Walking Has the Worst PR in Wellness
The most evidence-backed tool for mental health has nothing to sell you. That’s the problem.
The wellness industry needs exercise to be hard.
If walking counted (and it ABSOLUTELY does), the entire model falls apart.
There’s no programme to sell. No app to subscribe to. No 30-day challenge to restart every January because the last one lasted 11 days.
You cannot build a content empire around “go outside for 20 minutes.”
There is no charismatic founder standing next to a freezing cold plunge explaining that walking is the future of human performance.
So walking doesn’t count. That’s the unspoken agreement. Movement only matters when it hurts, costs money, or comes with a content strategy.
This is not a gap in the research. This is an industry working exactly as designed. Think about what gets platformed. HIIT classes with waiting lists, where the harder the class, the longer the list. Biohacking protocols that require 20 supplements and a $500 tracker strapped to your wrist. Recovery tools marketed at people who haven’t done anything to recover from. “Science-backed” morning routines built entirely around products you can click to buy.
The message is consistent and it is everywhere: health requires investment. Financial investment, specifically.
And it works because it plugs straight into something most of us already believe. That if we’re not seeing results, we’re not trying hard enough. That the answer is always more. More intensity, more tracking, more willpower, more money.
The entire system is built to make you feel like you haven’t found the right thing yet, so you keep buying the next one.
I bought the next one for about 15 years.
My entire 20s and most of my 30s were basically the same loop:
Sign up for something. Gym membership. Beachbody. Some app called Sculpt8 or Bootyfit or whatever fresh hell was trending that year.
Go every day. Feel reborn. Quietly stop when life got in the way. Wait a few months. Feel terrible. Start again.
Every one of those programmes had the same underlying message: you need more. More discipline. A stricter diet. A better plan.
What I actually needed was less. Wayyyy less. But it took me years to figure that out.
I had 20kg I couldn’t lose long term, a 20-cigarette-a-day habit, and enough wine on a school night to qualify as a personality trait. I kept throwing money and motivation at the problem. I would yo-yo, but in the long run? I stayed exactly the same.
The industry made a fortune while I made no progress. And I blamed myself for it. Every time I started again I thought it meant I wasn’t disciplined enough. It was never that. The model needs you to restart. That is how it makes money.
Approaching 43, I am fitter than I have ever been. Not because I found the best programme. Because I stopped looking for a perfect one.
I walk because it clears my head. I train in the gym because it feels gooooood. And yes, I want to look banging in a bikini. Both things can be true.
A 2024 review in JAMA Network Open looked at more than 96,000 adults and found that walking more was linked to lower rates of depression.
Not running. Not CrossFit. Walking.
A separate review of 75 randomised trials found that walking significantly reduced symptoms of both depression and anxiety compared with doing nothing, and performed comparably to other type of interventions.
So no, walking is not “just walking”. It is one of the most accessible mental health tools we have.
To be clear: walking is not a replacement for therapy or medication when those are needed. But it is a credible, evidence-based tool that far too many people dismiss because it sounds too simple.
And here is the bit that should genuinely be on a billboard: the less you’re currently doing, the more you get from starting. The person who walks around the block 3 times this week is making a bigger shift than the person optimising their fourth training block of the year.
Nobody with a podcast is going to make an episode about this because it would be 45 seconds long.
Go for a walk. OK, bye.
With love,
Noemie x
P.S. Shorter piece this week, written on the plane from Costa Rica to Rio de Janeiro, where I am for a LegalTech conference. I often talk about three gears for habits: Full, Low, and Survival. This week is my survival gear. Not perfect, still moving. That is kind of the whole point!
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, podcast host and the creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™, a science-backed framework for sustainable habits and wellbeing. She writes on Substack about burnout, habit formation, and evidence-based behaviour change psychology for people who want practical tools without the self-help BS.