Episode 169: A Walk A Day

Welcome back to the show. You’re listening to Episode 169 of Live Free Creative podcast. A walk a day. That is what we’re going to be talking about in this week’s show. I’m so glad that you’re here. How is your new year going? We’re still sort of easing into it over here.

2022 Is Already Weird

I saw a meme on Instagram. I think it’s like a tweet that then someone put on Instagram. It says tomorrow marks the official start of 2022 last week was just onboarding.

I feel that a little bit, like normally we have a little bit more of a runway for some reason. Maybe it was because Christmas was… I was going to say it’s because Christmas and New Year were like closer together than they normally are, but that can’t be true because they’re the exact same distance apart from each other.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one, according to this tweet, I’m not the only one who feels like this year has sort of happened all of the sudden. Even with all the reflection that I did, even with all of this sort of prepping myself and getting ready, maybe it’s because the pandemic seems to kind of be ebbing and flowing and we’re in a flow right now, I thought we were ebbing.

It’s a lot to keep up with and. It’s okay. It’s okay. To feel like we don’t quite have everything settled for the new year. It’s okay to not have figured out your plans. It’s okay to not have made all of your goals. It’s okay to decide that this year you’re not going to do any big goals.

It’s okay to be gentle with ourselves more and more. I am learning the importance of just being gentle with myself, having compassion and grace for the feelings that I’m experiencing as I’m experiencing them, not wishing them away, not thinking they should be different, acknowledging that it’s okay to have that whole human experience.

This was a very exciting weekend. We signed papers for the sale of our current house and for the purchase of our new house. If you are blindsided by the fact that we’re selling our house and starting a new in a new house, you can listen to last week’s episode, Episode 168 shares the whole story in all of its whirlwind of detail.

We Have A New House!

We have made it all official. The house that I’m living in right now is not mine anymore. We’re renting it back for a couple of weeks so that we can do a couple little things in the new house. Primarily get some flooring in. I’m not a carpet fan. So, we’re taking advantage of having a week before we have to get our furniture in there to rip up all the carpet.

There was on the carpet and a couple of the bedrooms, but we’re taking that all out, putting hardwoods in to match the rest of the house. The main floor of the house has original hardwoods. It’s a similar age to our house. I think that it was built in the mid-forties as well. Our new houses is a really cute, charming little house.

Like the one that we just renovated, the original floors are beautiful, and we’re excited to just take those throughout the couple areas that didn’t yet have them we closed.

I can already tell that one of my biggest challenges over the next several months is going to be pacing myself. I already am bursting with ideas of how to design and decorate our new home, how to make it feel like home to us.

I have learned about myself through all the different houses and apartments and rentals and, and things we’ve lived in through the years that even if something is completely move in, ready, that I want to make it my own. We moved; we built our house in Texas. We designed it and built it. And I moved in, and I immediately started making upgrades, changing some light fixtures, adding some paint here and there.

It’s just part of who I am. I like to personalize my space and I think there’s something really beautiful and natural about nesting creating beauty in our homes. And I need to pace myself because I started to feel overwhelmed today when I walked through to let the flooring guys in. And I started to just see all of the different things that I can imagine for this space.

And I felt like, oh my gosh, I don’t have time. I like, how am I going to get this all done at once? And my sister and my husband kindly reminded me in two different phone calls that I don’t need to do it all at once. It’s okay to move, to settle in, to have things be. The way they are and enjoy them the way they are along the process of making them the way they will be.

This is just an interesting thing to think about, and this is not even what today’s podcast is about. So, I’m going to wrap it up and maybe record a podcast for next week about this idea of the in-between. I know I’ve done a podcast, actually. I should go listen to it called the space in between how to enjoy that space.

Where you can see the vision of what you are hoping for, and you’re not there yet. That’s an, it’s an interesting place to be. And it’s an okay place to be. There’s definitely a shift in moving from what feels like a very finished, very curated, very designed, very personalized space into one that is not at all that way.

It will be a process. It’ll be a fun, exciting process. And it’s okay for it to be a slow process to get us to feeling at home again soon.

Segment: Peaks of the Week

What I am going to talk about today is the benefits of walking. Before I jump into the show, I want to share a couple peaks of the week.

