Healthspan isn’t just built in the gym — it’s shaped by the choices you make all day long. Cardiovascular exercise physiologist Dr. Jim Walter shares how his father’s early passing drove his mission to help people extend their healthspan through simple, science-backed daily movements. He explains why the “150 minutes per week” guideline often discourages beginners, introduces his “Move More” approach for adding activity into ordinary tasks, and reveals research showing how even 2,000 extra steps or standing breaks can reduce disease risk and improve brain health. This empowering conversation reframes movement as the most accessible medicine for living longer and better.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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Re-Engineer Your Day: Simple Ways To Enhance And Extend Your Healthspan With Jim Walter, PhD In Exercise Physiology
Introduction
In this episode, we’re diving into a topic that’s so simple yet so often overlooked, which is the power of daily movement. My guest is Dr. Jim Walter, PhD in cardiovascular exercise physiology. He has devoted his career to helping people re-engineer their lives and their days to move more, feel better, and live longer. Jim brings a unique perspective. With more than 10 years of clinical experience as a cardiovascular exercise physiologist, combined with more than 2 decades working in the pharmaceutical industry, he has seen firsthand that while medicine can play a role, the most potent and powerful prescription we have is movement.
His passion for this work is deeply personal. Jim’s father died at 45 years old from heart disease, something Jim firmly believes could have been prevented with more physical activity. That loss fueled his mission to inspire others to take responsibility for their health and break the vicious cycle of moving less, doing less, and becoming less active over time.
As a dynamic speaker and advocate, Jim shares practical, science-based strategies for incorporating more activity into our daily routines, whether it’s weaving movement into family life, staying active in a sedentary job, or finding unconventional ways beyond the gym to keep moving. If you’ve ever struggled to get enough exercise or wondered if small, simple habits can make a big difference, then this conversation is for you. Let’s welcome Jim to the show.
Dr. Walker, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s fun to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation ever since we met. I’m excited for our listeners to learn from you and your experience and expertise. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks. I am equally excited. I want to thank you for the opportunity. What we can talk about here can have an impact on a lot of people. You providing a forum to get out what I think is an important message works well. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
From Personal Loss To Public Mission: Dr. Jim Walter’s Story
I’d love to start with a little bit about your story. You have your PhD in cardiovascular exercise physiology. You’ve studied this at a very deep level. I always like to start with what led you into this. I always think it’s interesting to learn where people’s passions come from. You shared a little bit with me about your dad passing away at an early age and linked that to a lack of physical activity. Is that where your passion was born? Would you mind sharing a bit of that story with us?
I’d be happy to. You’re right. I’ll plant a seed for you to ask a subsequent question about why I’m a frustrated exercise physiologist. It goes back to the premature death of my father. He was only 45 years old when he died. In spite of only being 45 years old, he managed to have 8 children during that period of time. I consider myself, in some ways, fortunate. I was thirteen years old when he died, so I got to know my father. My youngest sister was one.
Part of what has driven me to this point to where I am is that it shouldn’t happen. Children should know their parents, especially since they can have an impact on in terms of their health. We can’t control accidents. We can’t control the rare few people who get devastating diseases that take them early, but there are a lot of things that we can control. We know that already.
When it was time for me to go to college, did I consider medical school? Yes. Did I think I could do it? I didn’t know at the time. I never even had plans to get a PhD. I went away to college. As I got in there, I started to learn about this field of exercise physiology. What I started to learn, which is what I believe, is that exercise, based on decades of research, arguably is the most potent form of medicine known to mankind. It has an impact on many of our chronic diseases, if not all of them. We used to think that it had an impact on cardiovascular diseases. Now we know it has a significant impact on cancer, respiratory diseases, and even gastrointestinal diseases. Everything falls back to exercise.
