a healthier lifestyle.

My grandparents always tell me stories about how far they had to walk when they were younger. It was rare that their parents were around to drive them to their after-school jobs or to their friend’s houses.

My mom always tells me about how my uncle had to walk 5+ miles to work in the summers because he wasn’t old enough to drive and had nobody else to drive him there.

While it sounds harsh in today’s world, back then, parents had the mindset that if their kids wanted to make money, they needed to find a way to get there themselves.

Even when I was in middle school, I walked to school every day. There was a walking path that joined my neighborhood to the school. Rain and shine, we were expected to walk if we wanted to make it to school.

A lot of times, my mom would be working, and I’d be forced to walk an extra mile from the school path to our house. While I complained sometimes, it was what it was.

Now looking back, I’m glad I got to walk to and from school. It was so much better than being trapped on a smelly bus!

As we grow older, we replace our legs with cars. Instead of walking to school, we drive. Instead of running around the yard with our friends, we sit our butts on the couch. Adults aren’t as active as kids. Kids now aren’t as active as kids of my generation were.

Do you see overweight people in cities?

Have you ever noticed that you rarely see overweight people living in cities? I have a theory that it’s because people are forced to walk. They have no choice but to walk 10 minutes to the Subway or 15 minutes to get groceries.

Not only is it more convenient to walk, but it’s cheaper. Only the rich can afford to have a car in a big city like New York or DC.

Sure, people in the cities don’t have access to nature or the peace and quiet of silence, but they are forced to exercise, whether they go to the gym or not.

When I would visit Sebastian in New York City, we would walk an average of 13 miles every Saturday. This is insane! I’m not even sure the average person in the suburbs walks that much in a month.

The benefits of walking this much are vastly underrated. Whether you live in a town that’s walkable or not, we should be taking a lesson from these city folk in taking the time to walk throughout our days.

Benefits of Walking

Because walking doesn’t seem like much effort, its benefits are often overlooked. It was the primary exercise of our ancestors when they would gather plants, water, and hunt animals. Humans aren’t the fastest things on the landscape, so it was actually our ability to walk for a long time and very long distances that made it so that we could outlast the animals we were chasing. After all, we didn’t domesticate horses until much later in our history, or have cars until the 1880s…

Beyond simply being the reason we humans even made it out of our early history, walking helps to improve your:

• mood

• blood pressure

• risk for chronic disease

• stress levels

• sleep

• focus

• joint and muscle pain

• digestion

• immune system

It quite literally improves everything…

If you suffer from any of the above issues, like trouble sleeping at night or IBS, walking can help you!

My personal favorite benefit of walking is its effect on blood sugar levels. I make sure to walk after every meal, especially lunch, because it helps stabilize your blood sugar and prevent you from crashing.

The worst thing you can do after eating a big meal is lie down on the couch. Go for a walk and you are guaranteed to feel so much better!

Building walks into your lifestyle

I get it, it’s easier to walk all the time when you have places to walk to. When you live in a city, you walk a lot without even realizing it. To a restaurant, to the subway, to the grocery store…

When you’re as cheap as I am, you walk everywhere to avoid paying for an expensive Uber. However, believe it or not, walking in the suburbs can be just as easy if you’re conscious about it.

You need to build walks into your day naturally rather than trying to go for one 2-hour-long walk at the end of the day. Because who has time for that?

Here are some things I do:

1. Go for a walk first thing in the morning. I leave my phone at home and use the walk to wake me up and get morning sunlight. Two benefits in one! The walk helps me organize my thoughts about the day and think about my top priorities.

2. Walk after every meal. Again, walking after a meal can help stabilize your blood sugar, giving you more energy rather than crashing. The walk can be as short as 10 or 15 minutes to get these benefits!

3. Take phone calls or meetings while walking. Every Thursday, I take my company's all-hands meeting while walking around the neighborhood. Because I don’t have to talk, it’s easy to listen and follow along. Plus, I find that I’m more focused and less distracted being away from my laptop.

4. Park further away. Ok, I may park further away because I’m a bad parker and simply scared of hitting another car, but it helps me get in more steps! This only ends up adding an extra 5 minutes (if that) to your trip, but gets you to move your body.

I recommend taking shorter, more frequent walks throughout the day in order to build more movement into your lifestyle. Nowadays, we sit for way too long. This isn’t good for our posture or our blood flow.

We are active creatures! We aren’t meant to move for an hour and sit stagnant for the rest of the day. Even if it’s 5 minutes, this 5 minutes is better spent walking than scrolling through social media.

Take action: Go for a 15-minute walk after your next meal. See how you feel after. Do you have more energy? Are you less sleepy than usual?

Walking to de-stress

Lately, my body has been asking me to slow down. Take a break from heavy weights. Stop going so hard for 60 minutes straight.

While this is hard for me, because I love my workouts, I’m honoring this. Working through a few different health issues, stress is at the root of it all.

Yes, working out is a GOOD stressor. But giving your body more than it can handle is also possible.

Instead of doing my usual high-intensity workouts, I’ve been doing a lot of walking, and I feel great!

Walking is a fundamental movement pattern many people seem to have forgotten. Walking should be sprinkled throughout our day, unlike a workout that usually happens for an hour at the beginning or end.

Walking keeps us moving all throughout the day. It gets our butts off the couch, out in nature, curious, creative, and focused.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Madison

PS: I may or may not be in France as you’re reading this. I can’t wait for all of the inspiration I’m going to get while I’m here. After all, my favorite thing is to write, educate, and share my experiences.

If you haven’t read the newsletters I wrote about my time in Greece last year, check those out: Grecian Foods Found at Every Meal and Eating Beyond Local in Greece.