Why Walking is the Missing Piece to Reaching Your Health and Fitness Goals

What if you've been going about it all wrong?? In today's episode Britany breaks down why walking is the most underrated tool for body transformation (and frankly your mental health too). She addresses the myths around 10,000 daily steps, how calorie burn REALLY works (and why you probably are calculating it wrong) and provides methods for increasing your step could despite a busy schedule,

This episode makes sure you're not missing one of the most important pieces to the puzzle when it comes to your health and fitness goals.


Use code BRITANYFIT for $230 the C2 Foldable Walking Pad until Jan 31st. A walking treadmill that folds up and is portable!

Track your steps, sleeps, stress, recovery, workouts and more with the Garmin Venu 3S.

Related Episode: How Dieting and Fat Loss Really Work

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Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome to the Filter Free Friday podcast. I'm your host, Brittany Williams, and this is the podcast that reminds you that the distance between the life that you want to live and the life that you're currently living isn't nearly as big as you think. How are you? Happy Filter Free Friday. Y'all, I need you to know my fingertips are frozen, frozen. I went for a run today and I got back probably almost an hour and a half ago and I still feel like they're tingly and I really shouldn't be complaining because I know there are people who live in much colder places than I am and some of you are in like the dead of summer like those of you in Australia so you're probably like I would kill for my fingertips to be freezing cold but it just like I it's like we keep it too cold in the house and then I come in and it feels like it takes me 20 years to warm up and I'm not one of those people you know how some of those people have like I'm going to call it poor circulation, but I don't actually know if that's the problem where their fingertips and their toes always get cold. I feel like my mom's one of those people. Her hands are always cold and you look over and sure enough, their hands are like ice blocks. I'm not one of those people. But I'm just, I feel like today was my first really cold run of the winter. You know, like we're in it where I'm like, I need a thicker pair of gloves. I'm layering the outfits. Like I went, I started off my run and I was like, I may need to go back and like get additional layers. And it wasn't even that cold. I think it was like 33 degrees this morning. So that's zero Celsius for those of you who don't know that conversion. But which is ironic. I feel like other people, like people who live in the Celsius world can convert to Fahrenheit, which you shouldn't have to. We Americans are odd. We're weird. Yet the Americans, who you think should be able to convert to Celsius because the rest of the world does Celsius, our dumbasses never can. It's because we're a selfish country. Let's just call a spade a spade here. Like, we need to fall in line with everyone else and just use Celsius. But I will say, I am one of those people who don't know the conversion, but every time I feel like I talk to anyone from another country, which is common, they always know with a Fahrenheit conversion and I'm like, damn, I feel like an idiot. I should know. I should be the one who knows as the like odd man out when it comes to this. Anyways, it was, let's just call it 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is zero degrees Celsius. So it was cold, right? But I, for whatever reason, the last two weeks have decided I'm going to do a track workout. And I'm not training for anything. I have no business being on the track, okay? I just, for whatever, I've just been bored. I've been bored with my runs. And I want to give you permission to know that it's okay to get bored with your running or whatever your workout is of the moment. Like, it happens to the best of us. And I just needed a little something something to, like, spice things up, you know, like I just needed to spice things up. So I was like, well, a track workout is going to make it real spicy. So last week I did four, sorry, six by 400 meter repeats. 400 meters is one lap around the track. And then I gave myself 90 seconds of jogging rest in between. And so usually when you're doing that, you're gonna do it maybe a little bit faster than like your 5K pace. So the goal isn't necessarily to like sprint, just all out sprint as fast as I can. The goal is to have like, enough of a pace that that it's not conversational that it's an effort that it's hard but like not so hard that you're like huffing and puffing at the end like the rest is supposed to be a jog when you're done like you're not supposed to have ran so fast that you have to completely stop and stand there to catch your breath and let your heart rate come down right that's the vibe and like let's let's paint this scene for you okay i am how old am i i'm almost 37 i'm at that age where i have to to like stop and actually do the math based off the year I was born to be like wait how old really am I because it just kind of all starts to run together I'm I'm gonna be 37 soon and um look I'm not gonna say that I'm not fit I am I'm fit like you see me on the outside and you're like yeah she's fit sure okay that's my job but I have a complex of who I used to be like I I used to run Division I track and field in college, and I was good at it. And in my head, that gives me a little bit of an inflated ego for what I should be able to do on the track, even though that was 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I have a friend who jokes because I have rheumatoid arthritis, and he's like, one day you're going to be– This is going to sound insensitive, but it's not insensitive. He means it. He's wonderful. He is like, you're going to be sitting in a wheelchair on a porch one day when I'm old. And he says that my grandma name is going to be Mama Williams. And he's like, you're going to be sitting on a porch one day. in your wheelchair so decrepit and all of like if you ever google like severe arthritis people's fingers be going in different directions and their kneecap like shit just be looking weird when you have like severe severe arthritis especially um the like autoimmune variety versus just the kind that kind of comes with old age um and like is like unmanaged, right? And so he's like, you're gonna be sitting in a wheelchair, like decrepit, like truly just looking busted. And you're gonna be sitting on the porch. I don't know why I'm on a