This Is Your Body On A 10-Minute Walk
HuffPost
Even just a short bout of exercise can help improve your physical and mental well-being. Here's what you can expect.
It can feel intimidating to commit to an ongoing fitness plan, especially one that meets recommended guidelines in the U.S.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you should perform moderate physical activity for 150 minutes weekly — for example, five days in which you get 30 minutes of exercise. And walking, specifically brisk walking, can meet this standard. Additionally, the guidance says you should do strength training two days a week.
While a single burst of short exercise — in this case, a 10-minute walk — won’t meet these moderate physical activity recommendations, you could still reach the goal by taking three 10-minute walks each day. And, if you can’t do that, you can start with even shorter walks, which can still support a healthy life.
“The data really supports that one of the most harmful things we can do for our health is to be sedentary,” said Dr. Samantha Smith, a sports medicine physician at Yale Medicine. A sedentary lifestyle puts you at increased risk for negative cardiovascular outcomes like strokes or heart attacks and is also a risk factor for other medical conditions, she said.
It can be a pretty big leap to go from zero minutes of exercise to 150 each week. So, if you need to start small, that’s OK. Experts say shorter bouts of exercise are still beneficial, because doing something is better than doing nothing. Even that quick 10-minute walk in your day will be good for your mental and physical health. Here’s how:
