33 Health Benefits of Morning Walking for 30 Minutes a Day

Morning is a rushing hour. People tend to have no time for even sitting and enjoying a cup of coffee comfortably with so many things they have to prepare before heading out to work or somewhere. The solution for this problem is simple: wake up early and move your body. When the sun is still hiding its brightest light and the air is extremely pure and slightly cold, you need to open your front door and walk out for a while. It won’t even take an hour of your time. A simple 30-minute morning walk will help boosting your energy. The bonus is you don’t have to rush your morning activities because you have much time left before the work time starts. Here are some benefits you can easily miss when you don’t wake up and walk as there are many health benefits of morning walking.

1. Stimulating Positive Attitude

Once you finish walking in the morning, you will feel satisfied and proud of yourself because one of things in your to-do-list has been done. This will stimulate positive attitude during the day starting from choosing the right foods for breakfast to dealing with your stress in the office. Now that the morning walk is done, you can’t wait to complete your other activities in the day too. You can feel how great it is to start your day with being positive. It will repair your mood automatically. A morning walk is simple, but it provides a huge effect to your life.

2. Helping You Start the Day

Have you ever feel stuck of how to start your day properly? Morning walk is the answer. With positive mind, starting your day is very easy. You already know what you need to do next and with the full recharged energy, all the important tasks can be finished. Compared with the rushing hour that destroys your good mood, walking in the morning does the opposite job.

3. Shedding Pounds

A surprise for dieters! Now you don’t have to spend hours in the gym or sticking with the low-calorie foods all the time. This is a better diet plan because it is easy to do for a long term. What your body needs for shedding pounds is: improved metabolism and burned fats. A morning walk can help your body do all of that. It is best to start walking on an empty stomach and do it briskly. When your body hasn’t eaten anything in the day, you can make sure that this is the fat that is burned.

Meanwhile, walk a mile and your body will release up to 100 kcal. Just imagine how much calories to burn when you walk more. According to experts, you don’t even need to change your diet, just walk in the morning and support it with some other exercises to lose weight. The amount of burned calories might be not high enough, but with regular walking, the steady amount can keep your weight in control.

4. Clearing up Your Mind

When a new day starts, you should get your mind clear first to do what you can’t do yesterday. All the problems stuck in your mind at the end of the day can be swept away simply by walking out in the morning, feeling the fresh air and warm rising sun. With your mind clearer, it will function better in solving problems.

5. Reducing Stress

Don’t take pills when you feel stress, but take a brisk morning walk instead. What you need to do is just to walk briskly until you sweat. The physical exertion makes your brain release chemicals to eliminate anxiety and depression. The ‘feel good’ hormones will also make your mood better, which is automatically cutting back your stress. This is a natural treatment to treat stress without negative side effects.

6. Boosting Energy

Feeling lazy in the morning to even take out your blanket? Wake up early and walk. With the blood circulation improved and the ‘feel good’ hormones released, there is no reason for you to feel lethargic, the feeling most people suffer from waking up late and face the rushing hour.

7. Improving Appetite

There is no better meal of the day than a healthy breakfast. The rushing hour makes people don’t even have time to enjoy breakfast properly, so it is almost impossible for them to even choose the best and most nutritious food to eat. With the morning walk, your appetite is improved and the time left is much, so you have the chance to choose and cook your meal properly. The best breakfast can keep your hunger at bay longer so you won’t get easily tempted to eat something fatty or sweet later in the day.

8. Substituting Exercises

Being busy becomes an excuse for most people to skip their exercises. With a morning walk, you can’t have that excuse because you would always have time in the early morning. This could be the simplest and cheapest exercise to do because you don’t need membership or tool to do that. With the numerous benefits can be reaped from morning walk, you don’t have to worry about not having regular exercises.

9. Toning Body

Since you can even take morning walk as an exercise, there is one more reason that makes going to the gym unnecessary: toned body. Walking briskly in the morning helps not only toning your leg, but also the muscles in the buttock, quads, and calves.