porch. I just, we close our eyes, him and I, and we imagine me, I feel like I just imagined like an old black grandma in the South. That's kind of the vibe that we get. And you're gonna be sitting in that wheelchair and like, you're gonna be like, back in the day, I used to run in nationals and now, I was ranked in the 5K. I thought that I was a sprinter, but in reality, I was a pretty good long distance runner. And then my grandkids are going to be sitting next to me and I'm going to be like, little Johnny, are you going out for the track team? And he's going to be like, yes, Mama Williams, I'm going out for the 100 meter whatever. I'm going to be a sprinter. And she's going to be like, well, if you got my genes, little Johnny, you're going to be a long distance runner because everybody thinks they're a sprinter when they're start but I've seen your scrawny legs you got your mama legs and those are my legs and you're long distance runner Johnny or whatever do you know you all we all have that family member who like thinks you know you know the vibe right like that's gonna be me and little Johnny is gonna like be kind of scared of me and like run into his mom so who I assume now in this story would be Blake and be like, Mama Williams is messed up in the head. There ain't no freaking way her arthritic ass was running a 5K on the track. And then I'll have to peel out the newspaper clippings that my mom kept from when I was in high school running track, and I'll have to pull out all of the medals and awards, and I'll have to Google me to be like, see, little Johnny, back in the day, I was a trainer on this thing called the Sweat App, and I had... I had almost 700,000 followers and people who listened to me and I was an expert in fitness and I could run around that track faster than you can say boogie. You know, like that's going to be, that's like me and one of my best friends. We've like, I've known him since college and we've always joked that like I do all these like cool physical feats but I do also have this autoimmune disease that's gonna like just demolish me one day and no one's gonna believe that I've done all of these things but so like no like that's the vibe though like I hold on to like my successes in college running as if they happened yesterday and I and especially now that I've like I have accomplished other things in the fitness world uh none of which are like races or anything but like Being a fitness trainer, you would think that I have enough to like let go of that win and like focus on other things that you've achieved. But no, I will be holding on. I will be pretending like I'm a hot shot runner for the rest of my life, even though I am, like I said, no longer a hot shot runner, okay? She's a washed up, she's a has-been. I need to be very clear. I do not run more than 10 miles a week. Like I run because I enjoy it. I am not training for anything. I am not like, yeah, I am a certified run coach. If I needed to write myself a running plan right now, I absolutely could. I just truly enjoy the sport of running. So I show up. I share all of that with you to tell you that I show up to this track. Last week for the first time, I have not been on a track in a decade at like a minimum. But I'm showing up to my local track. I'm ready to go. And like I said, it's cold outside. I'm like ready to go. I do my strides. I do all my drills. And then I'm doing six by 400 meter repeats. And like for frame of reference, like I said, 400 meters. Actually, I should say like I said, but I'm going to be honest with you. I've already recorded this video. this podcast once so like maybe I did explain this but maybe I didn't because it's possible it was in that previous recording I'll just be honest about that sometimes the opening is so bad that I'm like that's shit we're starting over and today was one of those days so if I didn't say this already if I if I I'm saying it again and if I did say it I apologize my workout was six by 400 meter repeats with 90 second rest 400 is one lap around the track uh 90 seconds rest and I was jogging in between my sets. In college, I would do that kind of workout, like 400 meter repeats. I'd probably do like eight of them, usually was like the number I feel like. And I would run anywhere from like 66 to like 75, 72 seconds. Like that was kind of like my pace that I would have run, ran that workout out. These days, I'm running at like a 80, like a 90 to like an 82 second pace, right? OK, so I'm a good 20 seconds slower than I was back in my heyday. And so, look, I'm showing up to this track with a little bit of like a busted ego, because, again, in my head, I think I should be hot shit. And look, I recognize that 90 seconds to 82 seconds. There are some people who only have to run if they only someone told them you have to run the 400 meters one time. they wouldn't be able to run it in 90 seconds. So the fact that I can do it six times, I am very blessed and very thankful. And I'm not sitting here being like, I am such a bad runner. No, I absolutely recognize my gifts. But just just just just run with me with this no pun intended like just go with me with this okay so i'm feeling busted up old out of shape but i'm here i'm doing it i'm there for fun i get to the track and who is at a track but whom i can only assume is a professional athlete she looks trim fit fast in shape she's got all of the things she's just you just it's hard to explain to a group of non-runners or people who aren't in like professional track scene. The difference between a lay person and a professional runner, but you know it when you see it. There's just a vibe. And this girl, she could have been just like me, a washed-up has-been who's creeping up to 40, who wanted to feel a little something-something on a Thursday morning, right? Like, that could have been her. But in my head, I'm 100% positive she was a professional athlete. So here I was, a 100% definite has-been, showing up for my first track workout in a decade, and there just happens to be a professional runner here. just my luck just my luck now there's a lot of professional runners in Portland it is a very big Portland scene also Nike is headquartered here so like there's also just like a lot of Nike athletes and like Eugene which is just down the road is like track town USA like it just it's a big runner community here in Portland so like I said it's very possible that she is is an everyday person just like me. But I don't know, it was like 10 a.m. Like who, what everyday person is running on a track at 10 a.m.?

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?

