Walking off Holiday Meals

Now, here’s a slice of trivia: 3,500 calories equals one pound of fat. Not bone or muscle or gristle—fat. On your body. Hanging over your belt.

Experts claim that a typical holiday meal will weigh in at between 1,700 and 3,500 calories. That’s for the one meal. Add in breakfast and a trip to the in-law’s house where you have to eat something just to be polite, and you’ve got a belly-busting, button-popping, belt-loosening wad of fat you need to work (walk) off.

How about a "Burn the Bird" workout for those who get carried away with the Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey.

With 60 minutes a day of moderate to heavy exercise, the average person who weighs an average amount and who eats the recommended daily allowance of calories can lose about a pound a week.

You can even burn up calories while walking around shopping for the holidays—but don’t even think about stopping your shopping to do a little more grazing. You might want to consider several quick laps around the mall before you actually start power shopping.

The malls in the northern climes are full of morning walkers. Unfortunately most of them have been sent there by their heart specialists. If you walk before you have a problem it will save a lot of steps (to the heart specialists).

We are all guilty of over indulging on occasion. A regular schedule of exercise will help ensure that intake and outgo stay fairly balanced. There is no more enjoyable and convenient exercise than walking a few miles each day. You can do it anywhere you find yourself with some spare time.

Walking Health Tips

When it comes to walking as part of stroke rehabilitation, faster is better, according to studies. Stroke survivors participating in a supervised rehab program who were helped to walk faster than is typically the case had a substantial improvement in their overall walking ability, investigators from McGill University in Montreal report.

In addition to improving mobility, they point out, more intensive physical rehabilitation should also improve cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, and range of motion. "Walking after stroke is characterized by slow gait speed, poor endurance, and changes in the quality and adaptability of walking pattern.

• Walking instructor, Baboo Lall, cautions against taking short-cuts when there are walking guidelines. "I see a lot of people stroll down the road, under the impression that they are exercising. After two blocks they are breathless and feel good that they have exercised. But, that is not how it is done and they will not get benefits from it."
"For a proper walk, your head has to be high, your back straight and arms bent at 45 degrees. The movement needs to be from the pelvic area," explains Lall.

• Walking poles are designed to ease body mass on knees and other joints and this form of exercise is said to burn up to 50 percent more calories than regular walking. It is also touted for its therapeutic benefits for back and leg injuries.

HIKING TRAIL UPGRADE IDEAS

American hiking paths are trailing those in Europe
American health experts would love to see everyone getting regular exercise by going on scenic walks.
But they may have to see it in Europe.

Trail networks such as those in Switzerland and Britain leave America’s trails in the dust. And the European dust is stirred constantly by hikers.
"Our cities are set up for people to drive," said Mary Margaret Sloan, president of the American Hiking Society, which is trying to promote more trail development in the United States. "They live in the kind of cities and towns where walking is really encouraged."

American trail-builders are developing new places to walk. Communities are converting railroad rights-of-way into places for walking or biking, marking out walks through local historic areas, or creating new connections off premiere hiking routes such as the 2,167-mile Appalachian Trail.
"We don’t do it like the Europeans do it," said Dr. Gerald F. Pletcher, a cardiologist with the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and a national spokesman for the American Heart Association. Walking and biking, which American health experts encourage as beneficial aerobic activity, are part of the European lifestyle, particularly in Switzerland and some other areas, he said. Switzerland cares so much about its paths that it enshrines them in its constitution, which says the federal government can set standards for trail networks and must replace any trails that it closes. Switzerland has 38,525 miles of marked trails, said Marcel Grandjean, director of the Swiss Hiking Federation. The private group gets money to maintain them from the cantons, the Swiss equivalent of states.

These paths cross some of the world’s most spectacular scenery. In the spring and summer, hikers walk through flower-filled meadows, under ranges of snow-capped peaks, and above and below waterfalls fed by the melted ice of glaciers. In the winter, some trails are clear of snow while others can be crossed on snowshoes or skis.
The Swiss have always walked, and like it, Grandjean said.
Switzerland does not keep statistics on how many people walk because "everybody goes hiking, from our top politicians to blue-collar workers," he said.
In the old days, walking was how the Swiss got from one village to another. Modern Swiss built their hiking trails on those paths and cart tracks. The public has the right to walk the paths even when they cross private land, Grandjean said.
Since the 1930s, the Swiss have been marking their trails with signposts.

