Research-PROVEN 30-Minute Walk Benefits
Research-PROVEN 30-Minute Walk Benefits
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00:00Hey there my friend, this is Dr. Anthony Balduzzi, founder here at The Fit Father Project and
00:04The Fit Mother Project.
00:06In today's video, I want to talk to you about the importance of walking for good health.
00:12There's a famous Greek physician by the name of Hippocrates.
00:15He's largely credited as being the father of modern medicine, and he has a very famous
00:19quote that says that walking is the best medicine.
00:23And it's literally taken me around 20 years of health and medical study to figure out
00:28why he said this, and now I believe it to be foundationally true.
00:33Walking is essential for good health.
00:36And we're going to go over some of the research-backed benefits of walking in this video, but I also
00:39want to talk about some of the bigger picture philosophy.
00:41But let's start with the actual benefits.
00:44The research is very clear.
00:45You take a 30-minute walk per day, your heart health is dramatically better because as you're
00:50walking, your heart is pumping in a nice, relaxed manner, circulating that oxygen-rich
00:55blood throughout all of your tissues.
00:57And we know that when your tissues are getting vital oxygen, vital nutrients, they stay younger,
01:02they stay healthier.
01:03It removes more metabolic waste.
01:05We have our blood circulation, but we also have these vessels in our body called lymphatic
01:10vessels that run near our blood vessels, and what lymph vessels do is they carry your immune
01:14system and they remove a lot of cellular junk and get it out of those tissues and recirculate
01:20throughout the body.
01:21So walking gives you this heart benefit.
01:23It also boosts your immune system through those lymphatics.
01:26And also, a 30-minute walk can boost your metabolism for up to 12 hours afterwards.
01:32Crazy, right?
01:34So if your goal is to lose weight, you pair a healthy diet with some walking and the research
01:38is very clear of this.
01:39You do a 30-minute walk per day with a healthy diet, you start losing weight.
01:44The weight falls off people.
01:45We've had members in our Fit Father and Fit Mother Project programs who literally lost
01:49a hundred pounds without touching a dumbbell and not doing anything other than daily walking.
01:55It's that important when paired with a healthy diet.
01:57Walking can improve your metabolism.
01:59As we get older, especially for women, when estrogen levels decline, our bones become
02:04more brittle.
02:05Walking helps strengthen that.
02:06It's the perfect amount of mechanical load as we're shifting our weight, moving our feet.
02:11It helps strengthen our bones.
02:13Obviously boosts our metabolism, but it's not just with the physical skeletal structure.
02:18It also improves our memory and our attention.
02:20There is research from the University of Michigan that showed that when people took a walk specifically
02:24in nature, they showed a 20% increase in attention and memory directly following the walk.
02:30And why is this?
02:32This kind of comes down to the philosophy component of this video.
02:35Us humans, when we are born, the first big challenge that we essentially have is learning
02:41how to walk.
02:42We start crawling, which gets our muscles stronger, and then eventually we start finding
02:47our balance, working our way up and walking.
02:49We are bipedal creatures and we walk so that we can explore our environment and do things
02:55and find food and eat.
02:56And we have this ancestral baked into our genes and our history, the need to walk.
03:03Gives us these health benefits, but also we're meant to walk outside where we came from.
03:08And when we get that sunshine for the vitamin D, when we're breathing that fresh air, it
03:12calms the nervous system down, improves our memory and our attention.
03:16The different colors, they actually call it like green walking or forest bathing.
03:20Basically taking nature walks is phenomenally good for your health.
03:23This is real science, not just foo-foo stuff.
03:26We obviously have the immune boosting benefits of lymphatic vessels, and this is one of my
03:30favorite benefits too.
03:32For those of us who want to lose weight and want to have healthy blood sugar, walking
03:36helps cut the blood sugar spike after eating.
03:40We are meant to do light walking after we have big meals.
03:44Let me explain why.
03:45When we eat food, oftentimes it has carbohydrate that gets broken down into glucose and fructose
03:52and the different kinds of sugars that raises our blood sugar.
03:55And normally we get this big spike after we eat a meal.
03:57Well guess what walking does?
03:59It activates some of these glucose receptors in the muscles of our legs and it sucks that
04:03blood sugar up.
04:04And there are some studies showing that walking can lead to up to a 40 to 50% decrease in
04:09the blood sugar response after a meal by walking.