Exercise, based on decades of research, arguably is the most potent form of medicine known to men. Share on XI started to learn that, and I was thinking, “I like this.” I was an athlete, too. I was a basketball player. It became consistent. There was the underlying factor that I started to put things together and realize, “I could do something to have an impact to help others. It didn’t help my father, but it could help others.” That has driven me down this path.
That’s where it started. I did spend ten years doing preventive and rehabilitative cardiology. I migrated to the pharmaceutical industry, where I’m employed. During that time, it was this urgency to get back to people and get a message to people about having them take more responsibility for their own health. I was like, “How can we do that? If the words exercise and the foundation of exercise aren’t working, what can we do differently? What can we do to have an impact on health that everyone can do?”
I’ve come up with this idea of, “Let’s start simply. Let’s get people to move more.” I can explain more about what that means as we go on, but that’s something everybody can do. Not everyone is ready. If you were to go and look up what exercise means, they’ll say it’s 150 minutes each week of moderate to vigorous physical activity. Many people aren’t ready for that, so they choose not to do anything at all. If I put all of those things together, that’s what’s driving me back to this space. In the twilight of my career, I want to help people, and I want to do so in a way that is comfortable for them. If they’re not going to exercise, can we get people to move more?
Beyond The Gym: Simplifying Exercise For Everyone
You’ve mentioned a couple of things there, like you’re a frustrated exercise physiologist. Is that also tied to the fact that the messaging around exercise may seem intimidating for many people? One hundred and fifty minutes of vigorous activity a week could be pretty intimidating if you’ve never exercised more than a few minutes at a time or not at all, or if you live a more sedentary life. Is it true? The CDC reports that less than 50% of Americans meet those physical activity guidelines.
If you go to the CDC website, it would indicate that 25% of Americans are sedentary, which means that they don’t do anything beyond what we’d call activities of daily living. Meaning, brushing your teeth, taking the trash out, and going to get the mail is the extent of their activity. Even more than 50%, closer to 60%, of people who do something don’t meet that definition of 150 minutes or more. There are a lot of people.
If you say 25% are sedentary and we’re almost at 400 million people in the United States, that’s 100 million people that are doing nothing. There are another 100 million people who are somewhat active, but maybe not enough. The underlying root of that is the problem. We put out there, “This is what we need people to do to get health benefits.” They look at it as a mountain that they can’t climb, so they decide not to try to climb it at all.
What I’m trying to do is simplify the message and try to offer a solution to people. Everyone can do it. Everyone can move a little bit more than they currently do. I’m not planning on standing up, but if I stood up, I’d have moved more. If I stood up, would that have health benefits? No. Standing up once doesn’t, but if you start doing things like that throughout the entire day, then it’ll begin to add up.
I don’t usually do this, but I’ll start off with some data from a reputable journal. We’ve all probably heard of the Mayo Clinic. There’s a journal that they produced called the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. In 2020, there was an article in there that indicated that the simple act of going from sitting to standing not once, but throughout the day, resulted in small but statistically significant reductions in fasting blood sugar and body fat mass. That’s replacing sitting with standing. You’re working eight hours a day. Can you get up once each hour that you otherwise might not, or once every 30 minutes?
What I then do when I talk to people, whether as an audience in public speaking or any individual, is I go a little bit further. I’ll be happy to give you lots of examples during this interview. I talk to them about how they can go through the day, as to how they can add more movement and replace being sedentary with the opportunity to move. That’s something that everybody can do. Importantly, you don’t have to set aside time to do it.
I like to use this word. Re-engineer your day to include movement where you otherwise might not. It’s a very simple concept. There is enough data to suggest that these little bits added up serially throughout the day do render health benefits, not to the same magnitude as the 150 minutes of exercise, but more than people are getting by choosing to do nothing at all.
Re-Engineer Your Day: Practical “Move More Moments”
It’s a way to get on that cycle. We all know that the more you exercise, the more you feel like exercising. It all feeds itself. Maybe you can paint a picture for us. I love that, re-engineer your day. You shared a few of those examples with me before, but could you share a few examples of what you mean by that, and how you can encourage people to do that?