Where Americans generally content themselves with colored blazes to show the way, the Swiss also give directions to towns and villages. And where America’s few signposts give distances in miles, the Swiss give them in an easier-to-follow measure—the time in hours and minutes that it takes an average walker to make the trip..
Along well-traveled trails Switzerland’s signs often point the way to restaurants, hotels and guest houses.Walkers can hike from breakfast to lunch to dinner, similar to Britain’s pub-to-pub rambles.

"I’m not suggesting people put more pubs in their mountains, but in Europe it has turned into a community experience," she said
Swiss market research expert Peter Doebeli said the community experience is especially important to seniors.

Investing in Hiking

The media is always giving ink to suggestions on how to add money to your retirement fund. Now they are working on adding years to your life so you have time to spend it.

A lot of people right now are just hoping the money they think they have coming doesn't evaporate. Maybe we should be writing about our money taking a walk!

Invest a Little Time for a Better Future

An editorial in the "Washington Post" did the math— invest 30 minutes of walking a day and you'll spend 49 days of the next 12 years of your life walking to gain 1.3 healthy years. That's a great payoff, considering that it is also likely the walking will help you keep off fat and improve your mood.

Spend Time Exercising

If you wait until you develop a health problem, you will be spending more than 30 minutes a day on drugs, surgery and recovery, treatments, getting the medical bills paid, going to appointments, and making your final arrangements. Instead, spend those 30 minutes a day beforehand in an exercise you enjoy. If walking doesn't work for you, try biking or swimming. If walking is too mild, try running.

Even One More Healthy Year is of Great Value

If you hate exercise, imagine how much more you will hate surgery and all of the bottles of expensive pills you must take. Giving yourself an extra healthy year, or two, or three is well worth it.If all these numbers work out for a majority of us they are going to make the social security benefit year 96 instead of 66. We are just living too long for the governments liking already. If they could just get more of us to die before they had to give us our money back they would be happier than a corn borer in a peach.

So let's all get out and walk and hike and run and swim and bike and drive those politicians nuts!

Stairway to Health

Researchers at Stanford University found that people who strap on a pedometer are more active, lose more weight and have better blood pressure.
"Much to my surprise, these little devices were shown to increase physical activity by just over 2,000 steps, or about one mile of walking per day," said lead author Dr. Dena Bravata.
Several organizations, such as the nonprofit Shape Up America, founded by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, recommend that adults walk 10,000 steps each day.
In recent years, pedometers have emerged as a popular tool for counting steps. Bravata, a general internist, said she was curious whether she should recommend them to her patients.
The analysis found that increasing physical activity depended on setting a goal and keeping a diary of the number of steps walked, Bravata said.
"Every night, you write down how many steps you walked that day," she said. "By flipping back through your diary, you’re able to see patterns: ‘On the two days a week I took the stairs, I increased my steps.’"
Bravata and her colleagues reviewed 26 studies that looked at the use of pedometers as a tool to motivate physical activity. A total of 2,767 people participated in the studies; most participants were female, overweight and relatively inactive before they started their walking program.
Depending on the kind of study, people wanted 2,100 to nearly 2,500 more steps a day when they were being monitored. Even the low end of that was a 27 percent increase in activity.
They also found that people lost a few more pounds — 2.5 on average — and blood pressure improved.

