Easy Ways to Incorporate Walking Into Your Day - Walking Challenge Day 5

Should you walk in the morning if you're a night person?

Should you walk at night if your an early riser?

Or should you stick to listening to your body clock?

Today we spill the beans on invigorating morning routines and soothing evening rituals. Learn the "wake and walk" strategy for mornings - even if you’re not a morning person - and get ideas for stress-reducing evening walks that will ease you into sleep.

This is day 5 of the walking workout challenge, part of the Walking and Talking with Helen  podcast. The coached walk episodes are unscripted, have some funny flubs, and a dose of ADHD.

Morning Walking Routine - The Wake and Walk Ritual

•  Start your day with a burst of energy by making walking the very first thing you do (after putting on your clothes, of course).
• Helen shares her "wake and walk" routine from her own weight loss journey of losing over 80 pounds, using the power of consistency.
• Even if mornings aren't your favorite, a short stroll before anything else can set a positive tone for the day (and coffee. Lots of coffee).
• Discover the magic of mindful morning walks, incorporating deep breathing, gratitude, and setting intentions for a stress-free day.

Incorporating Walks into Daily Life - Consistency

• Turn your morning commute into a walking opportunity or choose to walk for errands and daily chores.
• Walk your kids to school and use the time to connect with them and chat away from electronic devices.
• Options to "walking to nowhere." 

Evening Routine - Self-care Stress-Reducing Evening Walks

• Yes, you can have both morning and evening walks! 
• Use mindful evening strolls to clear your mind, ground yourself, and find a moment of peace.
• Create a calming environment for your evening walks, exploring parks or quieter paths.
• Turn your evening walks into a symbolic transition from work to personal time, establishing a healthy boundary (that's a hard stop, hard no to work)

Share your walks using the hashtag #walktalkwithhelen, and invite your friends and family.

There is a bell at the halfway point in case you want to turn around. Grab your walking shoes and let's go.

This walking challenge is for everyone. Start any time. 

Transcript

Good morning, morning walkers, and good evening, evening walkers. I thought I'd cover both bases.

Yesterday when we talked about morning versus evening, when is the best time to walk, what are the benefits, and figuring out when the best time is for you today. We're going to talk about morning and evening routine ideas

How do you figure out how to stick with it? And what are some routine ideas? That’s what we're going to cover today. And there are always going to be transcripts of the podcast so if you forget something you can go back and review the transcripts.
So you can always just run back and take a look. You can go back and listen to episode two, I think it was, or day two, with the mindfulness and you can do that one again if you need to reconnect and remember how to do more mindful walking.

It's always good to go back and revisit things, and the more you do something, the more you listen to something, the easier it is for it to stay with you. Roll those shoulders backwards now. This is my spin voice. One of my friends, oh wait, roll them on before I tell you the rest of the story. Roll the shoulders forward.

So one of my friends, she was also a trainer and a spinning instructor at the gym, and we had these amazing microphones and great stereo. One day she was somewhere else in the gym and she knew I was teaching because she heard this voice going and breathe she's like, “Oh Helen's teaching.” Because after you worked really hard, then you're going to leave after the easier part and you're going to think, “Oh wow Helen's so nice.” You're going to forget the fact that Helen worked you really hard during the class because you remember the last thing the later things that happened.

Oh yes, and our hashtag, it is walktalkwithhelen. So if you discover something, if you have some observations, something you want to share with us, you take pictures or video of your walks, you can post them to social media with the #walktalkwithhelen hashtag and that way it's accountability for us.

Okay, you morning people. This is for you. This is not for me because I feel sad when I wake up in the morning. I am not a morning person, yet I was in a morning person life for, you know, what, 80 percent of my life? 90 percent of my life? I don't know.
So here's a good routine for you, which is called the wake and walk ritual. Make walking the first thing you do, the first activity you do when you wake up, other than put your clothes on. So just start right away. When I was actively in my whole weight loss journey, I would get up at 5:30 in the morning.

Yes, I know. And I would. Just put on my shorts and a tank top and I would go downstairs. And then I would do like a 20-minute workout video and it was Tammy Lee Webb, “I want that body.” “I want those legs,” and “I want those arms.” They were 20 minutes each and I would do that every day I would just put on those shorts and tank top go down and do the video Then go upstairs, get ready wake up the kids and then I would walk them to school and then I would come back and then I'd be ready to start my day.

We didn't really use as much social media. We weren't as tied to our phones back then. I don't even know if there was social media. I just made it a non negotiable no matter how tired I was. I was up at 5:30am and I did that 20 minute workout and let me tell you, that was so effective.

