Get Healthy Tri-State: Step up for a better body – Huntington Herald Dispatch
Want a sexier six-pack, better blood pressure and the energy of a 20-year-old? All you gotta do is take 4,883 more steps a day. You’re already logging about 5,117 steps a day, says a new study of average walking habits. For top-shelf fitness and a better-looking body, your target is 10,000 steps. Here are four ways to power up your count.
CLIP ON A PEDOMETER, or download a free pedometer app. Watching your daily steps add up is motivating all by itself — just tracking them can inspire you to go an extra 2,000. (If I make like Dr. Mike and park at the far end of the lot, that’s 150 more steps both to and from. He even traded his regular desk for a treadmill desk.)
GET YOUR PARTNER TO WALK WITH YOU. Enlisting your spouse ups your odds of sticking with walking by a whopping 80 percent. Bonus: Quality time spent getting fit together translates into more sweaty fun between the sheets, too.
DO IT INDOORS WHEN THE WEATHER’S RAW. Over one cold, dark winter, 64 percent of Canadians in a fitness program walked at their local mall at least three days a week. By comparison, most exercise classes have a 50 percent drop-out rate.
COUNT THE OTHER STUFF. Award yourself 150 steps for every minute of lap-swimming, fast aerobics, racquetball, roller-skating and cycling; 80 steps per minute of weeding, golfing without a cart or dancing; and 40 per minute of bowling.
The YOU Docs, Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, are authors of “YOU: On a Diet.” Want more? See “The Dr. Oz Show” on TV (check local listings). To submit questions, go to www.RealAge.com.