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You want to be healthy. You know, you need to exercise more. But if you are not ready to grunt through an hour of kick-boxing, don't despair. There is a growing agreement among exercise researchers that the intense physical activities offered by most health clubs are not the only–or even the preferable–path to better health. Indeed, the best thing for most of us may be to just walk.

Yes, walk. At a reasonable vigorous clip (five to six km/h) for half an hour or so, may be five or six times a week. You may not feel the benefits all at once, but the evidence suggests that over the long term, a regular walking routine can do a world of preventive good.

Walking, in fact, may be the perfect exercise. For starters, it's one of the safest things you can do with your body. It's much easier on the knees than running and doesn't trigger untoward side effects. Dr. Johnna Manson, chief of preventive medicine at a leading Harvard woman's hospital says, "If everyone were to walk briskly 30 minutes a day, we could cut the incidence of many chronic diseases by 30 to 40 per cent." She further says, "Regular physical activity is probably as close to a magic bullet as we will come in modern medicine."

And for those of us who don't have half-hour chunks of time, the news gets even better. Several recent studies suggest that walking briskly three or four times a day for 10 minutes at a time may provide many of the same benefits as walking continuously for 30 minutes.

Here's how to make the most of your walking routine. First, get into gear. Walker's shoes need to have enough room at the front for the feet to spread. Then, ease on down that road. Avoid muscle aches by starting slowly and incorporating gentle stretches into both your warmup and cool down. You must plot your course. Some people walk at a specific time each day. Others shoehorn walking into their routines by parking the car a few minutes from the store or taking the stairs instead of the lift. Record your efforts, including how long and how far you walked. Jotting down improvements keeps you motivated and challenges you to do better.

Since walking affects you in so many ways at once, it's difficult to determine precisely why it's good for you. But much of the evidence gathered so far is compelling.

Brisk walking is good for the heart—which makes a lot of sense. The heart is a muscle after all, and anything that makes the blood flow faster through a muscle helps keep it in shape. But regular walking also lowers blood pressure, which decreases the stress on the arteries. It can boost the amount of HDL cholesterol (the good one) in our blood. It even seems to make the blood less "sticky", and therefore less likely to produce unwanted clots. This all adds up to as much as a 50 per cent reduction in the risk of suffering a heart attack.