As part of our continued town-hall blogging this week, we’re tasked with writing about exercise. If you’ve been here before you likely know I’m addicted to my daily power-walks. I stroll out of my apartment building most mornings, walk along two blocks – that’s streets to anyone not from NYC – and a huge park awaits me that I walk around. 

Most days I walk around the perimeter of the park rather than in it. I save that for weekends when I’m swept up in all the walkers, joggers and bikers. But during the week I enjoy the leafy trees and the brownstones along the streets that hug the park. All tolled it’s about 7,235 steps around the park, 3.7ish miles I figure.

A few days a week I might walk not around the park but to do an errand.  I walk to Trader Joe over in Brooklyn Heights, the library, a great middle-eastern market and through half of Brooklyn to buy discount produce. Luckily living in a city like mine, I can walk almost everywhere – including over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan which takes me 77 minutes or so, not that I’m anal.

I’ve even been walking with an injured toe – it’s got a hairline fracture. And, yes, I’m in a soft surgical shoe. But once I felt I could manage more than walking from my living room to my computer – all 5 feet – I took again to the streets.

Do I go low walking? Sure, sometimes. It’s not an exact science: how many carb grams for how many steps. You can walk everyday the same walk, eat the same pre-meal, take the same amount of insulin yet your body doesn’t seem to know it. 

I carry SweeTarts all the time. They’re in every pocket and bag and half are way beyond their expiration date. I find this out when I have to resort to a roll and it’s stale. But, hey, at least it’s there and still works its magic.

There aren’t many other forms of exercise I do because there aren’t many other forms of exercise I like well enough to keep up. 

But walking: I walk because I am. How nice to slow down the world, see the trees, feel yourself breathe, let your thoughts ebb and flow and know you’re burning calories and helping your insulin work better! 

I walk because I am. I walk because I can.