Women's Walking issue 2

NEW !

Flat belly ts secreED ED NO DIET NE

'Walking helped me lose 7 stone'

ONE READER'S AMAZING BODY TRANSFORMATION

GREAT ESCAPES

8 top walking breaks

10 BEST WALKING MARATHONS

FAMILY HEALTH

Get your kids active

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For a healthier you

BEGINNERS The only walking plan you'll need HARD HILLS MADE EASY HIT THE TRAILS Your essential off-road guide Revealed!

One superfood to boost your health

FASTER & FITTER

Improve your speed the easy way

STYLISH WINTER KIT

PLUS!

LOOK GOOD, STAY WARM

ISSUE 2 – £4.00 ISSN: 2051–5278

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CONTENTS 26

REGULARS

06 EDITOR’S NOTE

Peta Bee on why walking is good for the mind as well as the body

07

18 YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED Got a walking fitness question?

We’re here to help

20

MEET THE EXPERTS The team behind the magazine

IT’S ABOUT YOU! Boost your confidence and wellbeing with our expert coach

08 HEALTH HEADLINES

26

ASK THE GP Our resident doctor can answer your questions

The latest news and research

12 HAVE YOUR SAY

Share your views on all things walking

113 ‘WALKING HELPS ME TO BE MORE CREATIVE’ Writer Pippa’s passion for walking and dogs

GET MOTIVATED

14 START WALKING, LIVE LONGER Walking really can boost your lifespan

64 39

16 THE TEN BENEFITS OF

WALKING How walking can beat illness and disease

22

70 40

GET YOUR KIDS ACTIVE Turn them away from their computers – now!

28

OVERWEIGHT AND WANT TO WALK? Yes you can – with our expert tips

52

74

22

98

KIT GUIDE

24 KIDS’ WALKING BOOTS 42

Get your kids the right boots before they start walking

30

STAY WARM THIS WINTER Best winter kit for freezing temperatures

32

THIS ISSUE ON THE COVER Cover photo Eddie Macdonald Cover styling Xavier Robleda

Cover model Zabeena @ Nevs. Clothing: Top: ASICS Long Sleeve Half Zip Women’s Top, £45.00, www.asics.co.uk, bottoms: Model’s own, shoes: adidas Adizero Tempo 5, £80.00, www.adidas.co.uk

TIME ON YOUR HANDS? Best gadgets for walking

www.womenswalking.co.uk

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CONTENTS WALKING FITNESS

36

Beginner’s guide to walking Take your first steps today

40 Handle those hills

42

Uphill or downhill? Best technique explained

42

Boost your speed Get faster without getting breathless

44 Chi walking

How can it benefit you?

46 Loving the lakes

Why you should visit the Lake District if you love walking

WORKOUTS

82

Prepare your joints Moves to get your body ready

84 Conquer those hills

48 CLUB TOGETHER

The workout to get you fit in no time

52 Get away from it all

90 Iron and walking

56 First steps to first aid

Eating on the go Preparing for long walks

Join a walking group and get fitter

Our pick of the very best walking breaks

Life-saving tips you should know

58 Trail walking for

beginners Tackle more testing terrain

64 Flat belly soon!

How walking can help shrink your gut

REAL-LIFE

70 ‘I lost half my bodyweight

with walking’ Jackie Blake’s amazing transformation

72 ‘Walking was the key to my recovery’ Car crash victim Dawn McLean’s fight for health

74

NUTRITION What you need to know

92

95 Tasty treats

The latest healthy snacks

96 Ten best recovery foods

Walk back to fitness with these treats

98 Superfood sensation The benefits of watercress

100 Healthy recipes

Tempting meals you can’t resist

HEALTH

104 WALKING AND ASTHMA

How to manage your symptoms

106

BAD VIBRATIONS Walking to music? Read this now

108

Go the distance!

