One Londoner's diary: Walking to work to combat increased mince pie intake

The run up to Christmas is a great time for celebration, but for me that also means not doing enough exercise and eating lots of super rich food!

I have decided I want to loose some weight (preferably half a stone), that’s all I’m asking! (This has accumulated over a number of years of eating sausage rolls for breakfast and as it is mince pie season I am doomed). I also want to put my money where my mouth is and start walking part of the way to work. As of next Monday I will be keeping a daily diary for one week on the Walking Works website.

Most health professionals recommend 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week. *That means for an adult who weighs 60kg, a brisk walk of 30 minutes long or 2km is the equivalent of loosing an extra 100 calories per day.

Join me! Why not join me in my challenge? I have done a bit of research and found some helpful tips that might help.

Helpful tips

Most people I know need a good reason to do something. Here are some helpful tips that have definitely helped me in the past.

Record your progress. Seeing how much you have achieved in a week can be motivating in itself. I know it might sound ridiculous but putting a gold star against a day of the week to say you have completed 30 minutes of exercise can be enough reason to want to get walking and get those gold stars!

Please see attachment below for a downloadable chart

Visualize your goals.Put a picture on the wall of what life will be like when you have reached your goal. What does it look like? Is it a picture of a beautiful park which is part of your route to work? Put a picture up where you can see it not just on a daily basis but preferably on an hourly basis (you could have it as a screen saver on your desktop). This way it will help you say focused. Once you loose focus you loose motivation.

Get a buddy. It can be really difficult when you are trying to reach a goal on your own. Why not find someone who is also interested in walking to work and lives near you? www.mybudi.com is a website where you can find like minded people who are happy to walk with you.

Just do it. There are some days when you really don’t want to do anything and you cant stop telling yourself how hard it is to do such and such a thing. Sometimes you just have to get on with it and do it!

See it as a treat. If you look at walking to work in a positive light, for example part of my route to work involves going through a beautiful park. That’s what I’m going to focus on when I think about leaving the house. This can be motivation in itself.

Be patient. Many of us live in a fast paced, quick fix lifestyle. Unfortunately with walking to work this is not going to happen straight away. It takes time to get into a healthy routine.

Start small. To start with you don’t have to walk all the way to work. This might not be possible anyway. You can split up your goal into small chunks, for example if you live 30 minutes walk away from work, you can split 30 minutes into 5 or 10 minute chunks. On day 1 you could walk for 10 minutes and then get the bus. Day 2 walk for 15 minutes and so on. Once you have achieved each of these mini goals it is important to reward yourself with something appropriate.

Extra information

* http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/exercise.html

Published Tuesday 11 December 2007