00:00 : Now, from here to about the table there’s about 15 feet. So, I’m gonna pick up these two dumbbells here, each of which weighs 30 pounds, and I’m gonna walk 15 feet up, turn around, and then I’m gonna walk 15 feet back. So, that’s event number one. Now, then number two, I’m gonna walk up and down without the dumbbells but I’m gonna do it twice. Okay, so we’ll walk up, turn around, walk back, and then repeat, walk up, and then walk back. And so here’s the quiz: Of the two events, which one did I find more tiring? Which was harder to do?

00:52 : How many would say one time with the dumbbells? Okay, how many would say the second time without it? Okay. Actually, the first time was more tiring. Why? ‘Cause I’m not used to walking around carrying 60 pounds. Okay? That’s a little tough. Alright. Not that I can’t do it, but it’s a little harder, whereas just walking up and down without it, I didn’t feel anything, right? So the, event one was really a little more tiring. Second question: Which one used more energy, first or second? How many would say the first? How many would say the second? Okay. Now, if you say the first, you say, “Okay, Mike walked 30 feet carrying 60 pounds, so 60 times 30 equals 1800 feet, right?  1,800 pound feet. Second time, he walked twice as far but didn’t carry anything, right? So, it was zero.” Except it wasn’t. Because what else did I carry besides the dumbbell?

01:48 : Your body weight.

01:49 : Me, my body weight. Exactly. What actually happened was the first time I carried 60 pounds plus 200 pounds of me, 30 feet, for a total of 7800. The second time I didn’t carry the dumbbells but I still carried all 200 pounds of me 60 feet. I used almost twice as much energy walking back and forth without the dumbbells as I did… But I didn’t notice it. Why? ‘Cause our legs are so strong. We just never think about it, but our legs are so strong. And I can walk up and back with those 200 pounds. If I were carrying 200 pounds on my back, I’d practically fall over, right? But I can carry my 200 pounds there and back and not even notice it. Okay. So, when I spend a lot… Just by walking, I spend a huge amount of physical activity energy. So, you get the sense where we’re going. Walking is how humans became fit. That’s how we are fit. Because over the eons, we didn’t exercise. In fact, running takes more energy than walking, and it’s not because you’re going faster.

03:01 : If you walk half a mile or a mile, say, in 18 minutes, which is very fast, or at a leisurely pace of maybe 22 minutes, when you get to the end of the mile, you will have expended the same amount of energy. If you go fast, you’ll expend more energy per minute but it will still be the same ’cause you’ve moved your body a mile. If you run that mile, there’s something else happens. What happens is there’s a jump. Every time you take a step, there’s a little jump. That little jump means that you spend 30% more energy running. Well, primitive humans couldn’t do that, because there was only so much food to have available, had to conserve food. You wanted to get from here to there, you walked because running was too expensive, running was for emergencies, to run away from something or to run after something. So, we naturally… That’s how…

03:50 : And, by the way, in your handout, all your handout, most of the handout is scientific references, because everything we’re saying here is backed up by scientific studies and all the references and the URLs to find the… You can actually go read the papers. And what the anthropologists tell us is that primitive humans, before agriculture, had to walk 10,000 to 20,000 steps a day to hunt and gather enough food to survive. And so, walking became how we became fit, just as the turtle only has to go this far. We have to go a lot farther in order to survive, and so our fitness is through walking. Walking? Just walking, really? Just walking? You don’t have to get your heart rate up, you don’t have to sweat, you don’t have to change clothes, you don’t have to take a shower? Just walking? Give me a break. We’ll show you in a couple of minutes how the research shows conclusively, but let’s talk about the benefits of being fit: Energy, weight control, health, brain health, lifetime mobility.