walking

6,000 Steps a Day Will Help Keep Knee Arthritis Away

June 12, 2014 By Jeffrey Strain 3 Comments

There are plenty of great reasons to add walking to your daily routine. Some of them are financial, while others have more to do with health. You can now add another one to the health category. According to new research, walking 6,000 steps a day can reduce the pain of knee arthritis, and increase the mobility of seniors. This is far less than the 10,000 steps wellness programs often set forth as a daily walking goal.

Researchers decided to comb through data when they realized taking 10,000 steps a day could be a daunting task for those who suffer from knee arthritis. They found a study where 2000 people in their 60s wore accelerometers (high tech pedometers) for a period of one week from 2009 to 2012, then again for another week two years later. The data from this study showed those who manage to walk on average 6,000 steps a day were less likely to have issues with climbing stairs, standing, or walking two years later. In addition, for every 1,000 steps more a person walked on average per day, they reduced their risk of mobility loss by another 16% to 18%. That means for those who want to walk 10,000 steps, the news is even better.

6,000 steps translates into approximately an hour of daily walking says Daniel White, the lead author of the study. While this may at first appear to be a lot of steps to take, it’s important to note that it includes every step a person takes during the day. That means it includes the steps taken around the house to do everyday normal activities such as walking to the bathroom or around the kitchen. For those who are fairly active around their house, they should be able to reach the 6,000 step goal with only a little bit of extra effort. While taking a daily walk around the block won’t hurt, it isn’t necessarily essential to reach the 6,000 step goal.

The study also brought good news for those who have been inactive. Even people who walked as little as 3,000 steps a day were able to improve their functionality and avoid limitations. This amount would apply to the 66% of knee arthritis sufferers who walk only 90 minutes a week. With this in mind, White said those with knee arthritis should begin by aiming to walk 3,000 steps a day, then increase to a goal of 6,000 or more steps a day.

What’s even better is increased walking can help with other health issues as well. If you know someone who suffers from knee arthritis or you do yourself, you might want to give them a gift of a pedometer so they can begin to track how many steps they’re taking each day. In fact, this can be a wonderful gift for anyone to help them better their health, and reduce long-term health costs.

(Photo courtesy of muffett68)

Boost Creativity by Walking, Plus 10 More Reasons to Take a Daily Walk

May 1, 2014 By Jeffrey Strain 3 Comments

Photo courtesy of Amy Roseveare

There are a lot of things which seem to be completely unrelated to personal finance, but still have a large effect on your finances. One of the best things that you can do to help improve your finances is to realize that you need to look beyond those things that have a direct link to money, and also consider all of the things you do which have indirect effects. A great example of this is a daily walk.

I walk virtually every morning these days. The length of the walk depends on where I happen to be, but usually it’s between 2 and 5 miles. While I don’t have a specific time I take off each morning, I try to leave before 10:00 am. I started this habit simply because I knew sitting behind a computer all day in a small room writing articles wasn’t healthy, and I thought getting out at least once a day would help. What I didn’t realize at the time was the huge number of additional benefits that it would provide, and how it has helped me financially in the long run.

Going on a daily walk wouldn’t seem like a way to better your finances, but that’s exactly what it does for me. While all the benefits that I derive from a daily walk may not apply to you, my guess is that more than a few will. It’s when you can see how your daily routines help or inhibit your finances that you can really start to begin to make significant progress in getting them in order. Here are some of the benefits I derive from taking a daily walk:

Creativity

My walks give me a chance to be more creative than I would be without them. It’s not just me. A new study by The Journal of Experimental Psychology found that students who walked were able to substantially increase their creativity (as much as 60%) after they took an 8 minute walk. I’m far more creative when walking because there is no pressure to start doing the next thing. I’m free to let my imagination run and let it go where it may, allowing me to come across new and innovative ways of presenting articles that I may not have ever thought of before. The walks give me uninterrupted time to ask the question, “What if I tried this?” which I probably wouldn’t ask myself nearly as often if I were always in front of the computer writing.

