Posted on May 04, 2019 by Emily Forbes

Get your trainers on and head out the door, May is National Walking Month! And with the continuously improving weather and light evenings you have no excuses. Not everyone can afford a personal trainer so it is also cheap and accessible to a large majority of people.

Reasons to start walking:

  • Perfect as an entry into fitness. No gym membership or skill required. Also, if you have a lot of weight to lose then you will burn more calories than someone who is lighter so you will see more benefits.
  • Everyone can benefit from the extra health benefits of walking. Even if you hit the gym 7 times a week you may still have a sedentary lifestyle outside of that which carries health risks.
  • Health benefits include a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and dementia. Improved health also means greater savings to the NHS.
  • Increased productivity, up to 30% by short walks every day.
  • Walking can make you happy, reduce depression and improve mental health.
  • Getting some sunshine whilst walking also means increased Vitamin D production which has numerous health benefits including strong bones, improved immunity and aiding weight loss.
  • More activity actually helps to improve energy levels and sleep.

Walking facts:

  • In 1970 more than 70% of primary school pupils walked to school compared to less than half in the current times.
  • Sleepwalking is called somnambulism (Latin somnus “sleep” + ambulare “to walk”). About 18% of the world suffers from somnambulism.
  • To burn off one plain M&M sweet, a person would need to walk the entire length of a football field.
  • A 20-minute walk or about 2,000 steps is equal to a mile. So we would need to walk 5 miles a day to hit the government recommended 10,000 steps per day.
  • It would take, on average, 1 hour and 43 minutes of walking to burn off a 540-calorie Big Mac. And on average, a person would need to walk seven hours to burn off a Super-Sized Coke, fries, and a Big Mac.
  • To walk one light-year at the pace of a 20-minute mile it would take about 225 million years.
  • Given that the world is about 25,000 miles in circumference and that the average walking rate is 3 miles per hour, it would take a person walking nonstop approximately 347 days to walk around the world.

What more do you need? Get your trainers on and get walking!

Visit Living Streets if you want to get more involved with National Walking Month.

One step closer to a healthier, better you.

Emily x

Facts are taken from Fact Retriever.