Inside My Morning Hot Girl Walk

Or, a love letter to movement and the city I’ve come to call home.

By 8:00 AM, I’ve hit the one-mile mark. I stop at a crosswalk to catch my breath and consider if there’s enough shade available to rest in the park on the other side. The first leg of my routine Hot Girl walk is a gradual uphill stroll, with stretches of sun-exposed blocks that give way to the woodsy reprieve provided by clusters of magnolia, maple, gum, and oak trees. 

I’m sure that, by now, you’ve heard of the Hot Girl Walk. If you haven’t, it’s self-explanatory. You go on a walk, and you feel hot while doing it. And every Hot Girl needs a walk. I mean, Naomi Campbell has one. So does Rihanna, our Hot Girl Supreme, and Megan Thee Stallion, thee Hot Girl coach. A daily stroll is one of few fitness trends I can enthusiastically get behind. Walking is a fantastic workout and an excellent way to recover after a tough gym session. Regular walking can strengthen your bones, improve your cardiovascular fitness, increase endurance, reduce anxiety and depression, and aid in normalizing your blood pressure. (I don’t talk much about weight loss anymore but walking, in addition to strength training and a diet full of nutritious foods, is high-key the best way to maintain a caloric deficit, too.) The brisker your walk, the better. 

I’ve recently started taking a Hot Girl walk most days of the week. I was an avid walker before the pandemic, but I fell out of it like I let loose of most things I did before. I appreciate the time walking gives me to clear my head. Sometimes I walk for two miles; sometimes, I only go a few blocks. That doesn’t matter as much as being outside and present in my body—a motility weight lifting doesn’t always provide. The gym is my refuge, yet it doesn’t compare to feeling my feet bounce back off the brick of D.C.’s sidewalks and hearing the city come alive each morning as I linger in front of someone’s garden or pop in my favorite shop to buy a green juice. 

As people walking their dogs and kids learning to ride bikes bigger than them breeze by me, sweat beads under my black Nike hat, and I decide it’s too bright and too muggy to delay my return to central air conditioning. I turn around and begin my descent home, stopping to grab a magnolia bloom that will keep me company along the way.