30 Reasons To Start Walking For 30 Minutes Each Day

When we think of exercise, many of us imagine loud gyms or long, exhausting runs. But the truth is, walking is one of the best ways to move your body!

Walking is a healthy hobby that can boost your health and mind in ways you never imagined. Whether you’re feeling stuck at work, you’ve had a hectic day, or you’re bored at home, carving out just thirty minutes, maybe during lunch or in the evening, to go for a walk can change so much! 

Depending on your age, fitness level, and more, it’s typically recommended to walk 7,000-10,000 steps a day, but only walking 6,000 will improve your health! If you want to lose weight, 10,000 steps a day will likely help you.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends 150 minutes a week (~21 min a day) of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking. That means only 30 minutes daily exceeds that goal with 210 minutes a week! 

Need more motivation? Here are 30 reasons to walk for 30 minutes a day:

1. Better Posture

Daily walking can help improve your posture, preventing that familiar slouched position!

2. Lower Risk of Heart Disease

One of the major ways that walking can improve your heart health is by lowering cholesterol levels.

3. Training Your Body to Want to Move

Trust me when I say the longer you walk regularly, the more you’ll enjoy it. Pretty soon, you’ll be craving that daily walk! It’ll become a good habit to help you adopt more healthy behaviors. 

4. Reduces the Risk of Cancer

According to Cancer.org, walking is associated with a lower risk of cancer. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

5. Slows Aging

Walking is one of the most effective ways to avoid the loss of mobility, which is often followed by aging.

Fun fact: the average adult will walk about 75,000 miles in their lifetime. That’s the equivalent of traveling around the world 3 times! The average person walks about 3 miles per hour, which means they walk for 1042 days in their lifetime (nearly 3 years)!

6. Lowers Blood Pressure

Studies show that physical activity like walking daily reduces blood pressure levels in people with hypertension.

7. Prevents Type 2 Diabetes

According to the American Diabetes Association, daily walking can effectively treat or prevent type 2 diabetes. A 2012 study suggests walking about 7,500 steps per day can reduce blood sugar levels.

8. Lifts Your Mood and Boosts Mental Health

Research shows that just 10 minutes of walking can lift your spirits, and doing so regularly can help ease anxiety and depression symptoms and boost your mental health.

9. Improves Sleep

Moderate-intensity physical activity helps people sleep better at night, a fact supported by several studies.

10. Strengthens Immunity

One study found that walking at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, helped people have 43% fewer sick days than those who exercised once a week or less. And if they did get sick, it was for a shorter duration, and their symptoms were milder.

11. Boosts Creativity

A Stanford study found that walking improves creativity. Plus, being outdoors adds an extra creative boost, and creativity remains heightened even after you stop walking!

Fun fact: Mark Zuckerberg and the late Steve Jobs had meetings with their associates while taking a walk.

12. Curbs Cravings

Physical activity helps manage cravings. Even a 15-minute brisk walk reduces the craving for high-calorie, sugary snacks.

13. Keeps Skin Healthy

Want to stay looking young? Regular exercise is associated with increased blood flow to the skin, elevated skin temperature, and improved skin moisture.

14. Helps Prevent Dementia

Walking is one of the most effective methods of dementia prevention. Though there isn’t currently a medication that can cut your risk of dementia in half, one study shows that people who walked ~9,800 steps per day were 51% less likely to develop dementia. Even just 3,800 steps lowered risks to about 25%!

15. Keeps Bones Strong

Walking can improve bone strength in the legs and spine and slow density loss.

16. Increases Metabolism

Daily walking increases metabolism by burning extra calories.

17. Strengthens Muscle

While boosting your metabolism, walking is also helping to increase lean muscle mass.

Fun fact: We use 200 muscles for every step we take, so no matter how fast you’re walking, you’re doing a full-body workout! 

18. Reduce the Risk of Chronic Conditions

It’s not just cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases that walking lowers the risk of. It can also protect you against other chronic conditions like sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux disease, major depressive disorder, and hypertension.

19. Lowers Stress

Feeling stressed? Take a stroll outside! Both the movement and being outdoors will reduce stress and help you relax.

20. Better Decision Making and Faster Cognitive Function

In one study, brain scans of people who walked briskly for one hour three times a week showed the decision-making areas of their brains worked more efficiently.

21. Increases Lung Fitness

While your breathing rate increases, oxygen will travel faster through the bloodstream, increasing your lungs’ ability to take in oxygen. Hello, fewer moments of feeling out of breath!

22. Increase Energy Levels

Walking helps boost energy levels by releasing certain hormones like endorphins and delivering oxygen throughout the body.

23. Helps Handle Arthritis Symptoms

For people of any age with arthritis, walking is especially good medicine because it decreases joint pain!

Fun fact: Joint cartilage gets nutrition from the synovial or joint fluid that circulates as we move, so by walking and exercising more, you’re giving life to your joints!

24. Relieves Muscle Pain

While relieving joint pain, you can also speed up muscle healing after hard workouts and relieve soreness! A good long walk will help flush the lactic acid and other toxins to aid in recovery from the microtears that happen during intense workouts or injuries.

25. Relieves Back Pain

Too much sitting around or suffering bad posture puts stress on our backs. Walking can help ease that ache!

26. Improves Balance

Walking strengthens the muscles of the lower body, and these muscles are an essential element of good balance, especially as we get older.

27. Increases Vitamin D Production

Time in sunlight increases the production of vitamin D, which is vital to overall health.

28. Spend More Time with Loved Ones

The chaos of life often makes spending time with friends and family nearly impossible. So, why not join your neighbor or friend for a walk to catch up?

29. Time for Learning or Enjoying Music

Many of us like to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks while walking alone. This is an excellent opportunity to increase educational opportunities or just enjoy your favorite music.

30. Discover Beautiful Places

There are so many benefits of getting outside and taking walks in nature. Take the time to enjoy the beauty of the outdoors and explore more of your town. You may be surprised how many local trails are around!

Fun fact: walking barefoot is a great way to practice grounding, which comes with its own range of benefits!

Tips for making walking every day a habit:

• Get a walking partner to help you stay motivated and accountable!

• Try discovering a new path to walk every week. 

• Create a playlist you only listen to while walking! 

• Keep a journal to keep track of your walks, or download an app.

• Find a specific time to walk every day, like during lunch or in the evening.

For even more tips, tricks, motivation, interesting facts, and fun challenges or programs, join our walking group on Facebook!

I post in there regularly, and we have thousands of other members also attempting to create the habit of walking 30 minutes a day. Groups like this are a fantastic way to stay engaged!

Remember to be patient with yourself if you miss a day. One skipped day will not ruin everything!

You can’t expect miracles to happen in a single day, but you should be confident that its benefits will appear later in your life.

Let’s get out there and move our bodies, CRUSHers! You’ve got this.

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