It’s so fun to sit and think about what some of the things are that I’ve really been loving lately and after three and a half years of doing this podcast, of course, I’ve shared a lot of the things that I love. There is always something new and interesting though to share. So, I have three. Things that I’m going to share today, not groundbreaking, but things that I don’t think I’ve shared before that you may enjoy.

1. Grapes on Pizza

Number one is grapes on pizza? Yes. Let me just say that again. Grapes on pizza. There is a local pizza place here in Richmond. It’s called Galley Go-To actually. But when I called them this week, they said galley to-go. It’s Galley. They make pizza. That’s incredible. And my very favorite pie that they make is the roasted grape and Gorgonzola pizza.

Now, if you live here in Richmond, you have to just buy it from them. It’s amazing. Life-changing, you’ll love it. If you don’t live nearby, which a lot of you don’t, this is something you can easily make yourself. Get pre-made pizza dough, or I will actually link in the show notes. My very favorite, no fail pizza dough recipe.

That’s an Ina garden recipe I’ve been using for years. You can make that pizza dough. You don’t need any sauce. That’s the beautiful thing about a roasted grape pizza. You just need a little bit of olive oil, and then you’re going to add a little bit of mozzarella. Grapes literal, like just grapes out of the, I like red ones.

I don’t, I haven’t seen them do it with green ones, but I think red ones are a little or purple. They’re a little sweeter. The green ones are a little more tart. So, scatter some grapes on there, crumble some fresh Gorgonzola on top. You do a little swizzle of honey, little drizzle drizzle, drizzle of honey, pop that in to cook.

And as it cooks in the oven. You want to do it at, like, if you’re doing it at home, you want to do it on the grill or do it at high heat, 500 for 8 to 10 minutes. Let those grapes roast and get a little bit shriveling and the cheese get brown. And that Gorgonzola kind of ooze into the mozzarella.

I’m telling you friends, you will not regret this a little cracked black pepper on top, but right before you eat it, your well. You will enjoy it. I know there’s very strong opinions about pineapple on pizza. I’m a pro pineapple on pizza friend. I’m also pro grapes on pizza. So, you probably could see that coming.

Try it. Let me know what you think. Roasted grape and Gorgonzola pizza.

2. Luxury Robe

My peak of the week, number two is a robe. Now I think that I grew up believing that robes were superficialis. Like who actually uses a robe? And for my birthday last year, I asked my sisters, we there’s four of us, four girls, the three all go in to get a gift for the fourth for each of our birthdays.

So, we kind of rotate giving each other a nice gift. And last year I told my sister is what I wanted them to give me for my birthday. And it was this very. Really wonderful robe from a company that I love in Texas. It’s this cotton it’s pretty lightweight. It has pockets and it’s a bright colored kind of rainbow fabric. It’s from my favorite hotel group in Austin.

I noticed a few years ago that when I was staying in a nice hotel, that I always used the robe and felt a little bit luxurious. Like I’d get out of the shower. And rather than going straight into my pajamas, I would draft a little bit and then put on a robe to brush my teeth or put lotion on, do kind of my nightly routine, same thing in the morning.

You know, if I was getting ready in the morning, I could put on the robe as I’m kind of in between pajamas and regular clothes. It feels so fun. And so last year when I was deciding how to elevate my birthday, because we were on lockdown, I canceled a trip to Mexico that I had really been looking forward to.

And I said, I just, I would love to have this robe that I can have my bathing suit and my robe. And we had a Mexico day.

I will link the blog, post all about that in the show notes. This rope has become something that feels like luxury at my own house. I’m often, especially over the last couple of years with COVID thinking of how I can elevate the way my home feels so that it feels a little bit more like that lovely vacation feeling and turns out that having a nice robe helps me personally feel like a little bit closer to that vacation.

That I have something to kind of warm up in, in the winter. I’ll pull it over my pajamas. When I’m going downstairs to get a cup of cocoa. I definitely use it getting in and out of the hot tub, which is like a regular thing in the fall winter. I soak in the hot tub almost every night. If you don’t have a robe.

I know last year it was really funny. The SNL skit about how mom gets a rope for Christmas. I thought that was so funny and I kind of loved it because I really liked my. Like my robe was a fantastic gift and I really love it. So, I’ll link the particular robe that I have in the show notes. So, you can check it out.