A couple. I won’t do a lot. What I’ll do is go through your day or my day. The other important part that I want to say before I give the examples is that I provide examples, but I also want to encourage people to think on their own about ways that they can do it. The examples that I provide may not fit into their environment, and I’ll point them out when I do them.
I don’t know if you do, but I still get a newspaper in the morning. A lot of people don’t. They get them on their iPads or their phones and stuff. I still get a newspaper in the morning. It’s delivered right out my front door. I could choose to go out the front door to get it, or I could choose to go out the side door and get it. I could walk down my driveway and then around the curb to pick up the newspaper, and then go back and come in the side door or your back door. It’s something that you can do to add a little bit more movement. It’s the same thing with the mail.
You then go off to work. You’re sitting at your desk, and you need to get some more water. There are no rules in your workplace that say that you have to get water at the closest refilling station. Go up a floor or go down a floor, and then go to the other side of the building when you choose to do that. Drink a lot of water. What’s that going to create? That’s going to create the opportunity where you have to go to the restroom more. Do the same thing. Never use a restroom on the floor that you work on.
When you get to work, park your car out further in the parking lot and walk in. You’re adding movement. Does it take time to do that stuff? It does, but it’s not time that’s going to change your day. You absorb that time. You’re not going to think about it. You’re not going to stay at work 10 minutes longer because throughout the day, you’ve incorporated 10 minutes of activity. It’ll become a part of it.
I’ll use the example of a young parent who’s got a 6-year-old, 8-year-old, or 11-year-old. This won’t work. You come home and want to spend some quality time with your six-year-old. What won’t work is to find them and say, “How would you like to grab some dumbbells and go outside and go for a power walk with me?” It’s probably not going to fly too much.
What if you ask them to come outside and say, “Let’s see how many cracks we can count along the sidewalk,” or, “Let’s see how many different trees, flowers, or birds we can identify.” If you do that, you accomplish three things at the same time. You build more movement into your day, you spend some quality time with your child, and then, depending on what activity you choose to do, you might be able to even help them with their education.
You’ve got the 8 and the 11-year-old to take to their softball, baseball, or soccer practice. The parents that I talk to who say, “I’m busy. I’m working. I got to take care of the kids. I don’t have time to exercise,” are the ones that pull up to the soccer field or softball baseball field, let their child out of the car to run to practice, reach into their backseat or their hatchback, grab their lawn chair, sit, and watch the practice for 60 or 90 minutes. I’ve never seen a sign at one of these fields that prohibits parents from walking around the field while their children are practicing. It’s what I’ve said before. It’s trying to replace these times when we otherwise might be sedentary with an opportunity to move.
When you come home from that and you want to check in with your parents before you help the kids with their homework, there’s no reason to sit while you’re talking on a cell phone. I’m not saying exercise. What I’m saying is don’t sit. Stand in your living room and meander around. If you want, walk up a flight of stairs if you’ve got stairs in your house. Move instead of staying still. Those are the kinds of things.
If you don’t have stairs in your house, that won’t work. That’s what I’m talking about, where some of my ideas might not work for people. I don’t know about you. It’s a beautiful day here. Why not step outside? Maybe when you’re talking on the phone, look to see what kind of yard work you need to identify to do around your house.
I like to use this terminology. I don’t want to say I’ve coined it, but it’s my mantra. Move More Moments. Where can you add Move More Moments into your day? I’m constantly thinking and doing this myself. I needed to tell my son something. I work on the second floor of my house, and he was down in the kitchen. Most people are going to walk to the top of the stairs, yell down to their child, and ask them their question. I was about to do that, and then I stopped myself. I said, “Don’t do that. Walk down the steps, walk into the kitchen, and ask him the question. Come back, walk up the steps, and go back to work.” Replace being sedentary with more movement.
