Geography matters, maybe more 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. It is probably 15 minutes before sunrise, but we've got early daylight here in the Carolinas, and it is

stunning. The sky is this wonderful mix of pink, fuchsia, magenta, orange, and it's going to be a beautiful morning.

It's going to be a hot and sticky day.

I'm walking through the wooded area that's near our home,

and I've already been dive bombed by three mosquitoes since we started.

So it's going to be a beautiful walk, but perhaps even a little on the

annoying side. Yesterday asked the rhetorical, perhaps not so rhetorical question, would you still

walk if research released that there were zero health benefits to walking.

Whoops, it's all a myth.

Nothing to see here.

Would you still walk?

And it's a bit of a rhetorical question because, of course, we know that there are long-term

and short-term health benefits with getting out for a daily walk,

for physical activity, fitness, exercise. We know that. But what if there weren't? Would you still walk?

If the answer is, oh, absolutely, then this isn't necessarily going to be for you. But if the answer is,

I don't know, I don't know, maybe not. Yesterday, I said, that's revealing about how much you enjoy the activity.

And I have learned about myself, and I suspect I'm not the only one,

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