Where you live may have a greater impact on your fitness than you realize.

Welcome to Walking is Fitness. This is a podcast of action, providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013 averaging about 21,000 steps a day.

I am walking right now and would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

I don't know if you can hear the tree frogs.

I'm assuming that's what those are.

It's a beautiful morning here in South Carolina.

It is warm, it is muggy, and both of those are only going to increase as the day moves forward.

But right now it is pleasant for a walk and I hope where you are it is equally enjoyable.

Thanks for listening. I have lived in six different places. Five of those homes in Maryland

and the sixth, our current home, here in South Carolina. Three of those homes, the first

three, the first three, where I lived, my primary fitness activity, although I don't really think I thought of it in those terms, but my primary activity was riding my bike.

Certainly as a kid, it was how to get first. was riding my bike.

Certainly as a kid, it was how to get from point A to point B, and that's what we did together as we hopped on our bikes and rode.

And I loved it.

And as I transitioned into early adulthood in my 20s and 30s, bike riding became, again, I don't think I thought of it in these terms, but it was my primary fitness activity.

And then we moved to home number five, place number five.

And the friction for me to hop on my bike and go got pretty intense.

We lived on, and what I mean by that, friction is the stuff that we have to do before we can engage in fitness.

So I no longer lived at a place where I could open the door, hop on my bike, and go.

I had to either put it on a bike rack and drive somewhere, or if I did want to ride near my home,

it was incredibly hilly,

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