Wellness While Walking

NEWSLETTER COMING SOON! See below!

Is there hidden sugar in your restaurant order or regular dinners? Glazes, sauces, and dressings often carry added sugar, which matters for blood sugar, prediabetes, and diabetes risk. We cover how to root out the sugar from our evening meal, and what the research says about sugar and the brain.

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Doing well on three factors in midlife was linked to a whopping 13 more dementia-free years than for those who don’t do well on those factors! For many of us, one is already crossed off. Today we look at some of the things that might help, from the diet and exercise plan that can help us delay the onset of cognitive decline!

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Welcome to this no-frills, keeping it real, abbreviated bonus episode, brought to you by our mutual priority lists! xo, carolyn

If we live longer, we’re going to need THIS, said a keynote speaker at a health conference I attended. I’ll tell you about the secret ingredient, and then we’ll hear from Chip Conley, author of Learning to Love Midlife. We’ll hear how midlife can be a chrysalis instead of a crisis, how to edit what we've accumulated, and why relationships and our beliefs about aging shape our health span. Hear how to make room for purpose and live well in whatever extra years we're given!

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Back pain while walking can come from limited hip and mid-back movement, which leaves the low back doing extra work. Physical therapist Joanna Fisher covers what to try when your back starts to hurt, exercises that build support (bridges, planks, dead bugs, weighted carries, and foot strengthening), and what sciatica means. We also get into arm swing, walking poles, weighted vests, and when to see a physical therapist or physician.

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Our joints, muscles, and ligaments have estrogen receptors, which may help explain the aches and stiffness that can start in perimenopause. Physical therapist Joanna Fisher shares what to do about menopause joint pain, why strength training matters, and why she says we don't have to accept bladder leaks!

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Say "tai chi walking" in China, and people won't know what you mean. So what is it, and what's worth bringing into our own walks? Hear the real story, what the research says tai chi does for our balance, and the small additions that can make our walks do even more. We'll also cover what else improves balance, how the fear of falling can hold us back, and the everyday things in our homes that can make a fall more likely.

***Wellness While Walking website might be down for a couple of days***

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Feeling wired, edgy, or worn thin more days than not? Or maybe you've just come through something that hit hard and fast. Either way, stress is worth understanding rather than pushing aside. In this shorter but mighty episode, we look at the real difference between the kind of stress that helps us and the kind that wears us down. We cover why short bursts of stress can sharpen us, why the constant kind takes a toll, and what the research says about reframing a hard situation without slipping into toxic positivity. Plus a few concrete ways to get some...

A hyper-local rainstorm stalled over my town and we ended up with a basement full of water. What might this mean for my family's health? What can you do to address potential health issues that might not be commonly accepted or discussed? Today's episode will kick off a walk or another step that will have you caring for your health!

Breathwork and walking – a natural pair for pursuing health and vitality.

Indeed, Dr. Jacques MoraMarco and Dr. Yun Kim, our guides today, are the authors of Walking Your Way to Vitality: Integrating Walking, Breathwork, and Mindfulness into Your Daily Exercise. They're doctors of East Asian medicine, licensed acupuncturists, and will share their combined wisdom, including a 5-step breathing pattern that pairs the breath with the steps – spelled out during this episode, so we can try it while we listen.

An underappreciated aspect of walking can be the regulation of our nervous system, and our levels of s...

Back to school, back to health! If fall is when you get serious about your health again, a full calendar might be the first challenge you'll run into. Laura Vanderkam shows us where the time actually is and how to fit everything important in, plus: 20-minute dinners, how to set a bedtime you'll keep, and her five o'clock walk!

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Is it too late to start getting healthy? We give 5 research-backed reasons the answer is no — including how frail 90-year-olds got measurably stronger in just eight weeks! And a warm, overdue welcome to the men who've been listening along here all along!

This is the last in our Q&A series for National Wellness Month! Next time: back to full-length episodes and the BEEP!

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Newsflash: Long, unbroken stretches of sitting appear to carry health risk beyond the daily total of sitting. But breaking them up can help even when the total hours spent sitting number doesn't budge. A listener asked about NEAT -- the energy burned by the movement of ordinary life that isn't exercise -- and the answer turned out to have little to do with calories and a lot to do with staying strong and mobile as we age!

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A listener asked us a question a lot of us may have wondered at some point: do we have to give up bread? Today, we'll look at who might benefit from staying away from bread, what to do if we want to reduce the amount of bread we eat, and then how to enjoy it if we don't want to change much.

Another in our Listener Q&A series in honor of National Wellness Month. It's a focused, shorter episode so there's no beep. Do you have a question about eating, movement, habits or anything healthy lifestyle-related...