Just 20 minutes, because it was 20 minutes every day and it's all about consistency.
If you have a hard time getting started in the morning, you're not a morning person, but you know what? The mornings are going to be the best time for your schedule, then just start with a short little stroll around your neighborhood or even a nearby park before you do anything else. Before your coffee. Before you scroll on social media, before anything else, just even if it's a five or ten minute stroll. That's how you can get started.
It's miserable but once you do it once you commit to doing it and you do it, it starts to become a habit and a part of your life you can start taking mindful morning walks. So if you're stressed, if you have a job that may be stressful or a day that's very busy, set aside that time for you in the morning and make it your mindful morning walk, something that you look forward to.

And you can listen to the birds or you can listen to affirmations. There's a lot of things that you can do to kind of get you settled in because we just jump out of bed and go a thousand miles an hour and the day attacks us. If you look forward to that little time in the morning, it will help ease you and transition you.

So we talked about transitioning into sleep. This will transition you into having a better day and it really does work.

When you do your mindful morning walks, use the techniques that we talked about, like deep breathing, and we're going to have some other breathing options coming up, where you fill up your lungs deep, deep, deep, relax your stomach, and you exhale, pull the tummy tight just to get that air out. And then use those mindful morning walks to also set your intentions.

And to practice gratitude while you're walking. Sometimes when we have things going on in our lives, they seem so overwhelming and it's just like, "What are you grateful for?" I know you have things you're grateful for, but sometimes you maybe just can't find it when you're in that moment and frame of mind. So practice that gratitude also, if you're doing the mindful morning walking.

Then you can walk for your commute, if you don't work that far. You can walk for errands. You can incorporate walking into your daily chores or, you know, walking the kids to school because that's what I did when the kids were little. I started walking the kids to school and it was a really good way for us to connect.

Let's say you're going to have coffee with your friends in the morning after you drop the kids off at school. Well, the coffee shop is maybe a seven-minute walk from your house, but we all get in our cars and drive. But why don't you try walking when the weather is okay? Just walk there and then walk back.

That's almost 15 minutes that you're walking. For me, I find that when I have a destination to walk to, it actually becomes something I look forward to because I'm going somewhere. I'm not just walking in circles like on a treadmill. I have a goal, and I'm going to walk there and back.

The pharmacy might not be that far away, maybe 15 or 20 minutes. You walk to the pharmacy, you walk back, you've just got a 40-minute workout in! When you try to put those little walking moments into your day, it's so much easier to get your steps in and just become overall healthier, because now it's part of your life.

So for us evening people, our evening ritual is going to be stress-reducing evening walks because we all need that. And guess what? You could do a morning walk and you can do an evening walk! I know, what? But you can. For mindful evening strolls, just kind of go over the techniques that we talked about with mindfulness on day two. Ground yourself, clear your mind. If you've had a busy day, that's the perfect time to clear your head and be present. Feel the breeze, the road or dirt if you're on a path, and the smells and things around you.

Take that evening stress-reducing walk and make that a goal to become your mindful walking moment. And if you can, see if you can find a calmer environment, like a park, somewhere that's just not quite as busy. Make it something you look forward to. There's a big calming effect when you pay attention to your steps and your surroundings. If your mind starts to wander, you can even count out your steps, nice and relaxed: one, breathe, two, walk, walk, step, step, breathe, breathe, breathe.

You could also use one of the affirmations that we talked about, or create new ones. If you focus your mind on the steps and affirmations, your mind is less apt to wander and go somewhere stressful. At the end of the day, transitioning from work to personal time is crucial for creating a boundary between your work life and personal life. Turn your phone on do not disturb or don't answer calls from work, creating that clear separation.
That's where an early evening walk after work is really helpful. It helps establish that mindset and boundary. It's a symbolic transition. You go to work, you get home, you go for a walk, you make dinner, shower, and then you have that almost "hard stop" between work and personal time.

See if you can disconnect from your screens if possible. Even if your phone is on, if it rings and you don't answer, you still have that moment of tension wondering who it is and if it's important. There are very few real emergencies. So try to enjoy your screen-free time on your walks.

Finally, set your intentions for these evening walks. Do you want to feel more relaxed? Get more energy for the evening? Work out a creative problem you have? Set those intentions so when you go out, your mind already has an idea and you can start free-flowing from there. Then you can visualize on your walks how you want your day or evening to unfold. What do you want to do when you get home? Try a new recipe? Watch a movie? Do something productive or something you've been wanting to do. Use that time to visualize.

And to top it off, getting a little roller ball to roll out your feet after your walk feels amazing and helps release all that tension. I'll see you tomorrow.