04:13So you want to lose weight, you want to have more energy, you want to avoid diabetes and
04:17improve your glycemic control, take a walk after your meals.
04:22Ideally in a perfect world, after every single meal, but certainly after a big dinner meal,
04:26I think one of the best health habits I could recommend for you and your family is to take
04:30a 20 minute walk after you have a dinner meal.
04:33It's going to help shift your body into a rest and digest mode, it's going to help lower
04:37that blood sugar, it'll improve your overall health.
04:40So what do I suggest in terms of incorporating walking?
04:42Well I believe there's two primary important times to walk.
04:46The first thing is if you can, first thing in the morning.
04:48Our bodies are stiff from sleeping.
04:50We need to first off get up, rehydrate with some high quality water, with some pink Himalayan
04:54sea salt for some of these trace minerals our bodies needs, then we hit the pavement,
04:58we go for a walk.
04:59We get outside, we get the sunshine on our skin for the vitamin D3, we get it in our
05:03eyes which helps regulate our circadian rhythm and we get our bodies moving.
05:07We get the circulation, we get the benefits of pumping those lymphatic vessels.
05:11So first thing in the morning, great time to walk.
05:13And then after your biggest meal is the second best time to walk.
05:16So personally, I walk first thing in the morning and I also walk after dinner.
05:20I understand your schedule might be different.
05:22That might not be possible for you.
05:24Even just accumulating more steps throughout the day is great.
05:27Breaking up your sitting at your desk with some walking whenever you can is great.
05:32Accumulate walking, accumulate steps.
05:35I will say this though to hit on the meal thing.
05:38The researchers did compare sometimes people taking a 45-minute walk in the middle of the
05:43day versus the benefits of walking specifically after a meal.
05:48And there's tremendous benefits to walking after a meal in terms of improving your blood
05:52sugar responses.
05:53So a lot of people right now are afraid of eating carbohydrates.
05:55A lot of people are going ketogenic diets because they don't want their blood sugars
05:58to spike.
05:59Well, guess what?
06:00We're not meant to eat food and then sit on our butts.
06:03We're meant to eat and then move.
06:06This is the foundational aspect of what it means to kind of be a human operating in this
06:10ambient environment that we're all in.
06:12We're built to walk, so walk more.
06:15And this is the kind of exercise you can do into your 80s and your 90s.
06:18You might not be able to do that intense circuit workout or the CrossFit or the P90X or whatever
06:23you do, but you can walk.
06:25And as you get older, your ability to walk becomes even more important.
06:29It becomes the quality of your life.
06:31So start walking now, especially if you sit a lot.
06:33And now, how do you incorporate walking with your workouts?
06:36Well, I think the perfect scenario is thinking of walking not as exercise, but as daily baseline
06:41movement.
06:42This is what is required by this body every single day.
06:44We need to move it in some capacity.
06:46Then doing three 30-minute workouts per week, pulse throughout the week of higher intensity
06:51is perfect for your health and fitness goals.
06:53It's what our program members on Fit Father Project and Fit Mother Project do.
06:57They pulse these higher intensity workouts in.
06:59They walk every single day.
07:01Ideally after meals.
07:02And if you want help with some workouts, because obviously I think you got the walking thing
07:05figured out by now, scroll below in the description.
07:08Get our free workouts for fit moms, fit dads.
07:10We have women's and men's workouts.
07:11They take under 30 minutes.
07:13You can do them in the comfort of your own home or on five feet of floor space, and they're
07:16incredible workouts.
07:17So we have that for you as well.
07:19Key here, walking is great for your brain, for your heart, for your immune system, for
07:23your bones, all of these things.
07:26Walk more.
07:27Walking is truly medicine.
07:28I hope you enjoyed this video, my friend.
07:30If you found this useful, you learned something good, hit that like button.
07:33Give us a thumbs up.
07:34It really helps the YouTube algorithm spread this video across the internet to find other
07:39people like you who are interested in good health and fitness.
07:42It really helps our channel and we appreciate it very much.
07:44And if you did enjoy this, drop us a comment below.
07:46I would love to hear from you.
07:47I'd love to hear that you took a walk today.
07:49It'd make me very happy.
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07:53Across our Fit Father and Fit Mother Project channels, we literally have 500 plus videos
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08:10I'll see you around the channel, my friend, and I'll talk to you very soon.