After 40, This Matters More Than Exercise (Doctor Explains)

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   I know I should exercise more but feel as if I don't have enough time. If I was to prioritize only one form of exercise to get me going, what should it be? For me, it's got an easy answer. It's walking. Now, hear me out. Not everyone would necessarily agree with me here, so let me give you my rationale for explaining why I think it should be walking. When I say walking, it doesn't mean that I don't think strength training or high-intensity training has value for some people. They do. In fact, honestly, you don't really wanna just choose one form of exercise, especially as you get older. You want a variety. But inbuilt to that question is this idea of time poverty. We don't have enough time. So I can't do everything. Help me get started. And I've seen this so many times with my patients over the years, okay? They feel time poor and want me to help them start somewhere. Now, the reason I think it should be walking is because I think walking has so many incredible benefits which then lead to you wanting to do other things in the future. Walking is quite possibly one of the most underappreciated activities that we can do for our health and well-being. I think there's been this kind of tendency to prioritize intensity. I don't have long. I'm gonna get to the gym. I'm gonna push hard. And I think that's come at a real cost. Walking is a fundamental human activity. It's one of the things that makes us unique. Walking affects every single system in our bodies, our musculoskeletal system, our nervous system, our lymphatic system, which is one of the ways we clear and process waste in our bodies. Even our gut function can be improved when we walk. A lot of people don't think about this. They just think about walking through the lens of how many calories am I burning. You know, this is physical activity. It's good for me. And yes, it is. But think about this for a minute. When you're walking properly and efficiently, you're actually rotating. There's a counter-rotation going on in your body. Your chest is going one way, and your pelvis and lower limbs are going the other way. There's almost this torque in the system that is massaging your gut. And I can tell you, I've seen so many patients who had gut issues and had things like constipation, and what fixed it wasn't a change in diet. It was getting them out to walk more. Our bodies need walking. In fact, a recent guest on my podcast, Dr. Courtney Conley, writes in her latest book that walking should be considered a physiological necessity for human beings very much in the same way as sleeping and breathing. I mean, that's quite a profound statement, isn't it? But again, it highlights the point I'm trying to make, which is that we have underemphasized and prioritized walking at the expense of more intense movements. The next question often is, how much should I be walking? And of course, the context matters here. I don't know the ins and outs of this individual's life. But some broad principles to think about are that anything is better than nothing. Remember, we are a sedentary population. We know that physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of premature death across the world. We can't let perfection get in the way of us making progress. Now, some institutions consider anything less than 5,000 steps a day to be sedentary. So if you're getting less than 5,000 steps a day, you are considered a sedentary individual, and you don't want to be a sedentary individual. So I would say for most of us, we should be trying our best to get at least 5,000 steps. Now, let's just contrast this for just a moment. What did our hunter-gatherer ancestors do? Well, it kind of depends where exactly they were living. But most of the research I've seen suggests that our ancestors were getting at least 15,000 steps a day, maybe 17,000, 18,000, 19,000, so considerably more than we're getting. And I could say that we should do that, and I think if you can do that, I think it would be fantastic. But in the question was someone telling me that they're time poor, that they don't have time. So I think the first goal is to get to 5,000 steps. We know from the research that that will reduce symptoms of depression, so you're gonna feel better mentally, which I think is a really good thing. If you can get up to 7,000 steps, there is quite a lot of research out there showing that that will actually reduce the incidence of getting depression and/or anxiety. So that's really quite remarkable. 5,000 reduce symptoms, 7,000 steps reduce your chance of getting it in the first place. Again, which often makes me think about this idea that is it that physical activity is good for us, or is it more that physical inactivity is bad for us? Maybe all we're doing when we get to 5,000 or 7,000 is just starting to return to the basics of what our biology is expecting every day. There's a lot of research also showing us that walking for 30 minutes a day at a brisk pace reduces your risk of multiple types of cancer. And, and I could probably sit here for an hour listing off study after study showing you and demonstrating that walking more is gonna have a profound impact on your health and well-being. Now, why did I choose walking?and not strength training or high intensity training. Okay? Because those things can be good as well. And many of you may have heard me say before that once you hit 30 years old, you'll start to lose lean muscle mass every year unless you do something about it. And the amount of lean muscle mass you have is a huge factor in how well you're going to be as you age. We know that is really important. And again, I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing strength training or resistance training. The question was where would you start? And I think walking is the place to start, in my experience, because walking changes the way you think about yourself. Walking is something that you should really be doing every day. Strength training, depending on how you do it, maybe twice a week. It's actually quite hard to build habits when they're infrequent. What I want this individual to do is build the habit of walking every single day. Walking doesn't tax your body unnecessarily. You don't need rest days from walking, generally speaking, unless you're doing sort of crazy long hikes. It is something you can do every day. It's something your biology expects. And I think also philosophically, which is something we don't often think about, what