It’s quite an investment. It is luxury from a really cool brand that I appreciate also handmade and sustainable, which is awesome. And just consider whether or not a robe would elevate your lifestyle a little bit.

3. My Rosemary Plant

The third peak of the week I want to share is an herb a plan. It’s my very favorite herbs…

I think it’s kind of a tie maybe, but it’s Rosemary. This last week, I was able to go to a really fun shrubs making class at common house, which is a local co-working. Social club that I’m a member of. They had a shrubs class in shrubs, essentially drinking vinegars. So, it’s a way to preserve fruit. And then you add them to sparkling water to make a really fun, kind of a fancy fresh soda.

We made a grapefruit and rosemary shrub during the class. So, it’s equal parts, sugar, vinegar. And then we added grapefruit peel and fresh rosemary. And mine’s sitting in my fridge right now, waiting for me to use it in a mocktail.

As we were sitting there. And, you know, we had all of the ingredients in front of us. I was started chatting with the girl across the table from me, who, I didn’t know, we were just chatting. And I talked about how I love Rosemary and how I was getting ready to move. And one of the things that I was a little bit sad about was that I had planted so many cool plants and herbs at my house that I would have to leave.

And one of them was rosemary. I planted a rosemary bush three and a half years ago in my front yard. And it has blown up. Rosemary grows really well in a lot of environments. And so, my tiny little rosemary plant is now a big giant bush that I go and cut fresh cuttings from regularly. And it reminded me of a quote that I’ve heard that is “Rosemary grows in the garden of a strong woman.”

I actually don’t know where I’ve heard that. And I tried to look it up and I can’t find that exact quote, but. The there’s a few different references to where the mistress is the master where Rosemary grows, the woman rules the house. So, the idea of Rosemary growing and flourishing in the garden of a strong woman, this girl, this new friend had not heard that before.

And I just sort of laughed and mentioned that I would have to plant a new rosemary bush in my new house that could grow strong and, you know, signify the strong women living. My household, the interaction reminded me of how much I love rosemary as an herb itself. I do often run out and cut sprigs of rosemary to add too many different things that I make.

I love to add it to meat dishes. If I’m making almost anything with chicken or fish, adding a little bit of rosemary. Just adds this kind of herbal earthiness to it. I love it in drinks. So, like rosemary lemonade is wonderful. Rosemary with grapefruit juice in the morning is really wonderful. I love the woodiness that it gives to some types of cookies.

So, like a shortbread cookie with a little bit of rosemary lemon and rosemary is really great together in muffins or to top, I make a really great lemon pound cake by Anna garden and adding rosemary or lavender. That’s my other favorite herbs that I also have planted in my garden of my current house.

I’m going to have to just start planting ASAP at the new house. Rosemary is just wonderful. And if you don’t have any growing at your house, it’s really easy. It’s an easy one to grow right now. I have both the rosemary planted in my garden. That is the big bush. Now I also have a small roseberry plant in a pot on my back patio.

There’s something wonderful about having access to fresh herbs. And rosemary is one of the easiest to maintain, to keep around all year. And it’s one of my picks of the week. So, grapes on your pizza, a luxurious robe, and some Rosemary. Those, my friends are my peaks of the week.

The Benefits of Walking

My main goal for today’s show is to encourage you to go on more walks. A walk a day, what that could do for you. I’ve mentioned, I think a few times on the show, how I have been sort of late to walking. I really wish that when my kids were younger, I had a stroller that I pushed him around and that I would have taken advantage of the opportunity to go on walks with them.

For the sake of walking. I used a stroller when I went to the store or if we were wandering around the mall or if we had like some specific destination, I didn’t know how wonderful it was to simply go on walks. We always were walking to something rather than walking for the sake of walking itself.

Especially over the last couple of years, walking has saved my sanity during some of those really long locked down weeks and months of 2020 things have changed so much, right over the last couple of years, we’re sort of learning to adapt and live in this very unusual climate. There were times in the very beginning of this pandemic where we didn’t feel safe, really going a lot of places at all.