Ten best walking marathons revealed

FOOT FAULT Keep your feet in good shape

78 Fundraise yourself fit

WASTING AWAY The muscle disease you need to know about

Best ways to raise money for charity

110

90

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WALKING BENEFITS

WHY START WALKING? There are so many reasons to get your walking boots on that you can’t afford to spend a moment longer on the sofa.

GP Juliet McGrattan reveals why is easy to assume that to get benefit from exercise you need to be clad in Lycra, dripping in sweat and moving at the speed of sound. This is absolutely not true!

Walking can be just as good for you as running and other more vigorous types of exercise. A brisk walk is laden with health benefits that even those taking their first steps can indulge in. Here are my top ten walking benefits to get you started and keep you motivated.

IT

1 Reduce your risk of heart disease

1 Reduce your risk of heart disease You can make a major difference to your likelihood of developing the biggest killer of women in the UK – heart disease. Walking will reduce most of your risk factors for heart disease including blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes. Active people have almost

half the risk of heart disease compared to those who are inactive.

2 Lower your chance of a stroke Lots of studies have shown the benefit that exercise can have on stroke reduction. Like heart disease, walking will benefit you because it reduces your risk factors. One study in 2010 which looked at women over age 45 showed that brisk walking was an activity that reduced the risk of all types of stroke.

3 Reduce your risk of Type 2 diabetes By helping you to achieve or maintain a healthy weight and by improving the way your body copes with sugar, walking will reduce your risk of this ever more common disease. The more you do, the lower your risk. If you already have Type 2 diabetes, exercise is an important part of your treatment.

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walking benefits

3 Reduce your risk of Type 2 diabetes

6 Lower your risk of certain cancers

9 Improve your mental health

4 Reduce your blood pressure Walking will strengthen your heart muscles, lower your resting heart rate, help established blood vessels to relax and encourage new ones to grow. This all adds up to less pressure in your system and a reduction in your blood pressure readings. This is a particularly satisfying entry in the top ten because you can measure it and within a few weeks you may see your blood pressure fall by a few millimetres of mercury.

5 Lower your bad cholesterol levels Your bad LDL cholesterol levels will fall as your walking programme progresses and your healthy HDL cholesterol will rise. This is due to the exercise itself but also the weight loss that will accompany it. LDL cholesterol clogs arteries and causes heart disease and strokes.

6 Lower your risk of certain cancers Many types of cancer are less common in physically active people. Breast cancer risk can be reduced by 20 to 40 per cent. Bowel cancer by 25 per cent

helping to protect your bones.

It will also slow the progression of any osteoarthritis that you may already have.

(possibly by up to 50 per cent) and womb cancer by 20 to 30 per cent. This is due in part to weight loss but also to hormonal and other chemical changes in the body that occur when you walk.

7 Improve your bone health To strengthen bones weight bearing exercise is essential. Muscles attach to bone by tendons and when the tendons are tugged it encourages new bone formation. Walking is ideal, it is fully weight bearing and will help to protect you against osteoporosis.

8 Delay the onset of osteoarthritis By providing a low-impact all round workout, walking will strengthen the muscles around your joints. These muscles then absorb most of the initial force when your foot strikes the ground

9 Improve your mental health The fresh air, head space and rush of endorphins that walking provides helps in the treatment of depression but also eases symptoms of anxiety and stress.

Progressing, improving and reaching targets will also boost your self-esteem.

10 Reduce your risk of dementia We now know that exercise is an important way to help protect us from dementia. Walking will keep your cardiovascular system healthy by reducing your blood pressure and cholesterol which will reduce the risk of vascular dementia. It may help reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s too.

Remember these are only the top ten. The list is endless. What more motivation do you need to pop on those trainers and head out for a good brisk walk? This is truly life-changing stuff. www.womenswalking.co.uk

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WALKING together

© thinkstockphotos.co.uk

on Kids Kids on mov ee the the mov

Want to get your kids fit?