Why is it so hard to stick with a habit we actually want to build (a daily walk) or one we want to break (easing off the afternoon sweets) even when it's something that we know would improve our lives? This week we take the pressure off, name the five forces in the gap between knowing and doing (not one is the flaw we've been blaming), and then will build a small system that does the deciding for us on the tougher days. This is a Q&A episode in honor of National Wellness Month.

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The foods that heal us aren't necessarily exotic or expensive — most are already sitting on our grocery shelves. Dr. William Li walks us through the store, aisle by aisle, showing how everyday foods work with our bodies: fighting the fat we don't want, and helping us age the way we hope to. He'll also change how we think about body fat itself, because we can't judge our health by the size of our body — and the fat we can't see matters far more than the number on the scale. Real food as medicine, with a whole lot of joy and...

Dr. Li explains what actually drives midlife weight — the sleep, the stress, the timing of when we eat, the reduction in muscle mass — and he does it without asking us to give up a single dinner we love. In fact, he shows us how a healthy weight and a real love of eating go together, rather than being at odds. We'll come to appreciate what our bodies are already doing overnight, and then the small, doable evening changes become a superpower! Join us for this BEST OF episode with a new perspective!

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Today, the practical half: how to actually loosen sugar's hold. You'll hear where sugar is hiding in foods you'd never think to check. Why cravings often trace back to something other than a lack of discipline — our sleep, our stress, even our gut. What "eating by the plate" looks like in real meals, so we're not counting anything. The two-week fructose reset — what it is and how to make the most of it. How to test a single food and read what it's actually doing to our energy, so we decide what's worth it. And some more useful metrics than...

We've hit the year's halfway mark this week — which makes it the perfect time to revisit the New Year mindset, minus the pressure. In this BEST OF conversation, fitness hall of famer and four-time NYT bestseller JJ Virgin joins us to unpack the real roadblocks between us and better health: the difference between glucose and fructose, why "a calorie is a calorie" falls apart outside a lab, how satiety and a little muscle do the heavy lifting, and the food-marketing "health halos" Carolyn knows firsthand from her advertising days. It's the episode that predicted the current satiety-and-muscle conversation everyone's ha...

Light runs one clock in your body. Food runs a completely different set of clocks — in our gut, our liver, our metabolism. And when those two signals misalign, we can negatively influence our health.

This episode digs into meal timing through the lens of chrononutrition: the real science behind when we eat, what it does to the gut microbiome, and why a late-night dinner isn't just a calorie decision. Plus: what happens to your gut's rhythm after a disrupted week, and my own decades-long, still-imperfect evolution of meal timing and the pitfalls I mostly can now avoid!

One solid food choice can make the next good one easier, says the science. Today we're getting direct about something we're not being told clearly enough: what's on our plates matters for our health more than most of us realize, and adding more of the right foods might be the most powerful thing we can do to live well and stay out of the doctor's office and hospital. We'll make the case for adding — not subtracting, not overhauling — and walk through 10 high-volume, high-satiety foods and exactly how to use them. Plus a tiny experiment to try this week that just...

Want to be able to eat bigger, more satisfying meals? Today, we dive into a way to increase the volume of what we eat each day, and how to also ensure we're getting all the nutrients our bodies need. This research-backed approach has been tested over time, and can be great news for those of us in midlife who feel like our metabolisms have taken an extended vacation!

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The 21-day habit rule is a myth — and the truth is so much more encouraging. Today we're digging into what the research actually says about how long it takes to build a habit that lasts, and why the real timeline should make you feel better, not worse. Plus, we'll chat about how I kicked a very long and intense Diet Coke habit and also 8 tips to make healthy habits easier to form and keep!

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In this candid, personal episode, Carolyn shares her real-life challenges navigating the conventional healthcare system—and the realizations she's had about this experience. She discusses what makes the biggest difference in times of stress, and provides her favorite quick and simple mindfulness tool for creating more ease in challenging times. Give it a listen if you need a relatable reminder to keep yourself and caring for yourself on your own priority list!

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The instructions most of us receive before a procedure cover fasting, medications, and not much else. But the weeks before surgery — how we're sleeping, what we're eating, whether our vitamin levels are anywhere near where they need to be for healing — are quietly shaping our outcome before we ever walk into that hospital. Dr. Jen Stevane spent over twenty years as a surgeon before founding the Center for Holistic Surgery, and she joins us to talk about what real surgical preparation looks like and what small steps can mean for optimal healing and life post-procedure. If a surgery or othe...

Your step count goal might be off — and wonderfully, the fix is easier than you'd expect! In Part 2 of this conversation with gait specialist and author Dr. Courtney Conley, we get into the specific step and pace milestones that research actually supports — including the number linked to a 25% reduction in dementia risk that might surprise you. We also get into why a post-meal walk changes your metabolism, the difference between steps that count as intentional movement and the ones that don't, and why the reminders "walk taller" and "walk softer" may be the most useful gait coaching you'll ever rece...