I love that. It is simple. Maybe it takes an extra 25 seconds to walk a little bit further from your parking spot or to walk up a flight of stairs to use the restroom or get water, but then you’re interacting with different people. You’re moving more. All those little bits add up throughout the course of a week. You’ve then taken an extra 20,000 to 30,000 steps that week that you wouldn’t have taken.
You get other benefits, which you were alluding to. You’re in the office. We already talked about a couple of ways to add more movement, but what do we all do when we want to talk to somebody who’s not right next to us? We start instant messaging them or something like that. They’re right down the hall. They’re 100 feet down the hallway. Why don’t you get up, walk down, and talk to them? Along the way, you get to see some other friendly faces. There are so many potential other benefits of this as opposed to sending them an instant message. It helps us in a lot of ways, let alone starting off by having us move more.
All of these things cumulatively throughout the day, throughout the week, and throughout the month all add up to more movement. Am I against people doing 150 minutes of exercise? No. I’d love everybody to do that, but when the gap between being sedentary or doing very little to that 150 minutes is too much, that’s what turns people off.
All of these things, cumulatively throughout the day, week, and month, add up to more movement. Share on XIf we can reduce that gap and they move more, get a little bit closer, and build a little bit of confidence or a little bit of comfort in themselves, then maybe they can make the transition. Maybe they don’t start with 30 minutes of exercise in 1 day. Maybe they can do ten minutes of structured exercise. All of what I’m talking about is somewhat unstructured. It’s just moving more. If you do that and develop a level of comfort and confidence, then the idea of doing some more structured stuff is not as ominous.
The Power Of Small Steps: Data-Backed Health Benefits
I’m curious. Since you’re an expert in this field, is there data around adding X number of steps leads to X number of health outcomes? Do you have any of those kinds of statistics for us?
I do try to stay away from too much data because everybody can interpret it differently. A couple of years ago, in 2022, there was an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. We’ve got this magical 10,000 steps. That’s what people are striving towards. They have their watches or their phones, and they’re recording their steps.
This article in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that adding as few as 2,000 steps per day up to 10,000 resulted in fewer deaths and 8% to 11% reductions in death and less development of cardiovascular disease and cancer in these individuals, with more benefits to those who did more steps. It started with a minimum of 2,000.
I don’t have them in front of me, but I’ve read other articles where it indicates that you can go as few as 1,500. I’ll go back to the first data that I cited. Simply getting up out of your chair more times throughout the course of the day led to small but statistically significant reductions in fasting blood sugar and body fat mass. If you do more, there’s clearly going to be more benefit to that.
People are like, “2,000 sounds like a lot.” It’s not that many. That adds up quickly by going out the side door, going up the flight of steps to the restroom, going down the hall to get water, or going up and down the stairs to ask a question. You can add up to 2,000 steps quickly. That’s a significant 8% to 10% reduction in those kinds of deaths from cardiovascular, cancer, and other things.
I do practice what I preach. I do exercise. I was a basketball player who then became a runner. Why did I become a runner? It was because to play basketball, you needed nine other people. To run, all you needed was a pair of sneakers. I did that to keep in shape. I ultimately ran a few marathons. I ran six marathons. I did a lot of biking and stuff like that. I do that, but I also practice what I preach.
It could even be something as simple as putting your clothes away after you fold them. I take my clothes and put them on the bed. My dresser is six steps away. I take the socks 6 steps over and 6 steps back. That’s twelve. I take my shirt and walk 6 steps over and 6 steps back. I take my shorts and everything. For me, I always try to add that additional movement.
I was talking to somebody who gave me another idea. He talked about how one of his things in terms of accomplishments is making your bed every day. I started thinking about that and was like, “There’s another thing.” When you go to make your bed, instead of reaching over your bed and trying to pull all your covers up together, why don’t you start on the right side and hold them up? Walk around your bed and hold the left side up. Put the pillows there and walk around your bed. These are all simple little things to add more movement. If you add more movement, you’ll become more comfortable with it. Maybe exercise is not as daunting as it may have once seemed.