Get them walking and you could find they’ll end up not only fitter but happier. But how do you encourage them to do it? Peta Bee finds out

hat happened to your once active child?

When did they stop bounding around for hours on end and turn into slothful couch potatoes?

If this sounds all too familiar, you are not alone. There is little doubt that mass under-activity is reaching epidemic levels in the UK and that its potential consequences are dire.

Personal trainer Matt Roberts has been working with Daniel Cohen, a lecturer in sports science at London Metropolitan University, to research the problem of childhood inactivity. ‘There is no doubt that today’s children are less fit than their counterparts were 20-30 years ago,’ Roberts says. ‘But what really concerned me is the woeful lack of general conditioning and aerobic fitness even in children as young

W

as six. It is deeply troubling to see under tens who can’t run half a mile without stopping or get out of breath walking for 15 minutes.’

Certainly, declining levels of school sport are doing nothing to help children’s ailing fitness levels.

But Professor Ken Fox of the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences at the University of Bristol, stresses that it is daily habits outside school hours – in particular a lack of walking – that really make a difference. ‘What has changed markedly in the two to three decades since young waistlines began expanding at a faster rate than anywhere else in Europe is the home environment, the nitty-gritty of everyday living,’ Professor Fox says.

Last summer, a survey by parentdish.co.uk found that one

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walking together

Start them young!

‘It’s a great idea to buy pedometers for everybody and see who can tot up the most steps’ in ten parents who live within 500 yards of their child’s school confess they drive them to the school gates. natural mood booster In the long term, the effects could be devastating. Not only are diseases like diabetes and osteoporosis striking at a younger age, the side effects of chronic laziness are not just physical.

Surveys by the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency (QCA) have found that children who regularly play sport or exercise achieve higher grades in school and have better behaviour records. Another study by researchers at Oxford University found that exercise, particularly in groups, improved social skills, selfesteem and mood in young people.

Can encouraging children to walk more really make a difference?

Almost unanimously, experts say it can. Louise Sutton, head of the Carnegie Centre for Sports Performance and Wellbeing, says that studies have shown six to 12-year-old girls need to take 12,000 steps a day and boys 15,000 steps to maintain a healthy weight.

‘Much of that could be achieved by walking to and from school and even going shopping with you,’ Sutton says. ‘Steps can be accumulated throughout the day.’

Even better, says Sutton, is to encourage your children to walk with you at weekends. ‘It’s a great idea to buy pedometers for everybody and see who can tot up the most steps,’ she says. ‘Kids are often spurred on by competition and every bit of additional exercise they do will be benefiting their long term health.’

Ditch buggies and pushchairs by the age of two and a half or as soon as children can walk unaided.

C e r t a i n l y, c h i l d r e n o f t h r e e a n d older should not be confined to one and should be encouraged to walk. Several studies have linked weight problems in older children to the amount of years s p e n t i n a p u s h c h a i r.

Get your child to walk whenever you can. If you walk with them, pick up the pace and set challenges. At the weekend, drive to woodland and plan a walk of no l e s s t h a n 4 0 m i n u t e s . Ta k e t h e m out of their normal comfort zone.

It’s fine to lure them with rewards and they often enjoy it — so walk to a café and promise a drink or ice cream.

Wa l k i n g t o a n d f r o m s c h o o l f o r half an hour a day can burn 200 calories – more than an average PE lesson. Inactive children will inevitably get fat and while the Government recommends seven hours of physical activity a week for primary school children, a staggering 68 per cent of boys and 76 per cent of girls do not come close to meeting this recommendation.

Plenty of walking can help to keep up teenagers’ fitness levels, while competitive sport enforces a sense of physical and psychological challenge. It’s fine to offer rewards: ‘if you walk to… you will get...’ It can work. Mo Farah’s teacher persuaded the football-mad youngster to try running by promising to buy him an Arsenal top.

www.womenswalking.co.uk

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© thinkstockphotos.co.uk

Weight gain

Is size an issue?