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I mean me, but like nobody else. Like, I'm just like, this is clearly her full-time job if she's here. So I just, so I get to start my repeats and she and I, and it's weird when like you have to kind of share a track with someone because like sometimes she would pass me and I would pass her and like, but we would usually pass each other on the, one person would be in the hard part of their workout and the other person would be resting. So it never got too awkward. But you know, you're in your head, you're making up, I've made up this whole backstory for her life. I've made up the backstory of what I think her workout is. This whole thing. And my biggest fear, my biggest fear was that she was going to walk over to me because it was literally just me, her and this one other man who was walking on the track. So it's very clear. We were there for quite some time. It's very clear that like the two of us are just running laps around each other. I was so afraid that she was going to come up and be like, hey girl, what are you training for? And I would have to be like, nothing I'm literally just trying to feel some sort of fire in my heart that I haven't felt in a little while and I'm just trying to run some passion into these legs like I'm just a almost 40 year old has-been who is just sucking wind on the back stretch of this track and losing feeling in my fingertips in hopes of feeling like maybe I might be fast still you know like I was really afraid that I was gonna have to look professional runner in the eye and admit that I'm a has-been who's just chasing a feeling okay because sometimes that's what we're doing sometimes we all like to sit here as we get older and daydream about what our body used to be able to do and sometimes i just want to be able to feel that just a tiny little bit a tiny little Unfortunately for the story, but fortunately for me, she did not come up to me. And Lord knows I'm a very outgoing person. I thought about introducing myself to her because I would also like a little bit of a runner friend if I'm being honest. I think that would help me not be so bored. But I did not have the guts to do so this day. That was last week. I showed up again this week thinking that she was there. And if she was going to be there, I told myself I'm going to get over my fear of of her being a professional runner, and I'm gonna just introduce myself. But she wasn't there today. Today I had the track completely by myself, which made me feel, I think, even more ridiculous than running in front of a professional athlete because, like I said, I was freezing cold, I lost feelings in my fingertips, and no part of me needs to be there. Zero part of me needed to be on the track today running into a headwind, you know, like at almost 40 years old. Like I could have gone home and sat by the fireplace and sipped on hot cocoa but this is what we do this is what we do to ourselves it's just like I said we just really want to try to feel something that's where I'm at I just want to feel something in 2025 I mean that maybe sounds a little desperate it maybe sounds like I need to go to therapy which I'm in therapy but like I just wanted to feel the juices flow into my legs again you know sometimes you just need to do something like that um Anyways, that's kind of where I'm at right now. I do feel like maybe as I've been sitting here talking that maybe my fingertips are getting a little bit warmer now that I'm like jazzed up, now that I'm getting hype talking to you guys. So thank you for that. If you've done nothing for me this week, you've at least given me the opportunity to warm up my fingertips. What do I want to talk about today? I want to talk about the, I think, and I don't think this is hyperbole, the most underrated... physical activity that exists. And I think that it's a funny thing to talk about after I literally just told you that I'm out here running 400 meter repeats on the track for no reason. So the irony of this is not lost on me. But as a fitness trainer, I see so many people busting their asses in the gym trying to do All of the different things. And my DMs are flooded on a daily basis with people asking me for the secret sauce exercise that is going to get them insert goal X. I mean, I can tell you what it always is. It's either... trim her thighs, a bigger ass, get rid of belly fat. People wanna perk up their boobies. I'm gonna tell you now, you cannot perk up your boobies. I understand that things hang low and wobble to and fro after having a child. There is no exercise I can do to get the boobs to go from your belly button back up to your chin. I'm sorry, that requires a medical doctor. I can strengthen the muscle underneath it, but I cannot pull it up. I cannot de-sag your boobs. Trust me. If I could, I would. I'd do it to myself, and then I'd go make billions. But I can't. But people are always chasing. There's this secret exercise, or if I go from... Oh, maybe it's bar, maybe it's Pilates, maybe it's strength training. They always are trying to reinvent the wheel of how do I be healthier? How do I feel better? How do I have more motivation in the morning? How do I show up for my kids? And unfortunately, but also fortunately, there's not just one way of doing things. But one thing that I think does make a massive impact is walking. And walking deserves way more credit than we give it because it's not sexy. I get it. No one wants to be like, what did you do today? I went for a walk. I'm out here with my feelings. I'm walking. That's not very sexy. You wouldn't be like, no, I just busted six 400-meter repeats and passed a professional. That's the kind of workout we want to tell people. But in reality, so many people... like feel like if they want to lose fat if they want to be healthier like we've all got massive goals in 2025 i recognize this and a lot of these goals and a lot especially in this time frame is around changing the composition of your body and it's funny i think body composition was something that i walked away from talking about a lot but for some reason lately i'm just like Let's just like talk about it, okay? Because so many people want to change the way that they look. And like, I want to help you do that in a way that is healthy. And the first thing, there are two things that I think I need everyone to understand if you want to change the way that you look. The first of all, that... We feel like drastic change requires drastic measures that you are going to, in order to feel better in your body, in order to look better in your body, you feel like you're going to have to make drastic change. You're going to have to starve yourself. You're going to have to eat bland chicken and cottage cheese and broccoli every single day. You feel like you're going to have to spend six days a week in the gym for an hour, which I'm sorry, I know that 99.9% of the people listening to this podcast, myself included, do not have that kind of time. And we're also, the second thing is that we're taught, we've been programmed to believe that every single workout should be very intense. It should be very hard and you should just be like balls to the wall effort. Everything has to be high impact and jumping and you have to be sweating your balls off for it to work. And so when you take those two things, that drastic change requires