It is closing that gap or minimizing that gap as much as possible. One thing leads to another, and you’re on your way.
It’s going on. I don’t know if you are a tennis fan or not.
The US Open?
The US Open is going on. The US Open Stadium is named after the iconic tennis player, Arthur Ashe. There’s a big sign over the entrance that he wanted all of the athletes to see as they walked into the stadium. It says, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” That’s so in line with what my message is. Start where you are. If somebody is sedentary versus somebody who maybe does 10 minutes of exercise a day, they’re in 2 different places. Start where you are. Do what you can. That’s very important.
It’s one of the things that we learn in exercise physiology. If you came to me and said, “Jim, I’m ready to start exercising. I’m ready to go. I’m excited. I’m motivated.” I’m like, “Great. I’m an exercise physiologist. Day one, I want you to run a half-mile. Day two, run another half a mile. Day three, let’s go up to three miles.” I keep adding. You’re sitting there, listening and talking to an exercise physiologist. When we’re talking about stuff and you’re thinking, “I hate to run,” I haven’t helped you at all.
That’s where you do stuff that’s comfortable. Start where you are. Use what you have. Use your house. Use your place of work. Use wherever you are. When I drive, I make it a rule that I don’t drive more than two hours without stopping. When I stop, I’m going to make sure that I walk a little bit. Not miles, but I’m going to walk. I’m going to go in and use the restroom, or whatever it might be, and then I’ll come back out to the car. Use what you have.
Do what you can, and then get a little bit better. As you get a little bit better, you’re likely to do more. I found those words. I use them when I give talks to people. I have a picture of that thing in front of Arthur Ashe Stadium that says that. It’s a very simple message that people can use for a lot of things, particularly this message about moving more.
Mindful Movement: Connecting Body And Brain
I love that. It makes it simple. We’re simplifying that message. Don’t overcomplicate it. I’d love to ask you a little bit about the mindful movement. You talk about mindful movement and connecting the body and the mind. Can you share ways that having these simple daily movements can increase benefits within our brain health and our minds as well? Can you talk about that mind-body connection?
That’s what I learned as a physiologist. All of us took something that resembled physiology in middle school, and then we took it again in high school. If you were science-oriented, maybe you took it again in college. For me, it clicked when I ultimately had to start teaching stuff. You’ll see what I mean when I say this. You went into the textbook, and then there was a chapter on the bones and a chapter on the muscles. You then learned about the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, the brain, the gastrointestinal system, and on and on.
When I first did that, like the book, I compartmentalized everything into chapters, and I never put it all together. To get to your point about the mind-body connection, you learned, and then you took a test on the cardiovascular system, and that was done. You then moved on to the respiratory system, and that was done. Guess what? The respiratory system doesn’t work without the cardiovascular system, nor does the GI system, the brain, and the cerebral circuit. It all works together.
Blood flow is important to every part of our body. These little movements will increase the blood flow. Exercise increases blood flow a lot. Standing up will cause your body to adjust, react, and increase blood flow. We always have to maintain blood flow to the brain. When we do that, our brain likes it, and it feels better. That’s the physiology part of it.
I’m going to give you credit because you pointed this out earlier. When your body feels better, your brain is going to feel better because it’s going to get more energy and more blood flow. There are biochemical benefits. You’ve heard of the word endorphins and stuff like that that make us feel a little bit better. Catecholamines help drive behavior.
When your body feels better, your brain feels better. Share on XAll of that stuff works together. It’s a pump. Our body is a pump. The heart is the pump, but it circulates. It is the foundation of the way our body works. All of these things together will improve our mood, our sleep, and our ability to concentrate. That’s another thing that we want to do throughout the day. Adding a little bit more blood flow makes a connection that way.
Let me take it one step further. You weren’t asking this question, but the other message that I want to encourage people to do is to think differently. I’ve given some suggestions on ways that people could incorporate more movement into their day. That’s great. If you like these, use them, but think of your own. Take the blinders off.