10. Treating Depression

More than just reducing stress, morning walk is even effective for relieving depression. This is because the endorphins responsible to kill pain naturally can flow to the body, resulting with the better feeling. Just walk fast whenever you feel depressed to get your mind lighter.

11. Strengthening Your Heart

One of the heart attack causes is sedentary lifestyle with almost no exercises. To be active you don’t have to run on a treadmill or lift weights because a simple morning walk is helpful for strengthening the heart. Keep your heart fit by allowing it to work harder as usual through exercises. It has been even proved to a study that your risk of suffering from heart diseases can be 40% reduced by walking up to four miles for an hour.

12. Lowering Blood Pressure

Hypertension leads to several dangerous diseases especially cardiovascular problems. Keeping your blood pressure normal is very important and you can do this by walking in the morning.

13. Preventing Strokes

Since high blood pressure can be addressed through a morning walk, this is automatically preventing your health from strokes. With a strong heart and stabilized blood pressure, the risks of strokes can be lowered significantly up to 40%. Take a brisk walk and stay safe from strokes.

14. Reducing the Risk of Breast Cancer

Women should consider a morning walk as a regular exercise because this one is helpful preventing breast cancer, according to researchers. It is said that one-hour brisk morning walk is effective in reducing the risks of breast cancer for women in middle ages. Be more active to keep the breast cancer away of your life and balance it with a healthy lifestyle too.

15. Preventing Various Types of Cancers

While above researchers claimed morning walk benefit in breast cancer specifically, there are also other types of cancers such as colon cancer, onset cancer and endometrial cancer that can be fought. Your chance to prevent many types of cancers is always there in the early morning, so don’t feel lazy to get up.

16. Boosting Immunity

Wake up in the morning and walk helps your body exhale more oxygen while releasing toxins. This will not just increase your energy, but boost your immunity as well because at the same time the oxygen helps the blood circulation improved as well. Your body can stay fit and healthy without having to buy expensive supplements.

17. Improving Blood Circulation

There are many diseases caused by distracted blood circulation, most of them related with the cardiovascular, which could be dangerous. By walking briskly in the morning, you inhale more oxygen and in return the blood circulation is better. Be active in the morning and let the benefits shine inside and outside.

Related: Symptoms of Low Blood Pressure

18. Dealing with Fatigue

With your energy boosted after a short, brisk morning walk, your fatigue can be easily swept away. You will feel fresh in the body and mind, so you are ready to fight until the rest of the day.

19. Improving Lung Capacity

Walking in the morning stimulates the lungs to work harder in pumping oxygen because your body will demand for more as the cells are getting oxidation. This is actually a good thing since more oxygen means improved lung capacity. Just ensure you start it with a short, 20 minutes of walking first before going longer.

20. Stimulating the Senses

Early morning is the best moment of the day. This is when everything started. The air is so pure, the sun rising is so warm and the bird is still chirping beautifully. There is nothing better than this feeling when all your senses are more sensitive since the busy world that mostly distracts them is not yet coming.

21. Fighting Atherosclerosis

It has been mentioned several times above that morning walk helps improving blood circulation. It means, in the other word, atherosclerosis prevention. You suffer from atherosclerosis when the blood circulation is distracted by the accumulation of plaques. This condition leads to various diseases, so walking in the morning can protect you from them.

22. Improving Brain Function

One of the factors that make your brain function reduced is the insufficient blood supply and oxygen to the brain. With morning walk you can get both of them, which means the brain would get the same benefit as your body.

23. Keeping Memory Degeneration Away

There are studies claimed that walking in the morning can prevent cognitive degeneration in women. The reduced percentage is reaching up to 70% if you can stay active and walk regularly.

24. Helping to Focus

Sticking with your schedule to ensure that your must-to-do tasks are finished on time is so difficult because these days our minds are so easy to get distractions and change directions. Try walking in the morning if you want to keep your focus on track. It helps your mind clear and fresh, so you can concentrate better on your important tasks of the day.

25. Helping You Make a Plan

When morning is a rushing hour, there is no time for you to plan for what to do in the day. By waking up early and have a brief morning walk, it is easier for you to plan for what to do and what to put as your priority. The plan can help you finish more tasks compared with having no plan at all.