drastic measures and that all workouts should be intense, you can understand why walking gets a really bad reputation you can understand why in our society it feels like we have to push push push push push to be as best as possible and it feels like that push should require a shit ton of work but the reality is is that the simplest thing that we can do that is innate to our body, which is walking, might possibly be the exact unlock you need to finally achieve the goals that you are trying to achieve. And look, I've been there myself. I remember when I very first graduated college, you know, I'm coming off of, like I said, this running career and I had the opportunity to go pro in running and decided not to because I kind of had this like personal kumbaya moment of like, would I rather be a world champion record holder uh you know olympic champion whatever the top of your your craft in a professional sport or would you rather be the ceo of a massive like fortune 500 company and at the time this might surprise you i said i'd rather be the ceo and so i decided well if i don't even want the pinnacle of professional athleticism being a professional athlete like then why like I know that like I'm not going to want to put in the work to do it if like I'm not aligned with that so I kind of left sport you know didn't pursue the professional route and decided to go you know become a corporate girly uh and but I still had that urge and that like desire to like bust my ass in my workouts because you figure, you know, I was running 70 miles a week for almost four years. I was used to running twice a day most days of the week. I was used to running, you know, 15, 16, 17 mile long runs every single Sunday. And you don't need to know the conversion to kilometers for that. You just need to know it's a lot. It's way more than the average person. That's all you need to say. Long. It's long. And so I remember when I first came out of college, I was definitely in this like disordered mindset around what my body looked like. I was very obsessed with being skinny and fit and having visible abs. And so coming off of that kind of training schedule, And now I have all this free time, but I'm working. I have a full time job. I remember I was doubling up on workouts. I was doing like really long workouts. I was working out like every 13 out of every 14 days. I just was like doing everything because that's what I thought that success looked like. Like if I just like I told myself, if I just never stop having a professional athlete mindset, if I never stop having that collegiate athlete mindset, I'm And I just apply that to my everyday life. I will look amazing. I will feel amazing. And I will do amazing things. And that mindset really carried on for a long time. And I even remember when I stopped running and I because I injured myself and I moved to Portland and I started doing bar for the first time, even though my workouts weren't as hard. And I think that I was I don't know if I actually would say I was in a better space around my around how my body looked and my weight and not chasing the scale and the number and that sort of thing. But I do know that I was like doubling up bar workouts. I was spending all of my free time at bar and just like constantly felt like I had to work out like seven days a week. Like to me, that was a, it wasn't necessarily that I was spending a ton of time in my individual day at the bar studio, but I do remember I did go every single day. And it's funny, that's what I thought success looked like. To be fit and to look a certain way, you have to work out every single day and you have to like work really, really hard. But then when I actually look back now at what my day was scheduled, so I was working at Under Armour at the time, I was spending 10 plus hours a day sitting at my desk at work and then because I didn't have kids I was spending two hours a day watching tv or reading or sitting on the couch playing games with Rob I was probably getting let's say six to seven hours of sleep so like 18 to 20 hours of a 24-hour day I was spent sitting down whether it be at work whether it be on the couch I literally yes I may have worked out Seven days a week and that one hour made me feel like a boss bitch. I'm working out every day. Cool bro, doesn't matter when you sit on your ass for 20 hours a day. When your body is made to move, like it's no wonder our bodies ache when we move because we don't move enough. Like your body is not going to feel good when you get up and we all have aches and pains as we get older. And Often it's because we don't move as much when we get older. And I think that we start building workout plans and we start kind of like having this consistency around workouts and it suddenly feels like you have a hall pass. Like once I... Build this consistency in my workout. Well, I don't need to go for a walk. I don't need to move around as much because I've worked out today. And that's unfortunately just not how goals are met. That's not how fat loss works. That's not how your health works. You don't get to work out for one hour a day and then not worry about movement. the other 23 hours a day and I've I do have an episode um which maybe I'll link in the show notes that that breaks down into how calorie burn and fat loss really work about and I'll give an overview here and I'll try to make it quick for those of you who have already listened to that episode but give you enough kind of a refresher to keep it top of mind but like um There's this thing called TDEE, which is total daily energy expenditure. And that's basically a fancy way of saying calorie burn, right? Like how are you burning, that's the expenditure, your energy, which the metric for energy in the human body is in calories, right? I mean, I'm sure there's other ways too, but like at the end of the day, how are you burning through the energy, using your energy? And this is vital if you're especially trying to lose fat because as you may know you have to be in a calorie deficit in order to lose fat. It's scientific fact. Google it. Google it. It's a scientific fact. So how do we then burn calories, right? Because that's gonna be important for that formula. Well, there are four different ways that we burn calories or four different inputs that go into our total daily energy expenditure. The first is something called BMR, your basal metabolic rate. That's just the amount of calories you burn hanging out being a person. Just to keep you erect and eyes open and heart pumping and brain synapses firing, how, like, 60 to 70% of the calories you burn during your day comes down to just keeping you alive. Like you're just burning calories by existing. 