Relaxation

One of the greatest benefits of my daily walk is that it helps me relax. No matter how busy my schedule is that day or what deadlines I may have, getting out and walking a few miles takes away much, if not all, of the stress I have. Being less stressed allows me to be in a state where I’m able to do the things that I need to get done more efficiently and thoroughly. I don’t rush the projects, but simply work on what I know needs to get done. Anyone who stresses about things knows that the stress can greatly reduce your effectiveness, and taking my walk is one weapon against the stress of my job.

Preparation

Getting out into the fresh air allows me to clear my mind and mentally prepare for all the things I need to do that day. It gives me the opportunity to rank the importance of the things so that I can spend my time wisely on those which are most important. It also allows me time to consider what type of preparation I will need to do to accomplish the tasks for that day. This allows me to be more efficient when doing them, since I’ve already thought through all the steps in my head. This also helps me avoid doing things that could have been costly in both time and money because I accidentally forget an important step, which may not have been obvious had I simply started doing things without thinking through the preparation process. By giving me a time to think about the day in a relaxed atmosphere, I end up being better prepared and more efficient throughout the day.

Problem Solving

I’m not exactly sure what it is about walking, but it’s one of the times when I’m able to come up with solutions to ongoing problems that need to be solved. I think that since it’s just me walking without any of the other distractions I would have around me when I’m working, I’m able to process all the information much better. More often than not, I will return from a walk with a workable solution to a problem that I needed to solve, but was having trouble figuring out what to do about it in front of the computer. Again, being able to solve these issues in a timely manner makes me personally more efficient, and it makes things run much more smoothly than if they lingered unsolved for an extended period of time.

Focus

One of the reasons that I get so much more done on days that I walk is that I have a much better focus. The walk helps me determine exactly what I need to do that day so that I’m not stopping to constantly evaluate what I need to do next. I know what I need to do and can focus on it. Once done, I know what is next on my list and can focus on that. The day’s plan is settled and that focus helps me get so much more accomplished than I otherwise would.

Increased Productivity

Since my walks help me relax, prepare, solve problems and focus, I’m far more productive when I get back from them than I would be if I didn’t take them at all. Even when I’m gone for as much as two hours, the increased productivity will more than make up for the time that I’m out walking. It’s amazing how much less time I spend procrastinating or sitting in front of the computer trying to decide what to do next when I take a walk. In the end, this helps me get more done and earn more, while also being better organized in the work that I do.

Motivation

Walks are also a great way for me to get motivated for the day. I think about the things that I need to get done and how I will accomplish each of them, and I gain motivation to attempt as many of them as I can. I find that when I don’t walk I end up focusing much more on how much I seem to have to do, which sometimes seems like an insurmountable mountain. When I walk, I get some time to prepare, and I’m in a much better mental state to tackle the day’s list than if I simply rolled out of bed and began working at the computer. I know from experience that I simply have a lot more motivation to tackle the challenges of the day after I have taken a walk.

Inspiration

One of the most difficult parts of my job is coming up with new and interesting ways to present information about personal finance. This is always a challenge, but I find that most of the ideas I get for possible new articles comes while I’m walking. It’s time when my mind can wander and not think about other issues if I so choose, and often results in inspiration for a new take on some aspect of personal finance. It was from a recent morning walk that this particular article developed.

Exercise

One of the problems that I’ve always had working in front of the computer was getting in some daily exercise, and a daily morning walk has solved the minimum part of this issue. It helps ensure that I get at least a little bit of exercise every day, no matter how hectic my schedule may be. While it certainly isn’t enough exercise so that it’s the only thing I need to do, it’s a great minimum to have. I used to rely on a gym membership for this minimum amount of exercise, so the daily walk has allowed me to cancel this and save me the membership fees. Walking quickly taught me that I much prefer to be outside to get my exercise rather than indoors, and so I have changed my workout habits to accommodate this.