Walking isn't exercise — it's a biological necessity. Dr. Courtney Conley, gait specialist and author of the new book, Walk*, is back to make the case that walking belongs in the same category as breathing and sleeping, and that most of us are wildly underestimating what we lose when we don't do it enough. If your gait speed, your foot health, and your pain management strategy have never gotten a second thought, this episode will change that.

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Your "I have no time" story doesn't hold up — and the data proves it. Laura Vanderkam, bestselling author of Big Time, joins us to share what thousands of time logs actually reveal, why complexity and chaos are very different things, and how a simple weekly planning habit puts you back in control of your career, your relationships, and yourself. Plus: the hidden hours in your day, how to say yes to the things that scare you, and why your future self is shaped entirely by the memories your current self is willing to go make… if you can just get...

What did a health-conscious woman get wrong — and what can her story teach us about living longer and better? In the first half of this episode, I share a personal look at mom's health journey: what went well and what didn't, and I celebrate her being a pioneer in the work of making healthy lifestyle changes.

And then we'll also tackle belly fat. Specifically, the kind you can't see — and a tool that makes it visible. If you've ever wondered whether your daily choices are quietly working against you, this episode will give you a way to find...

ALL NEW EPISODE! We're often one small foot problem away from not walking! That's not an overstatement — it happened to me. So this month, for National Foot Health Awareness Month, we're giving our feet the attention they deserve. A dermatopathologist shares the dos and don'ts that keep walkers walking — from the soap brands to avoid to the post-shower timing window that makes all the difference for your foot care regimen to the practitioners we want to consult, and more. Get it right to keep walking and living well!

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Did you know (or do you still) know the calories in a medium egg? In a slice of sandwich bread? Or of a small apple? I lived by the calorie for too many years. Should it be the end all-be all? Definitely not. Do calories have any sort of role in determining our intake needs? Maybe. Let's figure out what about the calorie we might find valuable so that we can happily toss out the rest!

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What if a simple, everyday habit could be your ticket to better memory, increased satiety, and a healthier waistline—and you're already doing it multiple times a day? In this episode, let's revisit an underrated wellness strategy that requires no special equipment or willpower, but promises big benefits. Tune in to discover how a tiny tweak to your routine can ripple across your health in surprising ways!

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Meal planning stress, kitchen overwhelm, and the guilt of never doing it "right" — Kendra Adachi is back with a better approach. Her book The Lazy Genius Kitchen isn't a cookbook; it's a framework for making your kitchen actually work for your life. We cover her five-step process for "lazy geniusing" any area of your kitchen, the meal matrix method for reducing daily decision fatigue, and why naming what matters — quick? homemade? everyone at the table? — is the only meal planning strategy that sticks. Practical, judgment-free, and genuinely useful for any season of life.

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Overwhelm, perfectionism, doing it all — Kendra Adachi of The Lazy Genius Collective is here to help us stop all of that! Her framework is simple: be a genius about the things that matter, lazy about the things that don't. In this conversation, we explore why one-size-fits-all productivity advice fails most of us, how to identify what truly matters in this season of life, and a step-by-step process for calming the everyday frustrations that quietly drain us. Practical, permission-giving, and genuinely fun. This episode originally aired in 2022, and all that Kendra shares is timeless! Since this conversatoin, Kendra's gone onto do...

Do we need to lengthen our walks for better heatlh? Today we're breaking down what that research really found, what it got wrong, and how to elevate every walk in your repertoire. Plus: are you touch-starved? The science on why physical contact matters more than we think. And a little life update, too.

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Our choices => extra years! What I heard at a recent conference changed how I think about aging. This is one of the most encouraging and actionable things I've shared. Because the research is clear that the gap between those who get this right and those who don't can be measured in years — and every day we wait is a day we're not getting our message across. Our genes need our input so let's communicate with them... starting now!

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Your waistline, your sleep, your stress levels — the people closest to you are shaping all of it, whether you know it or not. Carolyn shares her own weight gain story and the science behind why your inner circle may be your most underrated health factor. Plus, a real-world case study for navigating it when not everyone in your life is on board.

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Touching your toes, pulling your heel to your butt, stretching your calves by pushing against a wall—what if these classic stretches aren't helping the way you think they are? Discover what's really happening when you feel "tight" and the game-changing approach that will help you avoid injury and stay active for years and decades. Physical therapist Joanna Fisher is here to help us find what might serve us better than flexibility!

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Experience behavior change breakthroughs, neural shifts, lasting results—discover a counterintuitive method to finally break old habits and ignite new ones. In this episode, guest psychotherapist Allyson Maida reveals how rewiring your brain can create real, lasting change in health, relationships, and more. If you've struggled to stick with resolutions or wondered why change feels so hard, you won't want to miss this transformative conversation!

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