EARLY MORNING WALK

Banking 10,000 steps a day is one of the magic numbers that self-tracking health nerds all aspire to, but how and when you get those steps can have a big impact on just how beneficial the exercise is. A purposeful stomp soon after you wake can improve your sleep, speed up your metabolism and boost your mood and cognitive function. “It’s about the time you go for your walk and the briskness of your pace,” Mosley says. “The advantage of an early-morning walk is that you get out there and get exposed to light, which will reset your internal clock, and we know that light is a powerful suppressor of melatonin and gets you going.”

As well as shutting down melatonin, which is a hormone that makes you feel tired, exposure to sunlight also boosts serotonin, improving your mood. The earlier you do it, the better the effects seem to be. In research from Tokyo University of Science, insomnia sufferers found it easier to drop off and woke up less frequently after engaging with early-morning exercise.

“The briskness seems to be important, too,” Mosley says. “You get more benefit if you’re doing more than 100 steps a minute than if you’re doing under. If you can aim for 120 there seems to be something optimal about that.” A study involving 50,000 people by Ulster University found that getting a move on when you walk can boost its effectiveness by 20-50 per cent, with a significant reduction in your risk of cardiovascular disease. Up and at them, and all that.