WALKING WITH A PURPOSE

 

One way to make walking not only healthy but also beneficial is to find charities to walk for. Basically, the way it works is you find the charity and set up the walk by asking your friends and family to donate to the charity based on the number of miles you walk. This type of walking gives you extra incentive to get in shape, stay in shape, and keep walking.

 

Use an App

 

A great app for this is called Charity Miles. Basically, you just download the free app, which is suitable for both Apple and Android operating systems. Set up your account and choose your charity. It will track your movements and report to the system. When you walk, it tracks it and sends the earnings to your charity of choice. You can find sponsors through the app as well as by asking friends, family, and small local businesses to sponsor you.

Link – https://charitymiles.org/

Seek Out the Charity

 

If you already know what charity you want to walk for but you don’t want to use one of the apps, you can reach out to start your walking for a charity event by contacting them directly to work out the details. Some charities already have yearly walking events that you can join and sponsor in your local area. You can look for more charities at ACTIVE.

Link – https://www.active.com/

 

Set Your Goal

 

Set your walking goals based on how much money you want to make and how much buzz you want to create for the fundraiser. You can make it challenging or fun depending on the audience you want to attract. Some people prefer a leisurely walk with food and lots of talking, and others want a fast walking race.

 

Be Aware of Your Fitness Level

 

Before you start, you want to know about your fitness level. Can you walk for long periods without an issue? Even if you can only walk 30 minutes at a stretch, you can still raise money for your favorite charity, but knowing this level can help you set more realistic goals.

 

Train for Your Fundraiser

 

One way to ensure you meet your goals is to train for the fundraiser. If you want to walk a 50K for the fundraiser, you should work your way back from the date of the fundraiser and set up a training program that gets you to that goal when you’re ready to do it. For example, you may want to add 100 to 1000 steps a day until you can make it.

 

Be Ready to Motivate Others

 

When you are doing a charity event (even if you’re using the apps available to do it), you’ll make more money for your organization if you motivate your sponsors and your team if you have one by training, ensuring you are prepped and ready, and having high spirits about your goals and what you’re doing.

 

Don’t forget that there are already yearly walks for many charities. You can find out more about walking for charity by approaching specific charities directly or using Charity Miles or ACTIVE mentioned in this article.

 

 

TIPS TO SMART WALKING

 

The main thing to remember, no matter what you’re setting a goal for, is that your goals should be SMART. That means they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. If you make a habit of creating goals for all aspects of your life using this acronym, you’ll be a lot more successful – no matter what you do.

 

But before you get started with your SMART walking goals, let’s talk about some factors to consider as you’re creating your goals.

 

1) Know Your Fitness Level – Almost everyone can walk. This includes people who are very unhealthy, even if they can only walk for five minutes. Start with your fitness level and set your goals accordingly.

 

2) Know What You’re Working Toward – Pretend you stuck to everything you are supposed to on this journey; what is the dream goal you’re working toward? Even if it seems crazy, knowing that final goal is essential for designing your plans.

3) Know Your Time Availability – This is part of being realistic because if you have roadblocks to having enough time to devote to walking for health to meet your goals, you may not succeed

Creating SMART Walking Goals

Walking

Here is an example of a healthy yet sedentary office worker for you to follow:

 

* Specific – My goal is to walk a minimum of 10,000 steps per day by the end of six months, starting where I am now at 1000 steps per day.

 

* Measurable – Every day, I will add 100 steps to my total. It will take me 90 days to reach 10,000 steps per day.

 

* Attainable – I am overweight but with no health problems, so my goal to walk 10,000 steps a day by the end of 90 days and to maintain it for 6 months is entirely doable in terms of my health.

 

* Realistic – Adding in 100 steps a day is realistic because I am healthy, and I have enough time. It’ll take me about an hour and a half at my walking pace to reach 10,000 steps. I plan to walk each morning between 7 and 9 am. I also have an indoor place I can walk when the weather is terrible.

 

* Timely – By adding the goal of reaching 10,000 steps in 90 days, then maintaining that for six months, it makes the goal timely – meaning it has a time limit that you have set for you to reach your goal.

As you see, crafting SMART walking goals will help you set up a plan that is achievable if you simply follow it. Once you have set the plan up, you can put it in your calendar, tell your accountability partner, and then just follow it. You will reach your goal without issue.

The Areas of Life You Need to Design for Success

Let’s start strong and talk about the areas of life you need to design to ensure your success. Often people never think about how each decision affects how their life will actually look and be in practice. If you want a particular lifestyle, you must think about how each choice impacts your desires.

the purpose

There are eight areas of life that you need to design purposefully for success:

 

  • Career and Business – What you do for money will have a massive impact on your life. It will inform every single choice you make. It will make the difference on whether you can afford the lifestyle you desire or not, and even whether you can maintain your health or not realistically.

 

  • Health and Fitness – Your health and fitness level are important because if you’re unhealthy and not fit in the right way for the life you want to experience, it’ll be hard to do. For example, if you want to spend the weekends camping and boating, you’ll want to maintain a healthy weight so you can keep doing it.

13 WAYS WALKING CAN BENEFIT YOU

  • Relationships and Social Life – What kind of social life do you envision, and can you afford to have that life? What about your significant relationships, such as your life partner, spouse, or your relationship with your children? These are all impacted by the rest of your life choices due to how it affects your health, finances, and so forth.

 

  • Finances – Did you choose the right career or business to fund the type of lifestyle you desire? What about time? Do you have enough time left after earning money to do the things that are important to you?

 

  • Personal and Spiritual Development – Do you have time to work on your personal life and spiritual and emotional development? Everyone needs time for self-care, including learning about themselves and taking care of themselves through eating right, exercise, going to the doctor regularly, and even doing things that are considered optional, like getting facials or massages.

 

  • Hobbies and Fun – What type of things do you want to do for fun, and what hobbies, if any, would you like to participate in? Does your business or career allow you to accomplish having fun and doing your hobbies too?

 

  • Home and Environment – What type of home do you want to live in? Do you want to live in the city in a condo, a house, or do you want to live in the country? Do you prefer to rent, or do you want to buy? What type of environment do you want?

 

  • Community Involvement – Where do you see yourself in terms of your community? Do you want to be involved in your church, or do you want to feed the poor or take care of stray animals in your area? What do you want to have the time and funds to do in your community?

 

Go through each of these areas and write a summary about how you envision your life in each of these areas. Then be very specific about what it will cost you in terms of time and resources to achieve the ideal life you’re designing for yourself. Do not make assumptions. Look up how much something costs, ask people who have done it how long it takes, and get real information so that you’re not just guessing. The idea is to design a life that you really want to live, but that is realistic for you to achieve.

 

Adding Weights to Your Walking Routine

 

The Pros and Cons of Walking With Weights

Walking

One of the biggest milestones in our first few years of life is learning how to walk. This activity becomes so habitual it is easy to forget that it is, in fact, exercise. The American Heart Association even calls it “one of the simplest ways to get active and stay active.” A piece on walking from a 2009 Harvard Health School newsletter points out that even though walking is such an automatic human function, “modern man appears determined to walk as little as possible.”

As walking is one of the simplest — and most accessible — forms of exercise, if you begin walking for fitness and are hoping to speed up results and make the activity more challenging, it may seem harmless to just add in some weights. However, carrying weights may be doing more harm than good. Here’s why and what you should be doing instead.

Read the full Article here

I enjoyed the The Article and often get a lot of tips from MyFitnessPal.

Keep on Moving Forward….