Mental Benefits of Walking

Walking reduces stress and anxiety. Even if you are not suffering from a mental health problem, walking is a great way to clear your head, boost your mood, improve your outlook and your overall well-being. 

Endorphins that are released with physical activity like walking, are known to not only boost our mood but also to lower our stress levels. Being physically active helps lower the risk of clinical depression, and spending more time in nature can also help to quiet the mind.  The same way endorphins make you feel better also help you with concentration so that you feel mentally sharp for life’s tasks and decisions.  Exercise also stimulates the growth of new brain cells and helps prevent age related decline. 

A long list of mental health benefits has been attributed to exercise, including reduced depression, better sleep, and more.

• Sedentary women who engaged in a walking program reported improved mental and emotional satisfaction and a decrease in stress, according to a Journal of Holistic Nursing article published in 2006.
   

• Women & Health published another study that measured 128 sedentary, ethnic-minority women. Researchers found that participants who walked more reported increases in positive mental health and well-being.

Create an atmosphere to share in the wild.

Walk & Talk 4 Men is a group (AKA The Proper Blokes Club)  that started in 2019 by Scott Oughton-Johnson by creating a FaceBook page and uploaded a video of himself talking about his mental health.  Their slogan is, “When life gets tough, we’re here to listen”.   They are a support group for men and their mental health that gets together a couple times a month and walks around green spaces in the United Kingdom.  This unique group gives guys the “opportunity to offload, get things off (their) chest and talk about how (they) are feeling rather than bottling it up and suffering in silence.”  Check out this video about the group!  In 2017, it all got to be too much for Scott, he went to his GP (General Practitioner) and received cognitive behavior therapy on the NHS. “But they can only offer a limited amount of sessions,” he says, “and then you’re back in the wild. I needed to find something to maintain that feeling I had after a counselling session. And one thing I enjoyed was walking.” 

Why is a mental health group for me important?  The male suicide rate in the UK is more than triple the rate of women as reported by  and data from the National Statistics in England based on registration of death.   
 

Another study of 124 sedentary older adults found that those who started walking for 45 minutes three times per week for six months performed substantially better on several cognitive tasks than those who did stretching or strengthening exercises. Researchers, whose study was published in Nature, think that their improved cardiorespiratory fitness increased blood flow to the brain, which helped improve brain function.

Even a short, 15-minute walk can help clear your mind, improve your mood, and boost your energy level. As you move and start to feel a little better, you'll often boost your energy enough to exercise more vigorously—by walking further, breaking into a run, or adding a bike ride, for example. (helpgGuide.org)

Another benefit for the mind from walking is resilience.  When life’s mental and emotional challenges hit us, exercise helps build resilience (the ability to bounce back and thrive verses just survive) and is a healthy coping mechanism.  When life happens, instead of hitting the vending machine, bottle, or bong – take a walk.  Walking also helps boost your immune system and reduce the impact of stress on the body.  When you engage in effective coping (like walking, prayer, exercise, deep breathing, mindfulness etc.) you practice effective coping and have a skill set that you can immediately use when life hits the fan.

Adding resilience skills like walking trains your brain to effectively cope with stress. Stress calls us to act and do…not stuff, stew and boil over. - Janelle Baldwin NBC-HWC

With walking, you don’t need to devote hours out of your busy day to training at the gym, sweat buckets, or run mile after monotonous mile to reap all the physical and mental health benefits of exercise. Just 30-minutes of moderate exercise five times a week is enough. And even that can be broken down into two 15-minute or even three 10-minute exercise sessions if that’s easier. A coach and nutritionist from Bio Synergy, Daniel Herman, says “that while it is 'better' to spread out your exercise across the week, fitting into just two days can still be 'beneficial'.

"It’s essential to remember that consistency is key. If you only exercise on the weekend, you may miss out on some of the day-to-day benefits of regular physical activity, such as improved mood, increased energy, and better sleep," he adds.  There are other groups out there like Menwalktalk started by David Tag.   

Want to feel mentally boosted? Walk and talk in an accountability group like this one in the United Kingdom.

Even a little bit of activity is better than nothing. Many sedentary jobs force employees to sit for hours without breaks.  Attempt to build in even 5 minutes an hour to stretch and move.  You may also need to consider starting your day with activity and ending your day with activity.  You will feel mentally boosted and give your body what it needs, movement!  

A few tips to add movement into a sedentary lifestyle or job.

·         Move in and around your home.  Do functional activities like washing your own car, cleaning the house, using a push lawn mower.

·         Sneak activity in at work or on the go.  Park further away, go up and down the stairs, setting a daily goal for the workday. Take a walk on a break or before eating lunch.

·         Get creative with walking.  Make fun walking dates like a walk in the park before coffee, go fruit picking at a farm or orchard. Explore a local park or hiking trail chatting with a friend verse on the phone. Organize a bowling or volleyball team.  Take a 1-time class in dance, yoga, or fitness. 

If you don’t have time for 15 or 30 minutes of exercise, or if your body tells you to take a break after 5 or 10 minutes, for example, that’s okay, too. Start with 5- or 10-minute sessions and slowly increase your time. The more you exercise, the more energy you’ll have, so eventually you’ll feel ready for a little more. The key is to commit to some moderate physical activity—however little—on most days. As exercising becomes a habit, you can slowly add extra minutes or try different types of activities. If you keep at it, the benefits of exercise will begin to pay off.

A recent study in the United Kingdom (the findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine and used the date from 89,573 participants in the UK Biobank which holds information on their genes and health) found that people who squeeze their exercise routines into one or two sessions dying the week experience almost as many health benefits as those who work out more often. “Physical activity concentrated within one to two days was associated with similarly lower risk of cardiovascular outcomes to more evenly distributed activity,” study author, Dr. Patrick Ellinor, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, says.

There is hope for even you if you have a demanding sedentary job. Get moving whenever you can find the time – your mind and your body will thank you! "Within nearly 90 000 individuals (who participated in the UK Biobank wore wrist tracking devices over 6 years’ time) providing wrist-based activity quantification, physical activity concentrated within one to two days was associated with similarly lower risk of cardiovascular outcomes to more regular activity."