Despite the benefits for health, fewer people today than ever before exercise by walking. Why is this? What can be done to encourage more walking?

In this modern world, walking helps to reduce different health problems while nowadays people have less interest in walking regularly due to various reasons. This essay discusses the significant reasons of people less interest in walking. The primary reason is the lack of awareness about the advantages of walking regularly among common people. They always believe that walking is a complete waste of time and energy, which can be utilised in their job sector for greater productivity. For example, most of the men are working extra hours in offices to get a high salary for the betterment of financial status, instead of doing exercise. This would cause many health problems in their life later on. The sedentary lifestyle and technological development are also influencing people to walk less. People are using their private cars even to visit a nearby place. The lifestyle and availability of cars and other transportation system are causing this problem. Moreover, people lead much more busy life due to both personal and professional responsibilities. Therefore, they may not get sufficient amount of time for walking on a regular basis. For instance, children have many things to study for achieving higher qualification in their academic area, whereas youngsters are forced to work full- time because of a stiff target and higher competition. As a result, they mostly concentrate only on duties and responsibilities rather than healthy life. The city life is another reason people walk less this days. They have markets, shopping malls, schools, hospitals etc. near their living places and as a consequence, they need to walk very little. Lack of proper pavement and green environment also a hindrance in many cities. However, there are some practical ways to develop an interest in walking such as mass awareness, providing adequate facilities in work areas as well as in educational institutions for the greater betterment of the healthy society and so on. In this way, walking exercise can be an inevitable part of everybody’s life. Consequently, people would hardly have health issues namely obesity, high cholesterol level and blood pressure disorders. Parents should teach their children the importance of walking and other forms of exercises. More strict rules should be imposed in case of using frequent private cars and the proper pavements which are safe for people to walk should be building by the government. In conclusion, although it is a time-consuming exercise, people have to find enough time to do walking exercise for longer distance without hesitation, which would help them enormously in the long run.