60 to 70%. Now, another five to 10% of the calories you burn or the energy that you expend is from the thermal effect of food. This is the calories that it takes or the energy that it takes for your body to actually digest and process the food that you give it. Like I remember back like in the 90s, back when like things were like, you know, everything was super toxic when it comes to like health ads. And like I remember getting like told like in like a Cosmo magazine or something that like we should all be eating cucumbers because they're negative calories because you burn more calories eating a cucumber than you do eating them which like the concept is silly like there are calories in cucumbers nothing is a negative calorie I mean something can be a zero calorie like water but like it's not nothing um But it's just like a silly concept, but it's the perfect example of what the thermal effect of food is. So right then and there, between your basal metabolic rate, just you being you and the calories it's going to take to just sustain you waking up in the morning, and then the effect it takes for you to digest the energy that you consume, we are talking 65% to 80% of your calorie expenditure is you don't even control none of that you can control your basal metabolic rate your thermal effect of food are two things that you cannot control so right then and there you should have a little bit of a well damn feeling well shit i can't i can't control the largest portion of my energy expenditure and that's true it's true you can't control it so First of all, stop taking yourself so goddamn seriously. So much of it is out of your control. But then you're left with the rest of it. You know, that 35, 20% of like what's left over that we can control. And that's two things. something called eat, no pun intended, has nothing to do with food, which is exercise, activity, thermogenesis, and neat, which is non-exercise, activity, thermogenesis. And eat is your exercise. It's your workout. It's that one hour a day that you're working out. Neat is everything else, non-activity. It is you walking, fidgeting, standing around, cleaning the house, all the things that you do that is just movement throughout the day. And Eat, exercise accounts for five to 10% of your energy expenditure a day. Neat, non-exercise activity accounts to 15 to 30%. So when you're actually looking at how much Of that, let's call it just for a round number, 30 to, well, I said a round number and I was going to give you one number, but I'll still give you a range. The 30, 35, 25, we'll say 30, the 30% of your energy expenditure that you can control. because there's only a very small portion of it you can't control. The vast majority of that will be dictated by non-exercise activity. This means that you will do more for your goals of fat loss and burning calories by paying attention to the slow burn of the candle throughout the day than like the quick flash of light that is your workout. Like a quick flash of light, if you're searching for something in a room, and someone's like, okay, I'll give you two options. I can either flicker the light for like two seconds so it'll come on, you'll get to look around the room and it'll come off, or I can give you a candle that's not gonna shine very bright but it's gonna be on for the rest of the day and it's gonna slow burn and you're gonna be able to see the light in the room and be able to find what you're looking for. We would all pick the slow burn of the candle even though that slow burn isn't as bright as like that one click flash of the light. That to me is what non-exercise activity is. It is a slow burn throughout the day that is going to generate the calorie burn that you're looking for when it comes to moving around more, losing fat, again, whatever your goal may be. Walking is not only... one of the most effective ways to keep that candle burning throughout the day but in my opinion it's the easiest because if you're super busy you've got toddlers you have a job that isn't mobile you can't have not everyone is just allowed to request a standing desk like i get it like we all have time to walk more and i think that that's just something that and it doesn't take that much like it it really doesn't like it does feel like a lot like i know that i track my steps and i know that in the morning I'll be at like 3,000 steps and I'll be like shit I'm never gonna make it my goal is 8,000 steps a day I'm like I'm never gonna make it because I'm so far away from 8,000 but then somehow five o'clock rolls around and I'm literally rolling around with Blake on you know in the living room and I look down at my watch and I'm at like 11,000 and I'm like well shit it happened but that's because I go for a walk a couple times every single day um And I know. I always get, and I can feel them. I can feel them. You roll your eyes. Oh, walking. It's so unsexy. I get it. Trust me. I had this, like, period right before... got pregnant with Blake so it must have been like summer spring summer of 2022 where I was walking all the time I was listening to like meditations on the calm app and I was just like look at me I am the pillar of physical and mental health and like I also walked during pregnancy but after like a year of it it just got boring like I now don't really enjoy going for a 30 minute walk like it just it doesn't really like I need to either have a friend with me even like listening to a podcast or something like I I'm a doer I I'm not a fidgeter but like my brain needs to be actively doing something and sometimes just listening isn't enough um so I get it I'm sitting here telling you that I get that walking sometimes feels like it's unsexy but I'm hopefully going to give you a few strategies to help you sexify add to the sex appeal of walking or make it less boring okay or more achievable because here's the thing walking doesn't have to mean that you go for a 30 minute walk it can be broken up into chunks and so one thing that i think the biggest barrier people have is time right and so I like to habit stack, which is something that I learned from Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I highly recommend. But that is when you're trying to introduce a new habit into your routine, it's important to, or it's beneficial to pair it with something that you either, the habit that you already have, something that you're already doing every single day so that then that kind of correlation and that connection gets stronger so that like you don't have to like, start from scratch when it comes to building a habit. You can kind of just tack it on to something else. So for me, and actually I guess before I say all of this, I do want to kind of give the disclaimer that like, 10,000 steps a day is an arbitrary number. Like it goes back to like the 60s or the 50s. And it was like an advertisement or a marketing campaign for something that like 10,000 is not like there's a bunch of research out there that actually says that 10,000 steps a day is an adequate goal. If anything, this research tells us the opposite. That like it really isn't about a specific number per person. And that shouldn't shock us, right? Like I think we all know by now everything is like a it depends situation. I don't want you to arbitrarily shoot for 10,000 steps and that's not what this episode is about. This is about like to me I think step count is the most important metric that you could start tracking about yourself in 2025. Sleep would be a nice one. I think that that it does tracking your sleep does require um some larger purchases some sort of sleep tracker um a lot of which has subscriptions and that sort of thing so i can understand that like that isn't achievable for everybody but i think that if your sleep and your step count if you're going to track anything i think you could stop tracking your workouts i don't give a shit i don't give a shit how many calories you burn in your workouts what i do care is how many steps you took every single day like truly if i was working with you