STEP IT OUT
The secret to cutting your risk of disease in half
BY:MARY ELIZABETH TERZELLA
You may be running yourself ragged, but chances are you’re not exercising regularly. That’s a big mistake. “The single most effective prescription for reducing and treating disease is exercise,” says C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, medical director, Women’s Health; medical director, Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center; and holder of the Women's Guild Chair in Women’s Health at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Thirty minutes of exercise, five days a week, could cut your risk of some diseases in half.”
Can’t fit a 30-minute workout into your already jam-packed days? No problem. If you’re truly time-pressed, there’s no need to carve out special time to go jogging or to the gym. Simply take more steps during the course of your day.
In a recent University of Tennessee study, a group of middle-aged overweight women told to aim for 10,000 steps a day—the number experts at the Cooper Aerobic Institute in Dallas recommend adults take for good health—tended to walk more every day than peers instructed to take a 30-minute walk. (Both groups wore sealed pedometers; the “10,000 steps” participants wore a second pedometer so they could monitor their daily steps).
Researchers found that the “steps” group averaged 10,159 steps a day—1,889 more than the 30-minute walkers. That’s a difference of almost a mile a day.
Clocking 10,000 steps is easier than you think. A poll conducted for America on the Move found that Americans walk about 5,600 steps a day, and taking an additional 4,000 steps is equivalent to a 30-minute walk. “Our study suggests that wearing a pedometer and having a 10,000 steps per day goal—which equals five miles—can motivate you to walk more,” says lead researcher Dixie Thompson, PhD, director of the Center for Physical Activity and Health at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “More steps, more calories burned, more health benefits.”
READY TO FOLLOW STEP?
According to Dr. Thompson and other fitness experts, you can steadily increase the number of steps you take by walking at every opportunity. Try these ideas:
Take the stairs. At home, find excuses to go up and down—for instance, move the computer or keep your car keys upstairs; at work, use the bathroom on another floor.
Divide the load. Make several trips to carry laundry from dryer to dresser or to tote groceries from the car to the kitchen.
Put a treadmill in front of the TV. Walk while watching your
favorite shows. No treadmill? Try walking in place.
Shop walk. Go down every aisle in the supermarket even
if you just need milk. Better yet, do a quick circuit of the mall before you start shopping, preferably before the stores open and hordes of people arrive. Picking up the pace can be a pick-me-up, according to researcher Robert E. Thayer, PhD, of California State University, Long Beach. Dr. Thayer found that just 10 minutes of brisk walking could give you up to two hours of increased energy.
Make your motto: “The further, the better!” Park in the outermost corner of the parking lot, walk to the more distant printer or copier at work, and get off the bus a stop sooner.
Walk the dog. Put Fido on his leash and take him for a stroll instead of letting him out in the backyard. Urban dog walkers spend nearly twice the amount of time hoofing it—about five hours a week—as their petless peers, finds a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.