Finally getting fit – this new year belongs to you!

I should go for a walk. I really should go for a walk. No seriously, I really, really should go for a walk. Like right now. Eh, maybe I’ll do it later. Maybe I’ll wait until I have a whole hour or so and do a speed walk. Maybe I’ll even try out my fancy new running shoes and go for a run. But I’ll definitely have to wait until after dinner if I am going to run. I’ll need fuel. But if I wait until after dinner it’s going to be dark outside. It’s probably better if I go tomorrow morning because it’ll be daylight. Much safer. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go tomorrow morning. Real Housewives is starting soon anyway, so maybe I’ll just watch that right now. OK, tomorrow it is. I will start my new jogging routine bright and early tomorrow morning.

Sound familiar? I bet you can guess where this is headed. Tomorrow morning comes and it’s too early or too cold or I woke up too late or I really need to get to work early for my meeting.

The other day I was browsing YouTube since I had saved time by deciding to postpone my new running routine and I saw this:

In this video Dr. Mike Evans reveals stunning evidence revealing the one single thing humans can do to improve our health. Spoiler alert: The answer is unbelievably simple. It’s not dieting, quitting smoking, taking vitamins, it’s not even some amazing new discovery from the Amazon like the acai berry. It’s much, much simpler. Are you ready for this? Walking. This doctor claims that walking alone for about 20 to 30 minutes a day has been proven to have higher and more consistent results for improving conditions like depression, high blood pressure, stress, and on and on.

But in watching this video, something else struck me. What struck me was not really the fact that walking could be such a miracle cure, because we’ve all heard that walking can do wonders for our health. What really amazed me was when I suddenly realized, wait a minute–if walking for 20 to 30 minutes can cure so many problems, it must mean that none of us are now doing it. All the people with the health problems that were cured or improved by walking must have not already been walking 20 minutes per day. How sedentary have we become? Are our bodies that desperate for some movement, some stimulation? Have we just developed into a society where it’s completely normal for a member of society to be living with zero amount of exercise? And just getting up and doing a few minutes a day is all they need to improve their ailing health? Why aren’t we doing it then?

Why do we put it off and postpone and just have a general feeling of not wanting to get up off the couch?What is this procrastinating that we do? Is the desire NOT to move a new human trait that has recently developed? Have we always been this way? Of course humans must have been more active in the past when they had to hunt for food and stay on the move, right?

So who or what is to blame for this evolution, or more accurately, devolution of humanity? Television? Internet? The big pharmaceutical companies? The gross consumer push by corporate conglomerates who are shoving goods down our throats? I personally think physics is to blame. Yep, physics.

It’s the law of inertia. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and objects at rest tend to stay at rest. In some aspects we can blame technology, T.V., the Internet, etc. because these inventions by nature encourage a sedentary lifestyle. Society has developed into an environment where “working” doesn’t always mean laboring, but often times just sitting in front of a screen. And then, in order to relax and decompress from the stress of staring at a screen all day, we come home and stare at another screen. And slowly, we become an object at rest.

We’re sitting all day long. We don’t want to get up and move. We feel like we can’t get up and move. So we don’t. And then we develop health problems and we promise ourselves that we’re going to get on an exercise regimen and we’re going to start running and riding bikes and swimming. But we’re still at rest.

All we need to do is start moving. Stand up. Put one foot in front of the other. Once you’ve got the momentum, it’s easier to keep going. And once you start walking more often, you want to walk even more often.

So I extend the challenge to everyone. Today, right now, stand up. Put one foot in front of the other. Take three steps. See where those three steps lead you. I’m going to do it too. But first I need to finish folding my laundry.