Talk to anyone about the health benefits of walking. There will be no disagreement. There is in fact a statement made by the Surgeon General in 2013, of the beneficial relationship between physical activity and health.

Where in lies the problem?
The problem lies in the gap that exists between idea and action. How do we develop physical activity into a life long habit? As it turned out the answers came in stages and revelations are still ongoing. First is to recognise what is the wrong way to start walking.
Begin with the wrong beginning
I have encountered patients who walked once and never walked again. This outcome also seems to be happening often enough. Walk for two hours and never ever want to walk for fitness again. What went wrong? Answer: Walking for fitness should be spaced out. The idea is to build up the pace step by step.
Doing it right
We started walking for fitness, me and my wife, sometime in 2005 or thereabouts. We started with the recommended advice of walking 30 minutes each time so that over a week we can accumulate 150 minutes of walking time. This was according to MOH’s recommendation. We started walking in Clementi Stadium which is behind my house.
Our first experience was six minutes to walk one round of the stadium (440 m). We walked 6 rounds. That took forty minutes.
With that start we decided to walk and to improve on the speed as we became stronger. Shall we do it tomorrow? “Yes”. And we went on, several days a week. It took us about 2 weeks to establish walking as a habit.
Recruiting my brother Jeffrey
I next recruited my brother Jeffrey. He stays in East Coast but he was game to come to Clementi Stadium. “Sure.” That went on for a while. We alternated between West Coast and East Coast. My mother was then staying with him so my mother, he, and his wife Joyce eventually formed a walking-for-fitness group. And that went on until my mother fell and had a inter-trochanteric fracture in 2017. That was a good 12 years. And my mother’s diabetes became better controlled along the way. They have succeeded in walking into a habit. Jeffrey and his wife Joyce continue to walk several times a week.
Fast forward to 2021
Happy to say, despite fits and starts we have continued walking several time a week. We have also seeded several walk-for-health groups among my siblings and my wife’s siblings. They all have formed their own walk-for-health groups. And we moved from Clementi Stadium to the Botanic Gardens and the Park Connectors (PCN). We have even got the tidy tots to join us on one occasion.

West Coast Park
Our latest discovery is West Coast Park in August this year. It is easily reachable for us and my wife’s brother Aaron and his wife, Jenny. And there are many things to discover in our walks. For example, we discovered two plots of flowering tiger orchids. We also saw the bright orange flowers of the African Tulip tree (Picture below: Top left). There is a bird’s nest (top right). And there were many cannon ball trees (Picture below: Bottom) , so named because of the brown fruits each shaped like a cannon ball.



Take home message: Joy of life: Walking into a habit
Walking into a habit can be part of your adventure in life. Try it.
References
- Health Promotion Board (HPB). HPB launches National Physical Guidelines. http//www.hpb.gov.sg/health-promotion-board-launches-national-physical-activity-guidelines Accessed 12 Oct 2021.
- Physical activity and health. Statement from US Surgeon General Ms Donna Shalala. https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/sgr/shalala.htm 12 Oct 2021.