one-on-one as a trainer i I would be like, I don't like when you give me your like recap of like how your workout went this week. I do not care about the calories burned. And I frankly like I honestly don't even really care about the minutes that you spent working out. I just care about how much did you how much did you move around today? And then like obviously the specific exercises that you did. But step count, if you can start to glorify your step count as something that's important in your life. routine it is going to do such amazing things and like so like just going for a walk I think sometimes feels unsexy so if you reframe it as I'm trying to get 8,000 steps a day well you can get 8,000 steps a day without ever going for a walk like that's to me what I love about it is like oh I'm just like I used to have the goal I'm gonna walk every single day and that got boring as hell and And that's why I'm kind of shifting it now to saying, I just want to get 8,000 steps a day. That 8,000 steps a day could be trying to learn how to twerk in front of my mirror for five minutes. Like that counts. Like, cause I'm moving around and my, my step counter, my tracker is going to count those steps. Like, like it really, even this is an episode about walking, but I really at the root of it, want you to start paying attention to how many steps you're taking. And I say all that to say, don't feel like you have to shoot for 10,000 steps arbitrarily. There was some really great studies that show that our goal should be around getting more steps. So I really recommend starting. Find what your current step count is. So I highly recommend getting some sort of pedometer. I wear the Garmin Venue 3S. I can send you the link if you'd like, but this is not an ad by any means for that, but that is what I use. One thing I need you to know about wearing pedometers is that if you're going to wear them and like the Apple watch and that sort of thing and a lot of different watches, do Do count steps. But if you are the kind of person who is walking with a stroller, a shopping cart, anything where you're pushing and your hand is stationary, even if it's cold outside and you put your hands like in your jacket pockets and your hand is not kind of, you know, like the cadence that your hand moves when you walk, it will not pick up those steps. So just be very aware of that. There's a couple of workarounds. One, you can get a product like Garmin. which I really like because Garmin's technology, I don't actually know how that works, I'll be honest. I just know that it works really damn well. And the Garmin technology works based off of an axle motion that doesn't require your arm to be moving for it to recognize that you are walking. So for me, someone who is pushing a stroller a lot, I love it because it knows I am walking, whether my hands are moving, hand is moving like i'm walking or whether my hand is stationary um the also the biggest thing that i did before i got my garmin is whenever i was walking on a treadmill or with a stroller i would put my um watch on my ankle i know that sounds silly but it does it works so i have a walking desk um which I'll talk about in a bit. And that's another thing too, is that if you're walking and working and your hands like on a computer, like you have a walking, a desk treadmill and your hands are typing on your computer, the watch, because you're again, your hand is not moving, it's not going to recognize that you're walking. So you have to use a pedometer elsewhere. You can either get like an old school pedometer, you know, the ones that look like a beeper and put it on your like leggings or jean waistband So that, um, putting it on your hip, uh, really helps it recognize the motion. You kind of imagine what your hip, how your hips move when you're walking. That is pretty, um, great because the hip is always going to move in that way, no matter whether you're walking indoors, outdoors, whether you're pushing something, whether you're carrying your kid, no matter what your, your legs have to move a certain way to walk. So having the pedometer on your, um, on your leggings or like on your belt loop can be really helpful. Again, I that that's like not cool for me. Like I like that. Like I feel like I'm I'm like in a retirement home when I see that. But like they're great. I just I'm giving you my honest opinion. That's why I love the Garmin because it just works no matter what. And I wear my Garmin every day anyways. So it's not like one extra thing I have to worry about when I do. I do wear my Garmin on my ankle when I use my walking pad desk treadmill. I and this is silly. So when I had my Apple Watch, I bought a stretchier band so that I was able to fit it around my ankle because my ankle is thicker than my wrist and my my wrists are pretty small. So my bands are always really small for my Garmin. I don't have a large enough band to fit around my ankle. So I just use like, you know, one of those really, really small hair ties that they use for like little like Blake has. I'm like really like small, thin hair ties. They're tiny, tiny, tiny. Um, maybe the size of like a dime or something, uh, for kids' hairs, you know, like little, you put little girl's hair and pigtails and stuff. I just loop that around the band to connect the two pieces, uh, around my ankle. And I know this sounds like, oh my God, you're going so above and beyond. It does. I promise you it. It works. I do it every single day. Uh, and I love it. You also like the treadmill tells me how many steps I take. I also could just like add the math, but like, I'm the kind of person that like, I don't want to have to, I don't want two numbers in two different places. I want all of my steps to be calculated in one, in one spot. Uh, I don't know what that says about me. Anyways, I say all of this to say, get something that tracks your steps, aim for one to 2000 steps, uh, more than you're currently doing. And that truly can't make a difference. So there was a meta-analysis done in 2023 that found each increment of 1,000 steps a day correlates to a 15% decrease in the risk of all-cause mortality. So each increment of 1,000 steps a day correlates to a 15% decrease in the risk of all-cause mortality. That same study also found that a 500-step increase per day is associated with a 7% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk. So 500 steps a day guys i'm not talking like you need to go out and like cure like solve world hunger or world peace here we're not like walking marathons can you get 500 a thousand 1500 more steps a day and the answer is yes and it's going to do huge things for your health so I think the best way to do it is to do it in chunks. I think you can walk for 10 minutes when you wake up. Doing it after meals, I think, is a big one or right before meals. That is something that I've started to do. So I walk using my walking treadmill right after lunch. I think it's nice because like I do, I have a standing desk, but I sit at my standing desk a lot for the majority of the time. So in the morning I get into my office, I sit down and I work, I get up, uh, eat lunch. And then when I come back, that's when I roll out my treadmill, I set it up, I plug it in. And it's kind of like, it's already a break in the day. And then I walk anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Uh, and then, um, I stop.