Having a few curves is no barrier to walking and a new study has shown that being a bit overweight may actually be good for you. Is there any truth in this? Liz Hollis finds out ou want to start walking to lose weight, but if you haven’t exercised for a while, you may be wondering if you can do it. The simple answer is that, like many forms of exercise, walking isn’t just something you do when you’re fit in order to stay that way – it’s definitely something you can do to get fit in the first place.

If your last regular bout of exercise was when you were at school, it’s natural to have reservations about being active again, especially if you didn’t consider yourself the ‘sporty type’. Whatever your age or size,

Y

you’re never too big to start walking (provided you don’t have any serious health issues – in which case see your GP first). If it’s been a long time since you’ve been active, start gently and slowly and build it up. The tips in our beginner’s walking feature on page 36 will help you get started.

Healthy fat And if you are carrying some extra weight, there is some good news.

Despite official guidelines claiming that we should strive to be a ‘normal, healthy weight’ for our height

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weight gain

a stone or two bigger than what doctors label ‘normal weight’.

How big?

However, the severely obese, with a BMI higher than 35, were a shocking 29 per cent more likely to die by the end of the study than the normal weight people.

Professor David Haslam, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said the study was part of a thread of research that experts call the ‘obesity paradox’. ‘Occasionally a study appears to contradict the view that being obese is detrimental for your health,’ he says. However, he stressed that the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was not a green light to overeat and had only looked at death rate and not rates of health and disease.

He added that the results of this study may also be skewed because it uses BMI which is an imperfect measure of fat that ignores fat distribution and muscle bulk – for

journal Obesity, found similar results.

It found underweight people (with a BMI of less than 18.5) had the highest risk of dying, morbidly obese people had the second highest risk, but slightly overweight people had a lower risk of dying than those of normal weight.

Obesity paradox ‘There might be an obesity paradox, but you can’t conclude from it that people in the normal weight range should deliberately try to put on a bit of weight so they can live longer,’ says Professor Haslam. ‘In general, the consensus is that avoiding obesity and above everything eating a healthy, balanced diet is best for most people’s health,’ he says.

Physiotherapist Sammy Margo says it’s also important to remember that being overweight can also bring added stresses and strains to your body, and particularly your joints, that can reduce quality of life – but the study hasn’t taken this into account.

‘Above everything, eating a healthy, balanced diet is best for most people’s health’ dominating the media, a startling new international study flies in the face of this widely-held view – suggesting that slightly overweight people may actually live longer than their thinner counterparts. So is there any substance in this?

The study of almost three million people by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention found that while obesity increases the risk of dying early, being slightly overweight appeared to extend life.

Indeed, people with an officially ‘overweight’ BMI of 25 to 29 were six per cent less likely to die than any other group. In layman’s terms this is a BMI which would make you of similar proportions to the singer Adele – slightly chubby rather than morbidly obese – on average about

example whether weight is muscle or more dangerous tummy fat.

Plus some people may actually be ‘normal’ weight because they have a chronic illness like cancer.

LIFE EXPECTANCY The increase in life expectancy for the mildly obese is also modest and doesn’t necessarily mean they had better health or better quality of life. It might mean living longer but suffering from more weight-related diseases like diabetes, painful joints and high blood pressure.

Another limitation is that the study combined all causes of death rather than the risks of dying from specific diseases such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes if you are overweight.

This latest US study was a systematic review that aimed to summarise existing research in this area. For example, a previous Canadian study published in the

‘When people are a bit overweight, that very often creeps into being a lot overweight as they gradually pile on the pounds over the years,’ she says.

‘You are more likely to avoid morbid obesity with its associated risks if you aim to keep your weight inside a margin that is anchored within the “normal weight” range,’ she says.

‘Good health is more than a BMI number – it’s feeling better because you have a healthy lifestyle, eat well and are physically active and less stressed,’ she adds.

