Self-care is within walking distance!

It’s ‘tis season of the year again. The season when you would like to relax, spend time with family and friends (even virtually) but you also want to do it all. Cooking the perfect meal for holiday celebrations, thinking about the perfect gift for everyone, buying them or doing them all by yourself, wrapping them, and then cleaning the mess left behind. You feel happy to have pleased everyone, you feel happy to have spent those hours with your loved ones, but you also feel exhausted and maybe drained.

You may think, “I will rest after the holidays, take care of myself, take some me time”. This is perfectly understandable! Your goal right now is to make sure that everything goes smoothly. But the truth is, once the holidays are over, you are supposed to go back to your “normal” life, your work and taking care of the everyday life. You won’t have time to take care of yourself. There are always a million reasons why you could postpone self-care. But you need to prioritize yourself (a little bit) each and every day. And self-care works best as a routine!

Self-care works best as a routine

Regular acts of self-care keep you energized and dealing with pressures well. It can’t be an emergency fix to get back on track when things go wrong. You need to allow yourself some time every single day (or at least regularly, on a daily or weekly basis).

Taking care of yourself means being careful of both your physical and emotional health.

Eating healthy food, getting enough sleep (depending on your personal needs), drinking enough water and performing some physical activity are among the most important factors that promote your physical wellbeing.

Emotional health means feeling balanced, in control of your thoughts and emotions and able to cope with life challenges. There are different ways to feel balanced and in control. There is no unique path to the emotional wellbeing. However some light physical activity such as walking can help you reach both physical and emotional wellness.

Walking (or any light aerobic exercise) is one of the best ways to nurture yourself physically and emotionally

One of easiest way to start a self-care routine is walking 10 minutes or more every day. Walking is the perfect opportunity to take care of both your body and mind.

A study from 2006 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry showed that aerobic exercises such as walking reduce anxiety and depression. These improvements in mood are the result of exercise-induced increase in blood circulation to the brain, which leads to an influence on the physiologic reactivity to stress. This a proof (if still needed) of the link between mind and body.

According to this study, there are countless benefits about physical activities, among others:

• Improved sleep
• Better endurance
• Stress relief
• Improvement in mood
• Increased energy
• Improvement in self-esteem
• Improvement in cognitive functions
• Reduced tiredness that can increase mental alertness
• Weight reduction
• Reduced cholesterol and improved cardiovascular fitness

If you are new to walking, it can feel intimidating to start. You may have heard of the daily 10,000 steps recommendation and it may feel hard to reach. But don’t worry, it’s easier to accomplish than you may think.

Walking as a self-care routine

What I like about walking is that while walking you can also do “other things”. But don’t get me wrong! I don’t want you to multitask (it would be the exact opposite of my “slowing down and taking care of ourselves” philosophy)! What I mean is that walking is a kind of exercise that let your mind wander and can even be a mindfulness exercise. While walking, you are not out of breath, sweating and only able to concentrate on your pace and not getting injured. After the first minutes (for me it usually takes about 5 minutes) you stop thinking about your pace, you can be present in the moment or think about whatever is important to you. Walking is relaxing in the moment and this is pure joy!

Why walking helps you emotionally

Holiday season or any other stressful time in your life (whether it’s good or bad stress) can raise mixed emotions: overwhelm, feeling tense, irritable or tired. Many of us, when in front of stress, binge in emotional eating. In other words we literally “eat our emotions”. But there is another way to release those negative thoughts! Walking is a powerful way of getting rid of the stress. So the next time you feel the urge to eat, start to walk for 5 little minutes. And while walking (and you can do it every where, even in your kitchen or living room) ask yourself why you NEED eating? What are the emotions that make you want to eat? Believe me, asking yourself these questions is way easier when you are already literally in the motion. And if this is an emotional eating craving, most of the time after these 5 to 10 minutes walking you will get over it. If not, the fridge will still be there for you!

How long should you walk?

If you think like me that walking can be a perfect self-care routine, you may still wonder how much you should walk and how long it takes? To help you with this step, keep in mind that CDC recommends for adults 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week. This means that you should aim at 30 minutes of brisk (or quite fast) walking 5 days a week.

The one secret that will help you build up the habit of walking is walking as much as possible! When you look close enough, there are plenty of situations when you can walk instead of remaining seated. I never again call somebody on my phone without walking a bit (unless it’s somethings that requires a lot of concentration such as a professional call). And when I want to listen to a podcast or even check my facebook or instagram account, if it’s a safe place (like inside my house) I walk. You know what? With a little practice, walking can truly become addictive. After a while, if you remain seated you will feel the need to stand up and walk! You need to make walking a habit. So do it as often as possible!

One last tip: like every routine, it may feel hard to get started. But remember: humans are made of habits. Once you get used to walking, you will fully enjoy this mind and body self-care exercise and you will miss it if for any reason you can’t practice for a few days. Believe me, I was NOT an athletic person and would never thought I would miss physical exercise. But here am I! And you will soon feel the benefit of walking every day.