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Yeah.

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And then I stop and then I sit back down or I stay standing. That's usually how I do it. But like I was saying with the pairing it with other habits, like for me, the habit is pairing it with a meal. We all know that's a habit. Lunch is a habit that I am not skipping. OK, like your girls never skipped a lunch a day in her life. So I know that I've paired my walking with lunch. And so it just happens. It's just like a natural progression of activities. I think waking up is a great thing. There's one habit it that I know that you've pretty much had the majority of your life, it's waking up. So if the first thing you did was a 10 minute walk and I recognize that not everyone's like, cool, it's going to pitch black outside. Like I get it or cool. I've got kids. I'm a single parent. I can't just leave the house and go for a walk for 10 minutes. Great. That's why I love my treadmill that I have. It's a walking treadmill from walking pad. I will include a link in the show notes for a discount. It's I think a 33% discount on this walking pad and it folds up and that I have always kind of looked at walking treadmills as like, oh, again, boring, unsexy, whatever. But my God, now that I have one, I don't understand what took me so long because like you could literally fold it up, have it underneath your bed. You could wake up in the pull it out walk for 10 minutes right when you wake up you could do it while you're brushing your teeth I don't care then go on with your day and then literally come back and right before you shower pull it back again walk for 10 minutes do your thing in the shower and then go on with your day and there bam you've walked for 20 minutes which I can almost guarantee you will get you probably more than one to two thousand steps a day or additional steps a day like pair it with things that are already happening you're already showering hopefully every single day you're already waking up every day you're already eating a meal um those things can be so helpful if you're at work for the majority of the day i think walking during phone calls is great i used to have a boss who paced like constantly whether the whether the um call was stressful or not he was a huge pacer and we would always joke that we want to put a pedometer on him because i'm like he must step must do like 30 000 steps a day because he just paced paced paced paced so if you're taking a phone call and it's just a basic phone call like can you take it in a conference room um and maybe you just walk around the conference room right like and put it on speakerphone i don't know like you've got to sometimes think outside the box like um I really love the concept of, and I use this, I always say this as a joke, but I'm dead freaking serious about it. Use the bathroom in the building over from you. Or like use the bathroom, if you're building, if you're only in one building, like can you go to five floors up to use the bathroom? Like, I know that sounds stupid, but if every time you have to pee, instead of using the bathroom that's right next to your desk, can you go up the five flights of stairs and go to the bathroom on that other floor? And then come back down. And maybe you can't. Maybe your business is really small and it's just on one floor. Okay. Can you walk to your car and back and then go to the bathroom? Like truly start making like really small, tangible, like I'm going to walk more routines. Take the long route to everything. So like I remember, um, You know, if I didn't want to go to the cafeteria at work when I was at Under Armour, like, can you do a lap around the building that you're in before you go to the cafeteria? We're not talking about taking because, like, not everyone can just say, oh, I'm going to walk for 30 minutes, like in the middle of the day, because I recognize that some of us can't be away from our desk that long. We would have to ask permission for our manager. Like, no one wants to deal with that bullshit. But like, so just do what you're already doing and take the long route and watch how that adds value. up and i know that's a big one too during the winter because like even if you do have time to go outside we can't always go outside um involving friends is obviously a big one so like that's one thing that like i have a really good girlfriend here in portland and like we never never other than unless we're playing with our kids hang out just sitting at our houses or at like a restaurant we always go for a walk like instead of inviting a friend over for a glass of wine invite them over at two o'clock on a Saturday, go for a walk. You've got kids, cool, bring them with you. You know, like make it fun and suddenly it won't feel so, like I said, unsexy to be walking. I also love out and back walks. So this is something that I do when I'm actually running and when I'm trying to start running further, meaning like my normal runs are four miles and I'm like, oh, I really should make them five miles. I'm making it up. I'll kind of force myself to do an out and back run. And that means that you're just pretty much running in a straight line. You don't physically actually have to run in a straight line, but you're going out. So like you're going far away. So if I'm walking, so let's say you walk 30 minutes or you're trying to walk for 30 minutes. You walk for 15 minutes away from the house. So it's almost like you never turn left or right. You never kind of get closer back to your house. home or your kind of destination you're always moving away from the destination i don't literally mean you can't ever turn left or right but the the feeling is that you're moving away so that once you get to that halfway point you have to to get back you have to take that long route back because there that is the only way back versus if you imagine walking in a circle you're kind of always have a tangent kind of quick way to get back home and things are always going to come up and you're always like oh i feel the call of work please Because that's always what happens to me. If I run too close to home, eventually... I'm like, oh, I should probably answer a few emails before Blake wakes up from her nap. You know, like I get that that I get that pull, even like on the weekends when I go for my runs and Rob staying home with Blake. I just get that pull. But if I know she's fine, I know that it's a Saturday. I don't need to work like I go. I try to run as far away from home as possible, just straight line because, OK, cool. I ran for two miles. All right. Now I'm going to turn around and I have to run the two miles back to get home. It's just kind of like a psychological shift. And you can apply that exact same thing to walks if you find yourself getting bored. I think that is a huge one. It's a huge one. I know that it feels like