actually is going on when you walk? Well, you're moving forward. You're putting one foot in front of the other. You're making progress in your life, and that's really important. A lot of the reasons why people feel stuck these days is because of stagnation. They're sat behind a desk. They're not moving their body enough. Walking's the opposite. You go walk around your block, right? You will think differently about the world when you get home. You'll have ideas about your life. You'll be more creative. There are so many things that happen when you go for a walk, and I've experienced this myself. I've seen it with so many patients over the years. When you build in a regular walking habit, because of the progress you feel as if you're making, it makes it more likely that you're then going to bring in some strength training and intensity training, right? So if I have to choose, I'd say go walking first, but the goal will be over time that you'll bring the other forms of movement in as well. Are you tired of waking up exhausted even when you've technically had enough sleep? Do you feel like you're constantly doing everything right, yet you still feel stuck? You're not broken. You're just running the wrong habits. I've taken everything I've learnt from helping thousands of patients and boiled it down into five tiny daily habits that can transform your life in just 30 days. No overwhelm, no pressure, just small shifts that reset your energy, mood, and mind. If you're ready to stop surviving and start feeling like yourself again, download my free guide now. Just click on the first link in the description box below or scan the QR code on screen. Now, I mentioned how many steps you can think about taking per day, but one thing I want to make really clear is that you don't have to do all your walking in one go. Okay? You can do something called a micro walk or a mini walk, right, where you do a five or ten minute walk several times a day. I think that can be very beneficial. In fact, one of the things we're learning about metabolic health, which is the foundation of our overall health, is that walking after meals is so, so good for us. Walking after meals helps to stabilize your blood sugar. This is something I've really changed in my own life over the last few years, is I try my best to walk after meals. Now, I'll be honest, living in the UK, it can be quite hard to motivate myself to do that in November or December when it's dark outside. It gets dark about 4:00, 4:30 PM. It can be raining and cold. Yeah, that can be hard. At the moment in spring, we have light evenings. It's very easy after dinner for me to go for a ten-minute walk, sometimes even a 30-minute walk. Okay? So think about different lengths of walks. Micro walks can be good. A one-off long walk, you know, if you can fit in even 60 minutes in one go, very, very good for your metabolic health. Okay? So many different ways in which you can, you know, change up the variety of your walks. You can do incline walks, uphills, which you could argue is a form of strength training because, you know, it's gravity that you're walking against. That can be very good for your body composition, your physique, your glute muscles. And again, there's a trend which is sort of growing at the moment, which is walking with a weighted vest. Again, not everyone's a massive fan of this, but I do think that if you want to increase your heart rate, I think a weighted vest can be helpful for some people. So there are ways to change things up if you want those options for when it comes to walking. And I think a final point I'd like to make is that the environment in which you live matters. You know, I was born and brought up in the UK, and where I live, it's very easy to walk. It's a safe place. There are a lot of pavements. I appreciate that not everyone lives somewhere like that. It might be unsafe for you to walk where you are. I know whenever I'm at conferences in America and I'm staying in a hotel, sometimes it's really, really hard to walk. The whole environment seems to have been designed for the car, the automobile, at the expense of walking, and I think there is a consequence to doing that. You find in many European old cities it's very, very walkable.So I understand that your environment matters and of course it can be more challenging for some of us than others. This is where a gym of course can be helpful. A, a treadmill at a gym. I think it is better to walk outside where you can, but of course it may not be possible for everyone. And this is where I also think if you had the space and the means, I do think a treadmill can be quite useful for people. A lot of people now are doing treadmills under their desks so they can, you know, walk while doing emails. But I think specifically for this after meal walking, I do think a treadmill, again, if you have the space and the money, I think it could be a very simple way of increasing the chances that you're going to get that walk in regularly. Three things I want you to think about when you're walking are to swing your arms. When you swing your arms, you really help the sort of counter-rotation. Think about your posture, okay? It really matters. There is some evidence out there showing that if you walk with a tall, relaxed posture, it can improve your blood pressure and creative thinking. I'd also encourage you to experiment with nasal breathing whilst you're walking, right? It's easier to use your diaphragm, which is the muscle you should really be using mostly for your breathing. It's much easier to use your diaphragm when you're nasal breathing, so if you find this hard, maybe, you know, just practice. Try and do one minute where you close your mouth, where you're just breathing through your nose. But over time, those three things can really, really help. So I hope I've ... I was gonna say convinced you, but I hope I've inspired you to really think about walking. If you're already walking, can you walk a little bit more? And if you don't know where to start and you know you need to move more, I'd encourage you, get out there, get walking. Aim for 5,000 steps at a minimum, and over time, I think you'll find that your life will start to change. If you enjoyed this video, do stick around. I've picked out this one, which I think you're really going to enjoy as well. In this video, I'm gonna share with you five small daily habits that have worked for me, that have worked for my patients, and are gonna make you feel incredible if you can give them a go for the next 30 days

Episode duration: 14:36