In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan emphasizes the importance of daily movement, particularly through walking outdoors. She discusses the health benefits of connecting with nature, the accessibility of walking as an exercise, and the significance of discipline over motivation in maintaining a consistent exercise routine. Cheryl encourages listeners to take a 15-minute walk as part of their healthy habits challenge, highlighting the positive effects on mood and energy levels.

Takeaways

Walking outdoors connects you with nature.
Daily movement is essential for health.
Discipline is more important than motivation.
Walking is an accessible form of exercise.
Fresh air and sunshine benefit your well-being.
Getting outside can improve your mood.
Consistency in exercise leads to better health.
Small steps can lead to significant changes.
Enjoying the scenery can enhance your experience.

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Episode Transcript:

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.174)
Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day eight of the 30 Day Healthy Habits Challenge. Today’s challenge is going to be something, you’ve already been doing movement every day as part of the challenge, but today I’m going to task you with taking a 15 minute walk. There’s specific reason that we wanna do a walk. So it doesn’t have to be any fast kind of walk, it doesn’t have to be a specific pace, but ideally I would like for you to walk outside.

And there’s a good reason for that. It is really a healthy and important thing to connect with nature on a daily basis. And I realize, you know, depending on what part of the country you live in right now, as I’m recording this, it is the end of December. And so it was about 25 degrees today here in the Midwest. And I realize it might not seem like the most pleasant thing to do, but if it’s cold, bundle up.

get outside if it’s too warm where you are, go earlier in the day where it’s cooler. Obviously be safe if there’s ice, if there’s an excessive amount of heat, maybe walk inside on the treadmill instead. And if you can’t walk outside for whatever reason and you don’t have a treadmill and you can’t go to the gym, then you’re just going to do whatever the movement you’ve been doing. So you’re still gonna keep your habit of daily movement.

But the walk outside is so great because you’ll get some fresh air, you’ll get sunshine, getting real sunshine on your eyeballs outside is so important for your circadian rhythm. It allows you to connect with nature, like I said, so just observing the trees. I’m looking out the trees outside my window right now, not in how many leaves, but just noticing the sights, being outside, breathing the fresh air. is so wonderful to actually get outside and get out of your office. Now,

For most of us, walking is pretty accessible. So just about the most accessible exercise that there is. Even people that are seriously deconditioned or very, very overweight can have small little walking snacks as part of their routine. And mostly people can handle this pretty well. It really supports heart health. So you’re doing cardiovascular work whenever you move, you’re making your heart pump harder. And I said, you know, there was no…

Cheryl McColgan (02:16.206)
speed or intensity kind of goal with this walk is just meant to be a stroll and get outdoors. But if you take on walk as kind of your normal daily movement activity, you can definitely make it a heart healthy activity if you go a little bit faster. And it’s really one of the it’s it’s just so like I said, it’s so accessible to everybody. It’s so easy. It’s free. You just walk outside your door and do it. And I realize

There are parts of the country where maybe it’s not so safe to walk for various reasons. Like don’t have sidewalks in my neighborhood, so that’s bit of a challenge. Here’s a tip for walking outside. If you don’t have sidewalks, you’re always supposed to walk against traffic, right? Because you want to be able to see the cars coming out, you know, so that you can easily jump to the side if needed. But, you know, and there might be, you know, maybe you live in an area that’s higher crime or something like that. So maybe it’s not as safe to walk outside, but you can possibly drive to a park or, you know, just take some time to get outside.

Ideally daily, but definitely weekly and I know that in cities it can be more challenging, but it’s definitely going to help with your energy. It’s going to help with your mood. It’s like I said helps heart health and it’s probably one of the easiest habits to repeat which makes it perfect for a discipline practice because you can almost always convince yourself to go for a walk if you have to convince yourself to go for a run or go to the gym and strength train or get in a cold pool to swim in the morning.

Those can all be very challenging, but just to go for a walk, I think most of us can convince ourselves to do that. I do have, since we’re talking about what’s more challenging, what’s easier or not easier for exercising, and I may or may not have mentioned this before because I think I told you guys that I, some of the recordings for whatever reason didn’t have sound. And so I may have mentioned this previously or I may not have. It may have been one of the recordings that are lost, but for years I just used this little trick for motivation or actually,

It’s a discipline trip more than motivation. Motivation, like I said, the whole reason we’re not talking about that this much in this challenge is because motivation comes and goes. I it’s great when you have it because it helps you get started on projects or started on a new exercise regime. But it quite often doesn’t help you maintain that. That’s where discipline comes in. Discipline is just doing the thing, right? So when I was a runner for 17 years, quite often there’d be many days I didn’t feel like doing. I didn’t particularly actually even like running, yet I did it because of the whole discipline thing. It’s one of the things I…

Cheryl McColgan (04:37.784)
have cultivated pretty well over the years. But it would be like a conversation with myself. If I really didn’t feel like it, I would just say, okay, well, just put on your running shoes, put on your outfit and go outside, you know, just get started for five minutes. And if you really don’t feel like you can come back in, I mean, you can convince or chew it, whatever it is, it’s the getting out the door or getting to the gym part. That’s the hardest part. Once you’re there, you’re gonna do something. I almost.

Guarantee it in all the years. I’ve tricked myself like this It has never ended up that I didn’t actually do something and I’d say 95 % of the time I did the whole Workout or routine or whatever it was I had planned so it might always been to the Perfect speed or the perfect intensity or anything like that, but I did it and that is Discipline that is all it is is just repeating it being consistent

Of course, there may be times where you need to honor your body and take time off and that’s totally fine. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just talking about when you know you should do it, you set aside the time to do it and you just don’t want to. That’s just a little trick there. So anyway, I hope wherever you are that you are able to get outside and take a walk today. Like I said, 15 minutes. So it’s a little bit longer than the amount of movement that we’ve been doing. It’s not going to increase every day from here or anything like that. We know that that’s not what this challenge is about. It’s still going to be 10 minutes of movement a day. But I just wanted to challenge you on this one.

Get the outside, get that extra little five minutes outdoors, get your heart rate pumping a little bit, breathe in some fresh air and enjoy the scenery wherever you are. Like I said, my scenery right here, right now is not all that exciting, but there’s always things that you can find to observe once you get outside. And even it’s just noticing how the clouds look today, because it’s a dreary overcast day here in Cincinnati. But hope you enjoyed today’s challenge, today’s habit that we’re trying and I will see you again tomorrow.