Get moving! As we move forward in this new year, this is a perfect time to reflect, recenter, and take a look at your priorities. As a healthcare professional, your job is to take care of other people’s minds, bodies, and spirits—but how much time do you set aside to take care of your own? Let this year be the year you improve your self-care routine. Remember, taking care of yourself is not selfish.
With that goal in mind, we will be dedicating time over the next few months to provide a series of Self-Care Strategies that will help you do just that. These may seem simple and rather obvious to some, but we think that shining a spotlight on them can help you commit to making self-care a priority in your personal and professional life.
Walking towards good health
Practicing as an advanced practice registered nurse demands a high level of physical stamina and mental clarity, as the profession oftentimes requires spending large portions of each day on your feet, providing patient care, and making critical decisions about diagnoses and treatments. Focusing on your own health and fitness can help to ensure you have the energy necessary to provide the best possible care to your patients.
It is safe to say that we all know that staying active and getting regular exercise is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle and for many, walking is the easiest way to get moving. And with an abundance of fitness trackers on the market, setting a daily step goal has become a popular way to track your movement.
Why set a daily step goal?
Walking is a form of exercise that’s available to most people that doesn’t require any special equipment other than some supportive walking shoes. There’s no need for an expensive membership at a fitness center, and it provides the opportunity to get outside and enjoy the fresh air and (ideally!) sunshine. Yet walking for regular activity can help reduce your risk of these common health problems:
- Heart disease
- Obesity
- Diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Depression
How many steps are enough?
You’ve probably heard that 10,000 steps is the ideal number of steps per day. However, the average American walks closer to 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day, or roughly 1.5 to 2 miles. That’s a fairly significant difference! It’s best to find out how many steps a day you walk now, as your own baseline. Then you can work up toward the goal of 10,000 steps by aiming to add 1,000 extra steps a day every two weeks.
If you’re already walking more than 10,000 steps a day, or if you’re fairly active and trying to lose weight, you’ll probably want to set your daily step goal higher.
As you get moving and embark on embracing these new self-care strategies, remember to start small and keep on growing—so much of our time is spent taking care of and tending to others, we have to remember to focus on ourselves, too.
Looking for more tips? Read our hydration focused blog from the self-care strategies series.