26. Strengthening the Bones

Unlike running, walking gives lower impact to the joints and bones, especially to those who are new to exercises. The risk of fall and fractures are significantly cut, and the bonus is osteoporosis protection for the bones because you get your body active by walking. Do this four times a week for around half an hour will give the result, according to some studies.

27. Treating Diabetes

If you are suffering from diabetes, consider taking a morning walk to prevent the spike of sugar level. Diabetes that is still in the early stages can be even treated by walking in the morning since it helps the blood sugar back to normal when done properly and regularly. This might help your diet less restricted too.

28. Promoting Glowing Skin

Improper blood circulation will not only influence your health, but also your skin at the same time. Better blood circulation prevents some skin problems such as early aging signs and pimples. Walk regularly and your skin will naturally glow as the blood is transferred to every cell effectively.

29. Lowering LDL

Cholesterol is actually needed, but too much bad cholesterol or LDL put your health in risk of several diseases. Make your body active helps keeping the bad cholesterol low while maintaining the good amount of HDL.

30. Supporting Healthy Hair

The connection between hair and walking is the body hormones are more balanced when you stay active. This condition leads to healthy hair, reduced hair loss and improved hair growth.

31. Stimulating High Quality of Sleep

Walking earlier might make you tired at the end of the day since the energy boosted and well-function brain are used maximally and effectively. This is not a bad condition because feeling exhausted will help you sleep better and the next day you can wake up with a better feeling. The times when you got insomnia after the exhausting day has passed, so enjoy your healthy new life.

32. Giving a Better Day

Now sit down and think. With the mind is clear, the body fresh, the plan of the day is well structured, the brain focuses on tasks and your activities done properly as you expected, would there be a better day than that? And you can even repeat it again and again simply by doing your morning walk regularly.

33. Mood Booster

You can walk just thirty minutes before you start your days whether you want to go for work, college, or anything. You can just put your headphones, turn on your favorite songs, and walk for about 30 minutes or so. This activity will simply start up your day good, a mood booster. Also, you can walk to the station, parking lot, through garden, or whenever on your right way.

Meanwhile, there are many health benefits of morning walking that you now know.

How to Do the Right Morning walk

Have a morning walk is more than just walk in the morning, but it takes some rules to follow if you want to get the most of its benefits.

1. Empty Stomach

Don’t touch your breakfast before the morning walk otherwise the stored fat wouldn’t be burned. Don’t worry about lacking of energy since your body has stored carbohydrates as fuel called glycogen to support your moves. Now that the little glycogen is used, as you move the stored fat would be burned instead of the added carbohydrates, the ones that will be burned after having your first meal in the morning.

2. Short 30-Minutes Exercises

Since you are on an empty stomach, you can’t go longer than 30 minutes if you don’t want to lose your lean muscle. Intense exercise requires more fuel, but your body will not use the fat because this is harder to breakdown compared to the glycogen while your body needs the fuel as fast as possible. As it takes the glycogen, the muscle will be broken down including the lean muscle, the most desirable one. However, when you do this only 30 minutes, your body will take fat as fuels instead since the demand of energy is not immediate, unlike in intense exercise when the body needs it quickly. As a result, your weight loss goal can be slowly achieved and you don’t have to lose your desired muscle.

3. Before and After Exercise

Although you are not allowed to have your breakfast, drinking water is a must because our bodies are mostly dehydrated when you wake up in the morning. Do this after the moderate exercise is also necessary. Get a big glass of water when you wake up and after your morning walk. Remember to drink only water since your body is still at the ‘burned calories’ stage at least 30 minutes after the exercise. Grab your breakfast after half an hour to allow your body burn calories maximally.

Take a morning walk is extremely easy and cheap, but it provides numerous benefits that would be so illogical to be missed. Moreover, get your body for walking in the morning for just 30 minutes or so will amazingly boost your health both physically and mentally. As a result, get your body move in the morning and reap the benefit for the whole day.