We’re at that time of year when the days are short (and likely cold), precipitation may be in the air, and your food consumption may have gone up with all of the holiday goodies and gatherings. Your head may know that it’s critical to keep physically active but your heart may be longing for the couch rather than a cold walk outside. So what’s a person to do? 

First, it’s important to understand that even short strolls can be hugely beneficial to your body. No one expects you to walk for hours outside when it’s cold and the ground underneath may not be safe. But that’s no reason to give up a walking habit. Instead, you should search out your indoor options to continue your regular exercise. Whether it’s at an indoor track at your local community college, a mall walk, or store walking at the local Costco, there’s no reason you have to give up a daily stroll just because the weather outside isn’t inviting. If you have a treadmill or belong to your local gym, that’s great, but if not, even marching in your living room or taking steps around your apartment can all add up to keeping you moving during the dark days of winter. For some at-home, indoor walking routines, take a look at what our friends from Yes2Next offer here and here. 

There’s more evidence than ever that walking provides a multitude of health benefits. A recent Spanish study published in JAMA Network Open provides even more reasons to keep walking. According to this study, which examined the association between depression and walking, increasing the number of your daily step count may be associated with a reduction in symptoms of depression. For those who walked 5000 steps a day, adding 1000 steps led to a 9% drop in the odds of developing depression, and for those able to add 2000 steps a day, the study reported a 43% drop in the prevalence of depression. Above 10,000 steps there seemed to be no positive benefit. For more on this study, take a look here.

It’s also becoming clear that an after-meal walk, even if brief, can aid in digestion and help control blood sugar levels. Sometimes humorously called a “fart walk”, these after-meal walks (often after dinner, when people tend to eat the most) can jumpstart your digestion (best to start the walk within 30 minutes of finishing your meal), blunt any blood sugar spikes that may result from your meal and pull sugar from the blood and into your muscles to sustain your walking. If it’s a cold winter evening, you don’t even need to go out- you can just march and move inside to help your body better metabolize the sugar resulting from your meal. Especially in the evening, when our bodies produce less insulin to help control blood sugar, taking an evening “constitutional”- or just moving your body once dinner is over- is an important activity for your health and well-being (and it will also help you sleep better). For more on this type of walking, get off the couch and click here.

And if this is the year that you’re resolving to finally start a daily walking routine, there’s plenty of advice to follow. A recent post in Very Well Health recommends you first determine a comfortable walking pace, how far you want to walk, how frequently you can commit to walking, and the total amount of time you hope to walk each week. The article also includes a suggested walking plan to help you get started. To make the start-up even easier, add some audio entertainment, make sure you have comfortable walking shoes, and invite a friend along to keep it social. And to get more out of each walk, a recent article in The Conversation has 5 tips to make your daily walk more beneficial, including doing intervals at different walking speeds, adding in some inclines or stairs, and holding some weights to increase the challenge. Whatever you do, just don’t stop walking this winter, for as Hippocrates said, “Walking is man’s best medicine.”