Indeed, if you are tempted to eat a Big Mac, the consensus is that it’s unwise to interpret this study as proving that chubby is healthy. Rather it may simply show that being slightly overweight is slightly less unhealthy than previously thought and it shows that being very overweight increases your risk of death. So keep walking because there’s no excuse to pile on the pounds. www.womenswalking.co.uk

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NUTRITION

NOT SO NAUGHTY Tasty guilt-free treats. Words: Carys Matthews

VITACOCO NATURAL COCONUT WATER WITH ORANGE

GRASSHOPPER CRUNCHY POP UP PORRIDGE

OHSO PROBIOTIC CHOCOLATE

(£1.49, www.grasshopper-foods.com)

(£3.99 for a pack of seven 13.5g bars, www.ohsolovesyourtummy.com)

(from £1.49, http://vitacoco.com/uk) Forget fizzy drinks and hydrate naturally instead with electrolyte-balancing coconut water. Now firmly established in the fitness and health market, Vitacoco has recently introduced orange to its range of fruity flavours.

Why you should It’s naturally rich in potassium and fat-free.

The verdict The fresh taste is perfect for post-run hydration.

Ditch your morning croissant for this clever little pop-up porridge pot, perfect for slipping into your handbag ready to eat at your desk or before a run.

Why you should Oats are low on the glycaemic index so you’ll feel fuller for longer.

The verdict This little pot kept me satisfied until lunch and tasted delicious.

CARYS’S NUTRITION TIP

THE MINERAL POTASSIUM IS VITAL FOR MUSCLE DEVELOPMENT AND IS USED BY YOUR BODY TO CONTROL HYDRATION LEVELS. THE RDA FOR POTASSIUM IS 3500MG, ALTHOUGH WOMEN WHO ARE BREASTFEEDING MAY NEED MORE.

To get the most out of your training you need to ensure you are taking in enough fuel to maintain blood sugar levels. Try snacking on nuts, dried fruit and natural yogurt or oatcakes topped with hummus or peanut butter from 30 to 60 minutes before you exercise.

A dark chocolate bar that not only tastes good but also supports digestive health, and boosts the immune system, is a winner in our books.

Why you should It claims to be three times more effective at delivering your daily probiotic requirements than a yogurt drink.

The verdict A guilt-free chocolate hit at just 72 calories.

RUDE HEALTH THE PUMPKIN, THE BEETROOT (99p, www.rudehealth.com)

Feast on these great-tasting fruit and veggie bars either before or after a run.

Why you should High in fibre and packed full of nutritious seeds, these wheat and dairy-free bars provide a sustained energy release.

The verdict We loved the fudgy texture and satisfying flavour.

TEAPIGS YERBA MATE ENERGY BREW (£3.49 for 15 bags, www.teapigs.co.uk)

Swap your calorie-laden morning latte with a refreshing cup of Yerba Mate Energy Brew to kick start your system.

Why you should This herby caffeine-free tea is thought to combat fatigue, boost immunity, control the appetite and reduce stress.

The verdict Unlike some tasteless or bitter herbal teas, this was a real treat.

POPCHIPS ORIGINAL POTATO CHIPS (69p, www.popchips.co.uk)

Treat yourself to a pack of these crunchy ‘popped’ chips as part of a healthy lunchtime treat or occasional snack.

Why you should They’re baked, not fried, and pack less than 100 calories a bag.

The verdict Healthier than crisps, but just as satisfying and tasty.

www.womenswalking.co.uk

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COMING NEXT ISSUE...

WALKING AND DATING Do they go together?

POST NATAL FITNESS Get back in shape after a baby – one easy plan

GET MARATHON FIT! Our guide to getting fit for walking 26.2 miles

BOOST YOUR HEALTH G WITHOUT EVEN TRYINk Easy fixes that really wor

BEACH BODY READY Slim down for your summer break in no time

© EDDIE MACDONALD

PLUS! More inspirational real life stories and motivational tips to get the most from your walking

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