Rejuvenation

I personally find my daily walk to be one of the most rejuvenating things that I can do. My attitude toward what needs to be done is often night and day from what it is before I go on my walk. It has almost become like a trigger that tells me, “Okay, it’s time to work and get things done.” I know on those few days when I’m not able to take a walk, I am so much more exhausted by the end of the day and never seem to be able to get on a roll like I do when I do get out.

Health

Overall, my daily walks make me a lot healthier than I would otherwise be. I know that my body doesn’t feel nearly as good when I miss my walk for an extended period of time. I also find that I gain weight when I don’t regularly take my walks. Not only do I feel physically better, my anecdotal evidence seems to show that I don’t get as sick or have other health problems nearly as much when I make sure to get outdoors.

Finding Money

As an added bonus to all the above, I usually find about $100 in coins on the ground each year while walking. While this is not a huge amount of money, it’s also not something to sneeze at. Even better, on the days when I actually find coins during my walk, all the above positives seem to get magnified as there is simply something that makes me happy when I find a random coin.

As mentioned earlier, chances are that walking for you might not bring all of the benefits that it does for me. Even so, some of the benefits are likely to also apply to you, and you may very well find others that are specific to you that I didn’t mention. What’s important to remember is that activities you do on a regular basis can have a profound effect on the way your day functions, and this will ultimately have an effect on your finances. As the above shows, while walking doesn’t have a direct link with money management, it affects a lot of things that will impact my finances.

I’m An Idiot Home Exercise Room Edition: Days 122 – 130

May 14, 2013 By Jeffrey Strain 8 Comments

As predicted, eight of the last nine days have been no-spend-days as I continue to house sit and work on my writing. This has been great news for the minimum wage challenge. As mentioned before, I had everything that I really needed which gave me the opportunity to save a bit of money, although it made for pretty boring writing. One would think that this situation would keep me out of trouble, but then one would be greatly underestimating my ability to turn every day simplicity into something much worse. In the process, I also have a new perspective on home exercise rooms.

I’ve always thought gym memberships and home exercise rooms were a waste of money. They just have never made a whole lot of sense to me. While there really isn’t any such thing as free exercise, it doesn’t have to cost a lot, and one can even make money doing it. Now, there are a couple of caveats that I need to address. First, I have never lived in a cold weather climate which has allowed me to get outdoors year round. Second, I’m not worried about sculpting my body to look a certain way, only to stay relatively healthy so I walk a lot. These two things make a gym membership or a home gym not nearly as important as they might be for someone else living in a different part of the country or who was trying to sculpt their body in a certain way.

The house where I’m currently house sitting has an exercise room and since it does, I thought I might as well try it out and use it a bit. I would normally prefer to exercise outside, but decided to give the treadmill a try. There were also free weights and since I do very little to improve my upper body strength, I thought it might be a good idea to see how strong I was in this area and work a bit on it.

The advantage of the treadmill was that I was able to do shorter and quicker exercises throughout the day rather than take out a several hour block of time to go hiking. This actually worked out much better than I thought it would. I would work for an hour or so, then do a quick 10 – 15 minute jog. I then would go back and write a bit more and do another 15 minute run. Wash, rinse, repeat. I found that taking the breaks were a perfect way to get away from the computer a bit so I didn’t burn out and the shorter times gave me a chance to work out without tiring me out too much. While an investment in a treadmill definitely doesn’t make sense with my current living conditions, it might be something that I consider if I ever decide to get my own place in the future which is something that I would have never done before experimenting a bit with it.