We were, we were asked to stay home and when I got a little stir crazy inside the walls of my own house, and I didn’t want to go somewhere else, I decided to start walking. There were days when I spent a couple hours out exploring my neighborhood on foot.

Just so that I could be outside, I could move my body and I could have some space to think there was a time when the gyms were all closed down and we didn’t have any home exercise equipment yet. And I normally would have gone running, but I was not motivated enough to go running. I was sort of feeling that languishing feeling and it felt better to go walking than to do nothing.

Little by little, I have formed this habit of regular walking and I have felt huge benefits in my own life, from the simple act of walking. Today I wanted to share some of the benefits of walking, doing a little walk every day. I love walking because it is super easy. The fitness level that you need in order to go on a walk is quite low.

It’s really accessible. You can leave from your front door and you’re on a walk. Like you walk out your front door and you are walking. You don’t have to go anywhere special. It doesn’t require any special equipment. It doesn’t require any cost. It’s kind of the lowest barrier to entry. Activity that yields huge physical and mental and spiritual and social outcomes.

Ten Benefits of A Walk A Day

Let me share some of those with you. I’m actually going to share 10.

1. Heart Health

The first one of 10 is the obvious health and cardiovascular benefits that when you go walk. You improve your heart health. There’s a study that shows that if you walk for 30 minutes a day, you reduce your chance of heart disease by almost 20%.

That’s a really big improvement for a very small commitment of time and energy. A lot of you listening, aren’t thinking a whole lot about your heart health. Yet you might be in your thirties or forties and, you know, having strong cardiovascular health is not like top of your list. And at some point, it will be, and you will be so happy that you’ve started to pay attention to these little factors that add up to an overall picture of health.

2. Curb Cravings

Number two, this is an interesting one. Walking can curb your unhealthy cravings. There is a study done that that showed that just 15 minutes of walking per day, reduced people’s craving for high sugar, high, fat, and high sodium foods. I notice that exercise is sort of like a linchpin habit for me, that when I exercise more, I tend to want to eat healthier.

15 minutes of walking to curb some of those cravings, it seems like a really cool added side benefit benefit.

3. Less Pain

Number three is that walking eases your pain. It can reduce joint pain like your hips or your knees. It can also gently stretch out and move your whole body. It’s sort of like a whole-body engagement exercise.

So, if you’ve been having any type of chronic pain going on, a walk can ease some of that pain, it gets your blood pumping. It gets things kind of moving and flowing so that you can feel a little bit better.

4. Immune Boost

Number four is a real cool one. Something we all can use right now; walking boosts your immune function.

A study showed that people who walked 20 minutes a day had 43%, less sick days that they called in during the study. Right now, where it feels like everyone is sick, getting outside in the fresh air for at least 20 minutes a day can improve your immune health. It gets you that fresh air. It gets you out of these contained spaces where everyone’s sort of hyper breathing each other’s air, even at home with your own family.

It can introduce you to different types of pathogens that are out there in your, in the air that can actually increase your immune function. In the book that I read called, There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather. There’s a whole chapter about how exposure to the outdoors builds our immune function by introducing us to all sorts of different types of pathogens and bacteria and mild viruses that then boost our immunity so that we are better prepared when we meet them in other ways.

We’re not even halfway through this list and I feel there’s enough solid evidence right there of, of the benefits of walking that we all should be making space in our life for a walk a day.

5. Energy Boost

Number five is that walking boosts your energy. It adds to your energy more than a cup of coffee! An article on health line says that by increasing your oxygen. To your systems, as well as boosting your cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, which are energy generators in your body, that going on a walk will give you more energy over the long-term than if you stayed put.

Energy builders. It’s important.

6. Mood Boost

Number six is the reason that I feel like I’ve really needed to walk every day for the last few months and couple years. Walking is a mood boost. There are tons of research that shows that walking for 30 minutes a day will lower your levels of anxiety, lower your level of depression, and actually lower your feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Being outside in nature, we start to feel more connected to the world. We feel connected to nature. We feel connected to ourselves. We feel connected to divinity to the universe. That bigger picture can help ease some of the mood dampening feelings that we can feel when life is hard or heavy or unexpected. The mood boost is massive. The mental health benefits of being outside on a walk massive.

