The One Exercise All Of Malta Needs To Improve Their Health Immediately
While working out is important in all its forms, you’d be surprised to know that one type of exercise stood out in its ability to increase lifespans. And that exercise is walking.
Walking falls under a type of activity known as Aerobic Threshold Training (ATR); a training form that makes use of the body’s fat-burning engine.
The form of training comes with a welcoming sentiment: that it doesn’t take a huge effort to engage in. It is simply ‘light activity’ sustained for a prolonged period of time.
While walking is a perfect example, other activities like gardening, cycling, or dancing could fall into the same bracket.
Why Walking?
Walking takes the metaphorical cake as the best exercise you can engage in regularly. You see, you absolutely do not have to kill yourself in the gym to get great results. And we’re about to lay down the science as to why.
The body can store up to 600 g of sugar (100g in the liver and up to 500g in your muscles). But after a 30 – 40 minute brisk walk, your body can potentially deplete these sugar stores and turn to fat for fuel.
A healthy person can theoretically even go for a fasted walk in the morning, increasing the likelihood of throwing that body fat into the furnace.
With this in mind, walking half an hour prior to breakfast would see you cover just over 2km in distance, with just over 3,000 steps. All that before your morning porridge.
What’s so special about those steps?
For every 1, 000 steps per day taken; one’s lifespan seemed to increase. In fact, more daily steps per day have been linked to having better cardiovascular health, better sleep, and a better mindset in general.
Researchers identified a 32% decrease in death among those who took at least 2,000 steps per day, and that each increase of 1,000 steps meant a 28% decrease in premature death.
It became evident when viewed in the context of long-living populations too, who as opposed to hitting the gym every day, simply tally a total of 10,000 steps every single day. Not in one go, either, but spread across the day, through labour.
In Malta, only 36% of young adults and 28% of our elderly are regarded as having sufficient levels of activity. Reeling in those steps is a sure way to make you an ‘active person’.
Never underestimate the power of a thirty-minute daily walk. By engaging in such a simple activity, you’d have targeted stress management, your daily step count, your aerobic training time, and your mindset – simply by promoting discipline.
As a bonus, doing so with a partner (or even a dog) would give you all the benefits of social interaction. Though alternatively, you could listen to a podcast, or audiobook, and make the journey an educational one.
Tag someone who needs to get those steps in