Happy first day of Q2!
How did the first three months of 2024 treat you?
It’s been pretty transformative year already for me. In a number of different ways, but today I want to share one thing I started doing 5 weeks ago that changed my life: walking.
Yep, the thing we do every day lol.
I’ve always wanted to be someone who went for daily walks but never was quite able to make it stick, until recently.
Walking daily absolutely started as a hail mary. I was sitting on my couch feeling terrible and said to myself, “I gotta move”, so I went for a walk.
But this time I kept going. I did it again the next day, and the day after that. Next thing I know, I’d been walking for a week straight! And it felt good to show up for myself this way because depression has made that increasingly difficult over the years.
I have never in my adult life intentionally done any form of daily exercise or consistent movement for this long before, and I'm really proud of myself!
I think what helped this time was lowering my threshold- not having to put on anything fancy or push myself to do a certain distance or intensity. Just throw some clothes on and walk. That’s IT.
Especially on the days things feel heavy. I don’t magically feel better when I get back inside, but I know it has helped because mentally and emotionally things are not AS heavy, and that makes a difference.
It’s been really nice to spend time in nature daily because prior to this, if I wasn’t in a good mental space sometimes I wouldn’t leave the house for days. Now I know I’ll spend at least 20-30 minutes outside moving my body and getting some fresh air.
So what other things have I noticed from walking every day for 5 weeks? I feel better in my body- I move better because I’m not as stiff, and I know that my stamina has increased- I walked 2 miles for the first time a few weeks ago, and just last week, 3!
And this is JUST from walking, I don’t have any strength or stretching routine at present.
I’ve also lost weight. This is being included as an aside because weight loss was not my goal, I just wanted to feel better. I knew that increasing my daily activity would lead to a little weight loss, but my eating has been very poor these past couple months (I haven’t been eating enough) so that plus daily walking has weight sliding off a bit faster than I would like. I don't know how much weight I've lost, but it's enough for it to be noticeable and my clothes definitely fit differently. Hopefully things will stabilize a bit once my eating gets back to normal.
Beyond that, I’m just really grateful to be actively proving to myself that baby steps are worth it.
I KNOW that, but it’s always been hard for me. I always want to see big changes to feel like I’m making progress, but those aren’t sustainable. Walking every day has shown me that I can show up for myself, little by little each day and it does make a difference 🥹
So what now? I’m gonna keep walking lol.
And I’ll keep sharing as well. I started sharing my daily walks on the gram and had some really nice and encouraging convos with folks! I’m on a slight social media break at the moment, so I hope to do a bit more sharing here on the blog and via email.
If you enjoyed today’s post, please leave a comment and let me know!