Nobody needs persuading that walking is good for them.
The gap is between knowing that and it happening on a Tuesday in February, so this is the practical half. The evidence for why it is worth doing is here.
The short answer: Attach it to something that already happens. A walk that has to be scheduled competes with everything else in your day and usually loses; a walk that is bolted onto an existing habit does not. Twenty-two minutes a day clears the American Heart Association’s threshold for counting as very active, and it can be split up.
Nine Ways to Walk More Without Finding Time
1. Attach it to something that already happens
This is the single most useful thing on the page.
Deciding to walk more is a wish. Deciding to walk after dinner, every day, is a plan attached to an event that already occurs, which means you never have to remember it or choose it.
People who write down when and where they will do a thing follow through at strikingly higher rates than people who simply intend to. It is one of the more reliable findings in behavioural research and it costs nothing to use.
2. Walk after dinner rather than sitting straight down
This is the one we actually do, most evenings.
It breaks the sequence that ends with eating in front of a screen, which is worth more than the exercise is. Eating in the same chair at the same hour for forty nights is what builds the evening habit in the first place.
3. Split it up
Three ten-minute walks are not worse than one thirty-minute walk, and for most people they are far easier to fit in.
If the only version that ever happens is ten minutes, do ten minutes.
4. Take calls on your feet
A phone call is dead time that requires nothing from your legs. Outdoors if you can, up and down a corridor if you cannot.
5. Change where the car stops
The far end of the car park, one stop earlier on the bus, the shop you have to walk to rather than the one you drive past.
These are decisions taken once, not every day, which is why they hold.
6. Walk with somebody
Not for motivation. For the appointment.
An arrangement with another person is much harder to quietly skip than an arrangement with yourself, and the conversation makes the time pass without effort.
7. Stop waiting for the weather
Your body has no opinion about scenery.
Up and down stairs counts. A large shop counts. Walking in place while something is in the oven counts. The version that happens beats the version that is nicer.
8. Get shoes that do not hurt
An unglamorous point, and the most common reason a new walking habit stops in week two.
You do not need anything expensive or specialised. You need footwear that does not make you dread the third day.
9. Never miss twice
When researchers actually measured how habits form, missing a single day made no measurable difference to whether the habit took hold.
Missing a day is a Tuesday. Missing two in a row is where it quietly stops. That is the only rule worth having. The same principle applies to food, and it matters more there.
Four Walking Tips Not Worth Your Time
Some of these were on this page in an earlier version. They should not have been.
- Walking fasted to burn more fat. Which fuel you use during the walk does not decide what happens across the day, and walking hungry mostly makes you eat more afterwards.
- Walking to remove toxins. Your liver and kidneys handle that. Circulation is good for many reasons and this is not one of them.
- Weighted vests, ankle weights and hand weights. Small effect on calories, real effect on joints, and they make the walk something you have to prepare for.
- Rewarding children with a treat every ten minutes to keep them walking. We suggested this once and it was poor advice. Attaching food to compliance is one of the few things that reliably causes trouble later, and it is worth avoiding from the start.
And the Expectation to Set
Walking will not change your weight on its own. A mile costs about a hundred calories, and that is roughly a biscuit.
What it will do is protect your brain, your heart, your sleep and your mood, at a dose most people can reach without changing their life. If you want the weight question answered, that one lives on the plate: here are the four numbers.
Venny is a medical doctor and a dietitian; Andy is a psychologist. This is general information rather than medical advice. If you have a heart condition, joint problems or have been inactive for a long time, start gently and speak to your own doctor first.
And, always, seek health consciously.
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