7. Increased Creativity

Number seven is another fun one. Number seven is that a walk a day can increase your creativity level. There was a really interesting study that showed when people were given a problem to solve. They had one group that stayed, put inside and tried to solve the problem at desks.

And then they sent another group out to solve the problem while they were walking. The ideas generated by the walking group were. More interesting and had more flow and connection. Then the ideas generated by people who stayed, put being outside. Walking enables us to make connections in our brain that we can’t make when we’re static.

Have you ever had a great idea come to you while you were on a walk?

It’s one of my favorite ways to have new ideas, German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” I kind of love that. Would you like to have more truly great thoughts? I know I would. Let’s get out there and walk my friends.

8. Connection To Place

Number eight comes from melody Warnick from her book. This is where you belong. She explains that walking around your neighborhood deepens your connection to place. That you actually feel more connected to your neighbors, to your city, to your neighborhood. You feel like you belong where you are because you have explored it on foot.

The power of that is incredible. If you feel a little bit disconnected from your neighborhood, from the place where you live, or if you’re moving, you’re going somewhere new, you just want to deepen some of those ties to the place where you are walking around, can do that for you.

We’ve lived in neighborhoods where walking was not the norm, where we were far enough from things that most of the time people went from their garages into their cars, to where, to the store or the library or wherever they were going, and then back in the car in the back home and the connection connecting the dots of those in-betweens didn’t happen. I can tell you that living here, where we walk a lot of places, I have felt more settled. I noticed my neighbors. I notice things around the neighborhood. I’m interested in what’s happening as is of course, it’s really lovely.

I take my dogs out. And so, I ended up talking to the neighbors the other day. Had Otis our puppy out with Quincy, we were on a walk. We were several blocks away from my house and I had a woman come coming the other way. She had her dog and she stopped me because of the puppy. And she said, oh, you’re one of those families on the block with the puppies.

And is this one of the puppies? Is that the mom? And they ended up having this great conversation. And the fact that I was out on foot enabled me to make connection to place and connection to. That I wouldn’t otherwise have made. Even if you live in a neighborhood that isn’t super walkable, you’ll get to know your neighborhood.

You’ll get to know your neighbors. You’ll be able to recognize homes and areas and maybe discover a park or maybe discover a little free library that you hadn’t seen before, because you were always driving by in your car, a walk a day. We’ll connect you to your place. You don’t have to go anywhere in particular either.

I mean, it’s really fun where we live, that we do have places to walk to. I can walk to a coffee shop. I can walk to a bakery. And most of my walks, I’m just walking in a, in a circle. I go down several blocks and then I go over and then I come back several blocks. And then I end up back at my doorstep. The walking itself is the purpose, not the place.

9. Get Better Sleep

For any of you who are having trouble sleeping number nine, is that going on a walk a day, will boost your ability to sleep well. Walking outside, especially if we do it sometime in the morning, resets our circadian rhythm, where our body is able to tune into the environment, tune into where the sun is in the sky and the season and the time of year.

Because of that exposure to nature as the day, winds up our bodies know that it’s time for bed and they can go to sleep more easily. Having had that exposure to the outdoors is not fascinating. A walk a day can keep your circadian rhythm in check so that you are connected to the, your natural bio rhythms.

I love it.

10. Increased Gratitude

Number 10 is that walking can increase your levels of gratitude, mindful walking, which is another way of saying walking while paying attention to what’s happening around you. Not necessarily walking while you’re on a phone call or listening to a book even, but walking and just being with yourself in, in the world can increase your ability to feel great.

Feel grateful for your life. Feel grateful for your environment. Feel grateful for your body. Feel grateful for your health and for your family and for the sunshine or the rain, whatever it may be. There’s something about that brief amount of time where we give ourselves a chance to just be that hugely benefits us.

10 Massive Benefits of Walking

So I’ve just shared 10 massive benefits from walking. The numbers are a little bit here and there. Some of the studies really focus on like a 15- or 20-minute walk. Uh, a lot of them say 30 minutes is like kind of a great cutoff. I try to aim for 30 minutes and often am walking more than that an hour or sometimes even two.

Bonus Benefit: I feel like I have more time!