I love sharing this story with people. It has nothing to do with movement. I’ll preface it by saying that. It was another thing that has been a foundational learning from my father that he didn’t teach me. I’ll tell you what I mean. In addition to having a lot of children, my father also loved to fish. The last boat, he built it himself. He got a 32-foot fiberglass boat hull from the boat yard and had them put an engine in it. He built the rest of it.
He never told me this, but I’m assuming that this is where he got the idea. The idea of a boat hull when it’s on the water is to keep water out so you stay dry. If a boat hull can keep water out, what could it also do? It could keep water. He went back to the boat yard and got a second boat hull. He dug a hole in our backyard, put the boat hull in that hole, and built a wooden deck around it. He created a swimming pool for us.
I told you that this has nothing to do with movement, but it does show a thinking process, which is what I’m also trying to encourage. If my father could see a swimming pool in a boat hull, I’m going to encourage people to see how they can go about re-engineering their day to be able to build more movement into it. We all live in different environments. We all have different circumstances. How can you look at your steps or at what you need to do with your kids and think about ways that you can create movement doing that? That’s as important as taking my ideas.
I love that. One of my guests shared that if you do 8 to 10 air squats each time you stand up throughout the day, so maybe you stand up 15 times a day or something like that, then over the course of the day, that would add up to the equivalent of doing a 30-minute run or jog. It’s little things like that that are simple. It’s like, “Let me do eight air squats when I stand up.” It accumulates throughout the day.
I think of being creative, too, with where you are. For example, you can buy those stand-up desks inexpensively. You can also add a walking treadmill below your desk. There are a lot of activities throughout the day that I could be walking on a treadmill as I’m typing an email, preparing for this interview, or whatever else I’m doing that requires me to be sitting still. Sometimes, I need to sit still, but then I can shift to your chair. There are a lot of creative things.
Let me share two things with you. I practice what I preach. I’m sitting here. I have two desks. I am on my personal desk. My work desk is behind me. That one has a button that I can raise the desk for, and I do have a walking treadmill that goes underneath that. This one has the very desk where you hit the levers, and it goes up.
You’re right about the air squats. It accomplishes two things. It gets big muscle mass moving, which is critical, and it doesn’t take time. You’re not going to change your day because you did 8 to 10 air squats a day. The other thing that’s important is that I’ll ask you a question. You may know the answer to this. Do you know what ailment it is that keeps the most people out of work during the course of the year? I said ailment, not disease. Do you know what causes a lot of people to miss work during the course of the year?
I would guess maybe low back pain or something like that?
Exactly. Do you know why? We are not biomechanically designed to sit. We are designed to be upright. Somebody a long time ago developed a chair to sit down on. It’s comfortable, but that’s not a natural position for us. How do most people spend their day? Sitting. Is it any wonder why low back problems cause more people to miss work during the course of the year?
What your other guest told you and what I’m trying to suggest is to sit. You need to sit. I don’t type as well when I’m standing. I don’t know why. My brain goes funky. I can do short things, but if I’m doing longer things, then no. Sitting is fine because we don’t want to be standing all day either. None of us has perfect posture. If we’re standing in an incorrect posture for a long period of time, something else is going to go wacky. Sit, but mix it up. You’ll get the benefits from both of those. Those are the simple things that we can do.
Take the blinders off that we put on ourselves, such as using a boat hull only for boats. It can be used for other things, as my father proved. That’s what I try to encourage when I speak to audiences. I do it in a fun way. I make it interactive and do all kinds of things. I have a bunch of exercises that I can’t do over the internet, but I do them with groups of people to help them appreciate some of the examples that I’m trying to share with them.
