I have never really enjoyed working out. I hate running, don’t find joy in lifting weights, and can’t get behind the spin class movement. This is not to say I don’t like being active. Small ways of being active, like a casual game of pickleball or dancing on the weekend, make me feel a lot better in all aspects of my life. However, I often feel like getting up and being active is too much work, or too time-consuming. So I decided to find a simple way to incorporate being active into my daily life
During the Summer of 2019, I was really into walking. I would walk nearly 4 miles a day in my very hilly neighborhood. Every morning at about 10 am, before it got too hot, I would set out for about 80 minutes to get my daily walk in. During these 80 minutes, I would often listen to music or my favorite podcast to fill the silence. At the time, I didn’t think much of all the walking I was doing. 2019 was before the rise of walking due to “Hot Girl Walks” or the quarantine family walks, so the idea of daily walks as a form of exercise wasn’t widespread. Despite being fairly consistent over the summer, as fall came around and brought school and colder weather, I stopped walking. Even in the following years as walking became a big trend, I never became that consistent again. During lockdown, I went on a few walks through the trails behind my house with my neighbors, but I never got back to daily 4-mile walks.
In my 4th semester of college, I have been looking for ways to improve my well-being. I have been looking for ways to become more active and alive. As I mentioned above, I have never been into the typical ideas of working out, so going to the Jo has never been appealing to me. In the past week with the weather getting nicer, I decided to make a return to walking. I didn’t directly jump back into the 4 miles I used to do; it is still a bit too cold for me and I just don’t have the time for that. So I decided to walk 1 mile daily during the week, and 2 miles on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. After my first walk, I questioned why I was doing this. I was tired, and cold and sweaty at the same time. But after a couple of days of walking, I got into a rhythm. While I was still a bit tired after my walks, I felt as though I had a newfound energy. Adding walks into my daily routine has made a lot of improvements in my daily life, and I cannot wait for the weather to get warmer, and to walk even more.