The free weights were another matter all together and prove that I should never be allowed near them unsupervised in the future. I decided to see how much strength I had by seeing how many repetitions I could do with ever-increasing weights with a number of different exercises. It seemed like a good idea and I was surprised that I could do a lot more than I thought I would be able to. Then I woke up the next morning and literally could not move my arms…

I have never been so sore in my life. My arms could barley function for about four days and every movement I made just made them ache. I didn’t even attempt to lift them over my head and everyday things like taking a shower turned into a game of “How can I do this in the least painful way possible?” Now, you might think that after this experience I would have the common sense to simply stay away from the free weights and stick to the treadmill, but for some unfathomable reason, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Once my arms began to function again, I decided that I needed to see if my first workout had actually allowed me to have more strength, so I did it all again with the exact same results and another 4 days of barely being able to use my arms. I do, however, think that the second round has cured me from ever wanting to touch a free weight again…

With the current house sitting job coming to an end, I needed to go to the grocery store to stock up on the basics for when the owners returned. I bought bananas, strawberries, apples, milk and eggs which set me back $8.97 as my only costs over the last nine days. Since the first third of the month has been so successful at not spending money, I have decided to take a short trip since I don’t have any plans for the next few days which should be a nice break since I have been spending so much time indoors. Here are the current numbers:

Nine Day’s Spending

Food: $8.97
Car: $0.00
Housing: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $0.00
Misc: $0.00

Total: $8.97

Total Spending

Food: $286.99
Car: $227.00
Housing: $42.75
Travel: $408.26
Health: $2032.65
Misc: $67.81

Total: $3065.46

(Photo courtesy of elliottcable)

7 Ways to Avoid Gym Fees

January 25, 2009 By Jennifer Touchette 3 Comments

One of the truths of getting older is that it takes a lot more work to maintain one’s fitness as compared to when we were younger. Not only do you need to be serious about watching what you eat, but what you eat is more likely to stick to unwanted places. Thus, began my search for balance between staying fit and saving money.

Considering past efforts, I’ve weighed my two most-successful options in this struggle: the gym or on my own. There are certainly benefits to both. The gym offers a supportive atmosphere and has all sorts of incredible equipment. On the other hand, there is the monthly fee, travel to and from the gym, childcare arrangements, and the regret of not taking advantage of the gym as often as I should.

I feel it isn’t good to be too hard on myself, so I am taking the low-pressure path and finding it really quite pleasant. I have to make the exercise a part of my day or it just doesn’t get done.

Here are several activities that make me feel fit:

Shopping the low and high shelves: Bending down or stretching up to get the cheaper store brands is a great workout that is easy on the wallet. Reaching for the store-brand beans, for instance, can save almost 15 cents per can. Searching for the dry beans at the very lowest bottom rack will typically cost you even less.

Walking with your friends tones your body and strengthens friendships: It’s great to have an exercise buddy, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know my friends better by walking with them at least once a week. Several of my friends also watch their budgets and it is a good time to share our tips and struggles.

Ditch the car: Our thankfully mild winter weather allows people to park their car and queue up for public transportation and/or walk to the store. It can be a few more trips if you forget your foldable cart at home, but carrying home two gallons of milk should be considered weight lifting!

Bike to stores that are farther away: We purchased a bike trailer when our kids were little and it has carried far more than the children. I was able to pack it with a full cart of groceries one day. It was amazing and, yes, heavy. Another great weight workout that is also is classified as a cardio workout.

Reconnect with your old love: Running has been a good to me in the past, but it has been sorely neglected in the past few years. Thanks to a great gift certificate, I was able to get some good shoes and start jogging again. I’m not the sort to run lots of miles, enter races and join the clubs, so the cost of this venture remains at a pair of shoes about every nine months.

Park far away: When I do have to drive somewhere, I park farther away from my destination. As long as I feel safe, it provides a little walk to the store or business and that, coupled with pushing a full cart all the way back to the car can certainly burn some calories.

Fitness equipment: Haven’t we all invested in the large exercise equipment that finally is used to hang clothes on? My best investment was a pair of dumbbells and to help tone my upper body. They are only 5-pound dumbbells, which sell for about $16 for two. I can step up the intensity with more repetitions or two sessions per day. Searching for “dumbbell workout” in your Internet search engine will find many good routines that you can tailor to your fitness level.

Hopefully, these ideas will help get you started on your road to fitness. Be sure to see your doctor before increasing your activity level, though. Your doctor may have some further, low-cost fitness ideas too!