Walking your way into 6-packs
Having an athletic background I had very high standards when it comes to choosing my cardio exercises. For instance, I would not even bother running if the distance is less than 5 miles (unless I am doing short distance sprints) and pace is slower than 9 minutes per mile.
As I aged into my thirties, I found myself running couple times in a week, injuring my knee, back or ankle, waiting to recover until my next new year resolution. Time flies but when you have a fitness tracker, you can catch the problem.
My solution to this problem was switching to indoor cycling. It has the added benefit of allowing you to multi-task; read emails, some article or even investing. I could maintain this routine for many months. Still this is relatively hard on the body especially if you try to keep a higher pace like me. Stiff back or shoulders sometimes makes the experience worse. Besides, getting stuck indoors is not always that fun especially when the sun is shining (to charge your melatonin).
I had never considered walking as an exercise. But I started noticing interesting things about it. I noticed that our 80-year old next-door neighbors were never missing their daily walks and they did not have any of the old age health problems. Came across couple body builders who were recommending walking as a means of fat burning exercise; 10k daily steps as a base line. I went back to my fitness tracker and noticed that I was walking at most a few thousand steps per day which was terrible. I accepted the challenge, set my daily goal to 10k steps.
Together with my low carb diet, 6 months into my walking routine my wife noticed my well defined 6-packs. It was miraculous because I never had this much defined 6-packs even when I was at my prime in athletics and military trainings.
Embracing the challenge as a family was quite helpful because we started comparing daily step records with each other. Quantifying the results using a tracker is a very useful tool in this journey. This made me increase my daily goal to 12k first and at the time of writing to 15k steps.
During the summer it gets challenging to do that many steps outdoors. So I spread my steps to indoors; I am lucky to have a home plan that allows me to loop around our staircase. 10 minutes gives me around 1k steps.
When it comes to walking it is really hard to make excuses; weather outdoor, injuries... it doesn't matter. This changes the whole mindset. There is no reason to sit and watch news or most other content. Just listen that while walking. No need to wait for coffee/tea/egg to be ready; just make a loop. Same goes for checking emails, surfing the internet and investing. It all adds up.
Now that everything has become digital I really missed reading books. But now listening audio books (at 1.5x speed) while walking outdoors has become my favorite daily activity.
Recently I have ditched my sunglasses for morning walks. As unfiltered morning sun light exposure charges my melatonin supplies and helps me sleep better at night time.
Hopefully I have convinced you about the benefits of walking. While 6-packs will be the the visual proof of your progress, the longevity and health benefits will go beyond the looks.