Welcome to get started today. Start your newsletter today Get inspiration delivered to your inbox every day. Join us on Instagram!In late 2021, Jessica Miller, then 44, recalled having a medical checkup: “Nothing was good. My cholesterol was terrible. My blood pressure was terrible. I needed to lose weight.”
Her doctor asked if she was thinking about exercising. “I said, ‘I’m thinking about doing something when I get older,’ and he said, ‘Today you’re going to get older. It’s coming soon. It’s coming soon. Maybe you should get into it,'” she told TODAY.
“The doctor wanted to prescribe me medication for my blood pressure and cholesterol, but I don’t like taking medicine and I forget to take it, so he said, ‘Let’s try walking and see how it goes,'” she says.
As a virtual teacher, Miller spent a lot of time sitting down each day and needed something to compensate for the lack of activity. She was a teacher “stalker.” Start your Facebook page today After seeing how walking improved the lives of other group members over the course of several months, she decided to give walking a try herself.
Within six months, she had achieved the following:
- My blood pressure and cholesterol levels have dropped significantly.
- I lost 25 pounds and have kept the weight off.
- Her mental state has improved greatly.
Here’s how she did it.
She was able to walk up to 10,000 steps a day.
Miller walked very little. “Only from my desk to the coffee machine.” When she started, she didn’t count her steps. At first, she walked for 10 minutes, then 15, then 20. Then she started tracking her steps, working her way up to 10,000 steps, sometimes more.
She usually wakes up at 5 or 5:30 a.m. and counts her steps first thing in the morning. She uses audiobooks to motivate herself, and only listens to them while walking. “If I want to hear what’s going on in a book, I have to be walking to hear it,” she says.
In the winter, when it’s cold near her Connecticut home, she switches to indoor walking at shopping malls. She tries to get 10,000 steps in the morning, but if she’s pressed for time, she and her boyfriend do more in the afternoon or evening.
She’s also started walking to the grocery store, friends’ houses, the frozen yogurt place, etc. “Before, I thought, ‘It’s weird if I don’t walk somewhere. I don’t want people to see me walking. They’ll think I can’t drive,'” she said. “Now I try to do it. If I walk somewhere, I have to walk home. It’s made me walk more.”
She turns to her Start TODAY group for encouragement. “Whenever I feel unmotivated, I look on their Facebook page and see people walking. They have all these other challenges but still get their steps up. If they can do it, so can I,” she says. “It’s motivating to see so many people walking and exercising and I keep in touch with friends I’ve met through the page.”
Miller is also taking on Start TODAY’s monthly challenges, but says walking is something she’s always done. “I know it’s helped me,” she says. “I’m trying to eat better, but I love to eat, and that’s mainly walking.”
She got the chance to appear on Today with Stephanie Mansoor in June 2022. “By that time, I was walking 10,000 steps a day. My cholesterol had improved, my blood pressure had gone down, and I’d lost 25 pounds,” she said.
She kicked her caffeine habit.
Miller’s virtual classes will also include motivational classes for girls across the U.S. and around the world. “I have to keep them energized. They want to talk and interact. I don’t want them to be bored,” she said.
She relied on coffee for her caffeine fix, but it was too much: She would start her day with a pot of coffee, sip on it from a Keurig mug throughout the afternoon and evening, and drink as many as 20 cups a day.
She gradually reduced her coffee intake to about two cups a day, but had to do so slowly because cutting back too quickly gave her headaches.
First, she mixed regular and decaffeinated coffee 50/50. “I had to pretend it was regular coffee because I couldn’t taste the difference,” she says. Once she got used to that mix, she started drinking only decaffeinated coffee in the afternoons and evenings. She also makes iced coffee, but it lasts longer because it becomes watery as the ice melts.
She drinks bottled water before her first coffee in the morning. “It’s the worst bottled water ever, but it helps because it means I don’t feel like I have to gulp down my coffee in one go. If I drink the water first, I’m not thirsty,” she says.
She also cut out soda and alcohol. She felt it was affecting her sleep and she didn’t want the sugar and calories. “Alcohol didn’t help me relieve stress. Exercise was better than a sugary margarita. Drinking water and going for a walk was easier.”
Lifestyle changes have improved her mental state.
When I walk, I feel like all my negative feelings just disappear. If I can walk, my mind becomes clearer and my mood improves.
Jessica Miller
Miller didn’t realise that her lifestyle was contributing to her stress, anxiety and negativity. “I didn’t think it was all related, I just thought I was anxious, stressed and on edge. Plus, my clothes didn’t fit and I wasn’t exercising so I felt lazy,” she says. “When I walk, I feel like all the negativity just goes away. When I can walk, I clear my head and I feel better.”
She finds that her healthy habits all combine together: “Exercise makes me feel good, it makes me feel good so I don’t want to eat junk food or drink coffee. Walking changes my mood and it changes my whole day. It’s a chance to expend some energy and feel good. If I start my day doing something positive, my whole day feels better. It all combines as a cycle.”
Her improved mental state has helped her accept aging and the changes that come with it. “Lose weight makes me feel better. I feel like I have 20 more pounds to lose, but that’s because I’m comparing myself to Jessica in 1995. I have to remind myself that I’m not going to look the way I did when I was 16. I’m almost 50, so I need to put my expectations into perspective.”