Lessons From Nature: The Natural Urge To Move
I love that. Another guest shared about how he spent part of his growing-up years in Africa, living amongst some of the tribes in Africa. He said they would spend an hour in a full squat position having conversations. That’s how they sat because they weren’t using chairs like we have. That’s a more natural position rather than sitting in a chair like this, which is not natural. That’s something that you don’t think about. It doesn’t cross your mind, like, “This chair that I’m sitting in right now is not a natural position for my body.”
That kind of habitat has so many examples for us. I’ll even bring that habitat here to the United States. As humans, we’ve evolved. Our brains have evolved. They’ve made us smarter, but then they’ve hurt us in a lot of ways. If you take a 2 or 3-year-old and put them in the middle of a room, what are they going to do?
They’re going to squat down or play on the floor.
They’re not going to sit still. They’re going to do something. They’re going to move around, especially if you give them a toy or something like that. They’re not going to sit there. I say that because that’s what our instincts are. Our instinct is to move. We get smart, we learn, and then we develop chairs, automobiles, and elevators. These are all the things that we need. Don’t get me wrong. We need that.
We then change the natural way we are designed. We are designed for movement. Remember, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. They didn’t eat if they didn’t go out and catch their food. What we are biologically designed for is movement, but we have found a way to make ourselves sedentary. Our ancestors were getting eaten by animals and stuff like that. They didn’t have longevity, but they were healthy because they had to move in order to get the food that they were going to eat. We can learn a lot from kids and from environments that don’t have the conveniences that we have to offer us better solutions as to how we should be living.
We are naturally designed for movement. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors moved to eat; that's what we are biologically designed for. Share on XA Paradigm Shift: Taking Ownership Of Your Health
I love that. You’ve shared a little bit about this already, but what’s your ultimate hope when it comes to inspiring people to move more and take ownership of their own health? As you look into the future, what excites you the most, and what are you hoping will shift or be accomplished?
I’ll answer that, but I’m going to start with a quote that I made up. I’ve always been fascinated by and studied a lot about our 35th president, John F. Kennedy. I put my own slant on the words he used during his inaugural address. I’m going to encourage people to ask not what your healthcare provider can do for you. Ask what you can do for your health. I use that because that answers your question.
Ask not what your healthcare provider can do for you, but what you can do for your health. Share on XI’m thinking big. I’d like to create a paradigm shift. We’ve got hundreds of millions of people in the United States who could be doing more to help their own health. The barriers that we’ve set for them to do it are too high. As a result, people choose to do nothing. Can I make a presumption that you’re fairly physically active?
Yes.
If I were to offer you the opportunity to go to Nepal next week and climb Mount Everest, are you ready for that?
Mentally, yes. Physically, probably not. I’d need some training first.
You would need months of training. When we throw out these 150 minutes every week to people who aren’t doing anything, it’s no different than suggesting you go to Mount Everest and climb it next week, so you’re not going to go. People aren’t going to exercise. My message is to try to simplify things. Going back to what Arthur Ashe said, because I don’t want to mess it up, start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. We can all move more. Look at your environment.
The other excuse that people use for not exercising is that they don’t have the time. All of these suggestions that I’m making don’t require extra time. You build it into your day. Take the blinders off the things. Giving another example of that is using the elevator instead of the steps. Somebody says, “I work on the 22nd floor. Do you expect me to go up 22 flights of stairs?” No, but that’s where the blinders stay on. Can you take the elevator to the 20th floor and then go and walk up 2 flights of stairs? People aren’t willing to think of that.
That’s where the swimming pool idea comes in. Change your thought process on how you go about doing things. What can you do to add a little bit more movement? That is what I’m trying to do, to answer your question. I’m trying to get a lot more people to do a little more than they’re currently doing, and then a little bit more than that to get them to the point where they’d be comfortable ultimately doing some more formal and structured exercise.
I’m a very active person. I do more than 150 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. Even for those of us who are meeting those CDC requirements, there are still a lot of things that I would love to do in my day. I can re-engineer my day as well because there are plenty of days when I don’t get enough movement, and I can feel it.
