I have started walking. Not right now, obviously – I’m sitting down and typing in my stained cardigan and leggings like the respected professional I am – but I have started Walking, with a capital W. For as long as I can, for as far as I can, every day. For my health and weight and supposed benefits to my psyche.
I aim for seven miles a day, though I have achieved this only once so far. Mostly I manage between three and five. Everyone has been going on about Walking for so long, as some kind of all-round miracle cure, and my body was becoming so slabbed with fat and so creaky within that I became desperate enough to try it.
(Point of order: those of you reading this and scoffing at the idea that a mere three miles is an achievement and seven miles an almost unattainable goal when you do that before you start the day’s challenges proper – I am a sedentary temperament in a sedentary job in a sedentary country in a sedentary age, and you are part of the reason people like me hate and fear exercise. Because of the exercisers.)
And do you know what? Walking works. A layer of adipose tissue has disappeared (not all of it by any means, but I had begun to think I had produced the world’s first indestructible matter and should offer myself for study to science). My skeleton has limberised. And my mind is calmer and clearer – I even came up with the word “limberised” on one of my walks, which I think we can all agree is a term for which the world has been waiting.
I’m furious. It works? This thing that everyone has been telling me is good for almost every minor thing that ails thee, along with quite a few non-minor things too like anxiety and Type 2 diabetes, actually works? There’s the superficial anger here of course, the kind that comes with every realisation that you could have been doing X for years and improved your lot long before now. That’s a given. But there is a more amorphous fury too that says: “You mean – I have to start believing people now?”
I don’t like to believe people, especially the kind of people who recommend things for other people’s health and sanity. It is but a few steps (no pun intended) from taking one piece of genuinely good advice to finding yourself swimming in a sea of nonsense about only eating seeds and smoothies to stay well or clearing out your mental clutter so that your mind can become as sleek as your new bowel movements.
It’s already starting to happen. I get back from a Walk and don’t want to fill my face with coffee and biscuits as per. I just don’t. I genuinely feel less hungry, and I feel like building on this good thing I’ve just done instead of destroying it by ingesting crap.
I feel – and I am using this word unironically for the first time, so please be gentle with me – empowered. Getting about under your own steam feels great. Walk for 20 minutes and you will have covered about a mile. Like putting a chicken in a hot oven for two hours and taking out a delicious roast at the end, it’s something you can count on absolutely. You are in control.
Moreover, there is the feeling that you have broken out, done something different. After a lifetime, basically, on my arse, I am now shifting it on a regular basis. It makes me feel that other changes might be possible. That I need not be trapped being entirely the current me for the next 30 years. I did this and nobody laughed, screamed in shock or died, including me. It opens up a world of options.
Walking is also a great way of getting time on your own. Husbands and children generally do not want to come on a walk with you, especially if you claim you are aiming for seven miles every time. I need that time and I never get enough of it. And so, you see, here we are standing at the edge and looking over into the yawning abyss that is the concept of “self-care”. You see how careful you have to be.
Still, I think I am handling myself well so far. Resisting blandishments. Sticking only to the empirically proven, the tried and tested. (Though if you return to a certain route regularly you will see, even in the middle of a world city, signs of the seasons changing and find yourself musing on the eternal, unshakeable rhythm of nature and our essential insignificance in the pattern of all things. That means you’re halfway to hippydom, so be sure to change them frequently).
Yes, walking is great. For losing weight, loosening joints and clearing minds. Just don’t go too far.