I want to add another kind of bonus one and this is for those of you who feel like, yeah, that’d be great. I just don’t have time. One of the things that walking has done for me, and I don’t have like a study to talk about this, but I can give you the person personal experience and personal anecdote that when I go on a walk, I feel like I have more time because it definitely would be faster to drive my car to the post office.

It definitely would be faster to drive my car to the coffee shop. And yet when I go on. I feel more in control of my time. I feel like I have a leisurely life where I can walk to these places. Not only does it add all of these benefits of health and mental wellness and immune function and energy and creativity and connection.

It also enables me to feel more in control of my schedule and the ease that comes. When I commit to, I’m going to go on a walk right now, instead of hustling from one errand to the next in my life is incredible.

Commit to A Walk A Day

So, I know we’re just a week into the new year and many of you probably already have goals and resolutions out there.

And if you don’t or if you want to join me on one of mine, I’m going to commit to going on a walk a day. This year, it could be a five-minute walk down to the end of the block and back it could be a five-hour walk out in the mountains. Most of them will probably be 20 to 30 minutes when I’m walking the dogs. A walk a day, see how that will feel.

I guarantee, even if you don’t go every single day, I’m going to try to go every single day to go on a walk a day this year and reap the massive benefits that can come from that. This feels like an accessible, attainable, realistic, and fun goal, a fun challenge. And especially when you, I can lower the bar so much that like I can count a walk to the neighbor’s house.

Like just going on a walk outside of my house is going to count. Now, I already believe in the power of walking. I’m just committing myself to being a tiny bit more intentional about making sure that it’s me out there every day. It helps that I have two dogs that need. I do sometimes ask my kids to take them, or Dave takes them out on a walk.

So, I’m going to do the walking, even if I don’t bring the dogs every time. If someone else walks the dog, I’m still going to go on a walk a day. I’m so excited about this. I haven’t been really super excited about any goals so far that I’ve come up with this year and this one feels good. I think it feels like all good.

All of these benefits, such low barrier to entry into success. If you feel a little pull to a little more intention, a yearning for a little more connection, getting out of your own head and out of some of the languishing and some of the slump of kind of not knowing what’s going on yet this year, because there’s so many things still outside of our control.

I invite you to join me on a walk a day. I hope that sharing these benefits have been insightful and. That you, whether or not you come on a walk a day that you create space in your life to go on walks because they’ll absolutely make a difference in your life. The other thing that I really love about walking is that, like I said, I wish that I had done this with my kids.

Walking Is Accessible

I feel. Walking is perfect. When you have a newborn, you stick them in the stroller and go on a walk. Walking is perfect. When you have a wild toddler, you stick them in the stroller, or you walk along with them and it’s okay. If they stop and look at every rock and tree along the way walking, I can do with my kids right now, they like to go on walks with me.

Walking is great. When you are a little bit sick, even it’s not high intensity. So, you can be a little sick and go on a walk. You can. Going to walk in the hot, in the cold, you can take an umbrella and go on a walk. You can, there there’s no real function in which you, you know, an able-bodied person in almost any stage of life can go on a walk.

So, I’m going to encourage you to join me. And I can’t wait to hear how it goes.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for listening to the show. I’m glad that you’re here. I am. Excited about the things that 2022 has in store, even if I don’t really know a lot about what’s happening, things still feel like I’m coming out of the tornado of the house, buying, and selling and moving and all of this.

And I’m excited to meet with you. On the podcast every week, share some insights, some ideas for a little bit more creative, intentional, and adventurous lifestyle. Thank you for tuning in for listing. I have gotten some really, really kind messages and emails lately from listeners of the podcast sharing.

How the podcast has been a positive influence or made a positive impact on their life. I appreciate that so much. And I want to ask kindly if you have some of those feelings about how the show has been impactful for you if you would please also leave that as a written review on iTunes. I’d love to hear about it, and it’s so wonderful.

It makes an impact for the show itself. If other people can hear how, it is. Adding benefit to your life. So, I want to invite you if you have, haven’t left a written review. If you go ahead and do that, that would be much appreciated. And of course, if you’re new hit subscribe, don’t miss an episode. Tell your friends and family about the show.

I love this community here of podcast listeners, and I would love to continue to expand it to all of the people for whom it can make a difference. Okay. Have a great week. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.