Walk Your Way to Better Health

How many steps do you average daily? If you’re like most people, you take about 1,000 to 3,000 steps per day—walking to and from the car, strolling outside, and moving around the house. But if you bump this number up to 10,000 by adding some brisk walks to your routine, your health will benefit enormously!

That’s because walking tones the largest muscles of your body and helps keep off excess weight. It also gets your heart rate up and enhances circulation. Plus, it strengthens your bones and heart, improves your mood and sleep, and lowers blood sugar and triglycerides—all at minimal risk of injury.

Here’s a secret that practically guarantees you’ll take more steps…

Studies show that people who wear a pedometer (a small electronic device that tracks your steps) walk more. That’s definitely been the case at the Whitaker Wellness Institute. Every new patient who enrolls in our Back to Health Program is given a pedometer, and we encourage them to walk as much as they can.

What we’ve found is that when we add up the .8 mile walk between the clinic and the hotel our patients stay in, plus 10-minute after meal walks, our patients walk an impressive three miles a day! To give our Back to Health Program participants an extra incentive to walk even more, we issue prizes to the patients with the highest pedometer readings at the end of each week.

Pedometers can be purchased in most sporting goods stores. Pick one up and challenge yourself to working up to 10,000 steps per day!

Now it's your turn: Do you have a pedometer, and have you found that it motivates you?

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