If you’re looking for a way to up your fitness game, you might want to try the “Hot Girl Walk” trend. According to HuffPost, the “Hot Girl Walk” is the name of a TikTok trend that involves walking to improve your physical and mental health. Despite its name, the “Hot Girl Walk” trend has nothing to do with gender or beauty. In fact, the main focus of the challenge is self-care.
Created by TikTok user Mia Lind, the viral trend is meant to be a simple and accessible way to boost self-esteem and add some exercise to your daily routine. “I felt that walking had a strong stigma as not being a valid form of exercise, so I gave ‘walking’ some rebranding as a Hot Girl Walk,” Lind told HuffPost. To participate in the trend, pick a set location, like a cafe, and walk there while thinking about what you’re grateful for, what your best qualities are, and what you hope to accomplish in life.
Benefits of walking
Despite the stigma attached to it, walking is a safe and gentle form of exercise that is associated with many important health and fitness benefits. For instance, walking can help keep you in shape, regulate your blood pressure, and reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease. According to Healthline, walking outside in the sunlight can even increase your body’s overall production of vitamin D, which can help strengthen your bones.
Believe it or not, walking can help boost your mood and benefit your mental health, as well. That’s because walking and any other form of exercise can help release “feel-good hormones known as endorphins which can benefit your mood, reduce anxiety, stress and worrying, and overall improve your mental health,” Roxana Ehsani, a board-certified sports dietitian and the national media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told Healthline. Ehsani says that mindfulness and positive self-talk can also have a similar effect.
How long should you walk?
In order to reap these benefits, however, you’ll need to walk more than just a few blocks. If you want to get the most out of your “Hot Girl Walk,” you should walk at least 2.5 hours per week, according to experts at Mindbodygreen. Fortunately, you don’t have to cover this distance all at once. You can break it up into daily increments. This involves walking around 21 minutes a day, 7 days per week. Doing this on a daily basis can have lasting effects on your health.
As a matter of fact, a Harvard Health Publishing review found that walking 21 minutes per day can not only improve your memory, blood pressure, and cholesterol, but it can also be as effective as medication when it comes to relieving stress and decreasing symptoms of depression. “Tension starts to ease as the road stretches out in front of you. Mood-elevating endorphin levels increase,” the authors of the review wrote.
