by Anthony Megna

Created on: January 09, 2009   Last Updated: June 26, 2010

For some people exercise can be boring! Include me in that category. Unless the exercise is exciting, than count me out. When they gave us options in gym class to pick a sport to concentrate in, I was dismayed yachting wasn't on the list!

I used to feel that walking was boring. I'd rather play tennis or go water-skiing or do anything except walking as that was the only thing that could keep my interest. That was when I was young and relatively stress-free. Ah, the good old days....

Stress and age seem to go hand-in-hand. Needing to get rid of the negativity that stress was causing me, and trying to cut down on smoking, taking a walk seemed to do the trick. It helped that my wife and I got a dog. Does a dog force you to walk? Oh, does it ever. And guess what? I got into it more and more. In fact, I wasn't waiting for the dog to give me his cues to go out, I was putting the leash on him as he looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Let's go" I prompted him. "Come on, we have things to explore". I love it now. It just seems to be more fun with a dog. But dog or not, there are a whole lot of benefits to walking.

Speaking from personal experience, walking doesn't only relieve my stress, it gives me the time to meditate. To plan for the day's events, and to get the much needed exercise required to burn off that pint of ice cream I ate the night before. Walking allows me to focus and to zero my energy into the goals of the day. I can't tout the benefits enough about going for a walk.

When you decide to go, choose a traffic-free zone if you can. Personally, I hate the sound of cars whizzing by me, and unless you have earphones, find a park. Also, since I'm usually walking with my dog, I prefer a safer place to walk. Where I live, there are plenty of parks and plenty of trails to walk. I usually walk for about 30 to 45 minutes, which isn't a tremendous amount, but the key is I do it everyday. I even lost 30 pounds one summer walking, and I didn't change my eating habits!

Yes, I am walking my way to stress relief, and a slimmer me. It is now a contest to see who gets to the leash first!

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