there's so much to focus on. Like I'm trying to get you to work out. I'm trying to get you to eat right. I'm trying to get you to walk more. And it feels like sometimes you're like, yo, Brittany, I just want like one thing to think about. And I respect that. But if you already feel like you've got a good routine, if you feel like you're motivated to work out and you've been working out and you just feel sluggish, if you feel like if you do, like I said, you had a body composition goal and body composition goal means that you're trying to change the way your body looks, right? Walking more is going to help even even if you just mentally feel like you were in a hole maybe you're struggling with depression with anxiety whatever I know I know man the last couple months I have been in a funk and I have just felt. I have definitely dealt with a mild depression on and off throughout my life. And I was in it in a big way. I'll say like November, December. And I started walking in in January again. And again, I kind of use that New Year momentum. I was like, OK, I have to look. I will just sit on my ass all day if you let me. And I know that surprises you as if it might surprise you, given that I'm a fitness trainer. But like I go balls to the wall in my workout for like one hour and then I sit on my ass. like that is my default state and I am like I just need to start moving more and sure enough I had been at about like um I would say like 7,000 steps a day so I gave myself the goal of 8,000 steps a day starting in the new year and ever since I have given myself that goal my average has been 10,000 and this isn't just me being like looking at my watch you know to look at my step counts constantly it's just that once you kind of tell yourself I'm going to start moving more you find ways to do it i also another tip that i have is i put my step count on the main screen of my garments like right now when i'm looking at my watch it tells me the time it is 12 35 oh it's time for lunch and then it tells me the date and then right underneath that it tells me i have walked let's see 9 462 steps today because i went for a run this morning so that's a cheat code cheat code to get more steps is to become a runner um So make it so that it's so in your face. I think that is just such a great way of achieving a goal. But my main takeaway for you is that If you feel like you've been busting your ass and you aren't getting to where you want to go, it may be because you're busting your ass for one hour a day and you're ignoring what you're doing the other 23 hours a day. And if I know anything about health is that you cannot correct it with just doing something for one hour a day. And your workout is absolutely going to help you gain muscle, gain endurance, gain cardiovascular health, but you cannot hide behind. And I want you to be proud. I want you to be proud of that one hour that you work out, but you cannot use that as a fix all for everything in your life. Our bodies are made to move and I want you to get up off your butt and I want you to move more. Okay. I will, I guess, include the links for both my Garmin and my walking pad since I talked about both of them in the podcast. If you're interested, you can DM me any questions you have. have on either of them um or any of this because I I this is something that like 25 year old me would be like ew cringe I can't believe she's talking about walking but like it's changed my life in getting me to move more to feel better to be less achy in the morning and And I also, and I don't have a perfect relationship with it. I'm not going to sit here and say that like, oh, I've walked consistently every single day, but it's there for me. It's like an old friend. Walking is there for me when I need it from a physical perspective, from a mental perspective. And right now my walks are like vital, um, And I just, like I said, I do anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour a day. On days like today, when I go, I'll be honest, on days like today, when I went for a run already today, I will probably go for a walk with Blake, but that's it. I don't actually go, I don't pull out my walking pad on days like today. When it's summer and it's not raining buckets every single day in Portland, I will use my walking pad less and I'll try to get outside more. But honestly, I feel like I have zero time to get outside. So maybe that's not true. Maybe I'll use my walking pad during the summer because I can walk while I do emails and edit videos and all the things and like everyone's always like how the hell do you walk and do emails I walk very slowly okay I think one is like one mile per hour or whatever it is is like the lowest that it goes and I literally walk on like 1.2 Like I walk very slow, but you do not, you can walk slow and not for very long and it makes a difference. It makes a difference, guys. I want you to not feel like you peaked at 20. That's kind of how I feel. I peaked in my college days and I'm constantly trying to live back to those days and like this is how we do it, okay? You've got to move more. Your body was meant to move. You creak and ache and have that soreness and whatever it is in the morning as we get older because we stop moving. And the reason it felt like you peaked when you were 20, because you were bebopping around. OK, when you were 20, you were wearing those short mini skirts and you were on that dance floor and you were like, whoa. And unfortunately, dance floors aren't really a big part of my life here at almost 37. Can't say that's something that I partake in. So I got to find a new ways to move. All right. And for me, it's walking. I know walking, like I said, is difficult. Truly one of the most underrated things that you can do for your health. And I hope that you've gleaned even just a little bit of motivation to go for a walk today. Or maybe next time Filter Free Friday comes out in two weeks, you walk during that episode, okay? Just a couple times a week. You don't even have to do it every day. Guys, I'm giving you permission to not make fitness and health so dang hard. I want you to enjoy it. I want it to be easy. I don't want it to be complicated. Work out more days than you don't. Lift weights that are heavy enough that it feels challenging to do it and walk more. And sleep more and drink more and eat perfectly. And I know, I know, I know the list goes so long. Oh, guys, you are wonderful. Thank you so much for listening to me go on this rant about walking. But I truly, truly, truly feel like it is so impactful. If you have any questions on anything I talked about today, let me know. I will also, like I say, include the links. to the podcast where I really talked in depth about that total daily energy expenditure and kind of like where calorie burn comes from. I will leave that link in the show notes as well. Um, I hope you have a wonderful filter free Friday.