Hiking for the Health of It

You may hear many different terms to describe walking styles, such as: power walking, speed walking, aerobic walking, and race walking. Of those names, race walking is the only form of walking that has a clear cut definition because it is governed by a specific set of rules. The other terms are often used simply to help validate walking as a real form of exercise in the minds of the participants, and the different names do not usually refer to a different technique. The foundation of a good basic stride is posture. The spine should be elongated by standing straight—not in a rigid military position, merely straight, tall, and relaxed. You should be able to draw a straight line from your ear down to your shoulder, to your hip, knee and ankle. A common problem to look for here is an unnatural arch in the lower back. Commonly known as a “sway back”, this incorrect posture can create great discomfort, especially when walking long distances. To eliminate this problem, practice tucking your buttocks under your body, putting the pelvis area in a more neutral position. To accomplish this, pull in your abdominal muscles, and at the same time squeeze your buns. Don’t be squeezing any one else’s on the trail. This can put your jaw way out of alignment. The head should be level, eyes looking forward, and the chin parallel to the ground. A protruding chin or tilting the head down to look at the ground is a common mistake. If the head is allowed to tilt forward, excess strain is put on the neck and shoulders and will lead to undue fatigue. Focus on looking forward to about 12-20 feet in front of you. If you need to look closer to where you are stepping, lower your eyes, not your whole head. A walker’s shoulders should be relaxed, not drawn up towards the ears. Arms should swing naturally with each step, and should be bent at the elbow at a 90 degree angle. This is important. Straight arms on long walks lead to problems with swelling, tingling, and numbness of the fingers or hands. Bending them will not only eliminate this problem, it will help you gain upper body strength and tone your deltoids, biceps and triceps. Try a set of walking poles. They will give you an upper body workout, keep your arms bent and moving, take tons of weight off your knees and give you an extra set of legs during steep climbs. They can also be excellent outriggers when trying to manuever around muck and water on a narrow trail. For many walkers, weight loss is a goal. By bending the arms, you will also burn 5-10% more calories. One more great reason to keep the arms bent and moving in an athletic motion is that you will immediately be able to pick up your pace for greater periods of time. The bent arms should swing comfortable and naturally at about waist level. Your hands should be relaxed and loosely closed. Any excess tension in the arms or hands should be avoided—it wastes energy. The elbows should be close to the torso, with the hands going no higher than the center of the chest on the forward swing, or past the back of the hip on the back swing. Again, more motion than this is wasted energy. The movement of the lower half of the body in is the most difficult to describe, and for many walkers, the most difficult to achieve. This is usually due to the inflexibility of the hips. Flexibility can be improved by consistently stretching the hip flexors and lower back.In your lower body, the walking technique begins by using the abdominal muscles and hip flexors to rotate the hip forward and lead the leg in its forward motion. As the leg swings forward and straightens, the body will land on the heel. The ankle should be flexed with toes pointed upward at about a 45 degree angle from the ground. The foot placement should be in front of the body, as if almost walking along a straight line. Keep in mind the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. As the body’s weight passes over the leading leg, the foot should roll forward and push off from the toes to begin the next step. A strong push will give you more momentum and power. That’s the basic technique. As you practice it and increase your hip flexibility, you will naturally develop a slightly longer stride. A word of caution: It is counter productive and potentially harmful to your back if you try to increase the length of your stride by taking longer unnatural steps. Speed and efficiency in walking are generated by hip flexibility and quicker, not longer, steps.

Exercise Helps Keep Memory Sharp, Too

If you need another reason to get moving and go backpacking a new report is claiming that exercise helps keep your memory sharp.In addition to the benefits your body receives from exercise, your mind has a lot to gain, too. We know exercise positively affects mood, self-image, and happiness… now we know it also helps us remember.When combined with social involvement and lifelong learning, exercise not only helps you retain memory, it also helps ward off Alzheimer’s Disease.According to the article: The magic memory pill has yet to be found, but science does know that regular exercise, social engagement, and education all help keep the brain sharp as you age –”not just in terms of current memory,” says Dr. Gallagher, PhD, “but also in reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.Aim for 60 minutes of exercise at least three times a week. If you can work out for 30 minutes every day, that’s even better. It doesn’t even have to be all at once. If you can fit three 10-minute walks into your busy day, that’s just as good as walking for 30 minutes all at once. If you’re just beginning an exercise program, start slowly to avoid injury.Like Ellen Degeneres says, "My mom walks three miles a day and we don't know where the hell she is!"