Thank you for bringing that up because that’s so important. You hit the nail right on the head with what you said. I’m pretty active, but I do these things myself. A lot of people might say, “This message isn’t for you or an athlete.” I would suggest otherwise. What I didn’t say before is that after finishing six marathons, I developed a bad case of Achilles tendonitis in both of my feet. It got to the point that it wasn’t 5 days, 5 weeks, or 5 months that this set me back. It was five years. I couldn’t run for five years. Hopefully, that won’t happen to anybody else. My point is that all of us are going to be injured.
Even if you’re not injured, maybe you’re going to have a child, or something’s going to change your life pretty dramatically. You’re going to move, and your routine isn’t the same. All of these things that we’re talking about here are creating better habits. If you have those habits for days when you don’t feel like doing it or can’t do it because of other circumstances that come into play, you can at least move more throughout your day. More importantly, you’ll have these consistent habits that you do for your lifetime. They may become the primary movers for us as we get older and lose our ability to be as structured as you might be. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s a critical point.
Connect With Dr. Jim Walter: More Tips For A Moving Life
This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate the message that you’re bringing and the way that you’re making it accessible for everybody to do something. I appreciate that you encourage all of us to take the blinders off and re-engineer our days a little bit to be more mindful about this. Thanks so much for the message that you’re sharing. Where can people connect with you? How can we find you?
I do have a website. It’s my name, JimWalterSpeaks.com. This is all on there. My email address is Jim@JimWalterSpeaks.com. My phone number is on the website, so I won’t bother repeating that here. In addition to being able to connect with me, a bunch of these Move More Moments that I’ve talked to you about are posted there. They rotate. I add new ones all the time, so there are fresh ones.
I need to get better at social media. I do have an Instagram account. It’s @JimWalterSpeaks. What you’ll find there are these Move More Moments. That’s where they’re primarily located. I have a technical person to help me with this. They magically go from Instagram onto my website, and they rotate around. You can also see different clips of me speaking and some of the general ideas that I’d like to share.
If anybody’s interested in this content, if I do a presentation, I do it in a fun, inspirational, and interactive way. It’s great to have that. You might call that a motivational speech, but what is more important to me is that there’s an important message that’s built in there, which can have an impact on most people’s lives. If you can do that in a fun, interactive, and inspirational way, then you’ve got something. I’d love the chance to be able to speak to people and an audience that people might want to have me in front of.
Thank you so much for sharing with us. Thanks for this message that you’ve curated, crafted, and made accessible for all of us. You’ve given us a lot to think about. Thank you for what you do.
I want to thank you for having this show and helping to get messages like this. Mine isn’t the only one. I did read several of your sessions. There are important messages in there. I appreciate what you do and everybody else who’s interested in helping people be more aware of their own health.
Thanks so much for being here with us.
Take care.
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I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and maybe you learned a few new things as I did. It’s hard to believe, but 100 million people in our country, the US, live sedentary lives, and another 100 or so million don’t get enough physical activity in a week, according to the CDC guidelines. I love Jim’s message. It’s keeping it simple. What are the simple little things that we can do to take off the blinders and re-engineer our days to move more? As we do that over time, it all adds up. One thing leads to another. Eventually, we find ourselves exercising in a more structured way.
He is closing that gap and helping all of us, even those of us who are very active and do exercise significantly throughout the week. I know for me, there are things that I want to add in based on what Jim was sharing there. I love the stat that adding even 2,000 steps a day can have an 8% to 11% reduction in cardiovascular disease and cancer. That’s significant.
Another thing that I learned, too, is that sitting is not a natural thing. I’ve never thought about how sitting in a chair is not a natural position for us. We need to move our bodies, stand, and move more naturally throughout the day. I hope that you enjoyed this. You can connect with Jim at JimWalterSpeaks.com. There are a lot of his little tips and tactics on there as well. You can check him out on Instagram, @JimWalterSpeaks, or his website and find some more tips for how you might re-engineer your day. Thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
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