By walking every day, Susan Duncan has lost over 30kg and found freedom.

Aotea Harbour south of Raglan is a wonderful place to walk – as Susan Duncan knows. She walks 365 days a year and has done so for years.

“Walking’s always brought me great joy. To me, it’s almost like a form of meditation. I fell in love with tramping as a kid… but married an incredibly controlling person and couldn’t do anything on my own.”

After three attempts, she finally left her partner and started walking every day. “It was so healing, it was phenomenal.”

Since then, she’s lost 30kg, moved to Kawhia, in the Waikato, and says “my freedom was incredibly hard won. That was eight years ago and still, this mornin, I walked for an hour and a half on the beach and didn’t see another soul. There’s something incredibly beautiful about that solitude. And having the freedom to do that.”

She refers to her former weight as her luscious size. “I was still fit and was walking every day. It’s a lusciousness – at different times in history it would have been the sought after body type to have. And it’s safe too – being bigger is a way of becoming invisible and being safe. It served its purpose at the time, I’ve no regrets. That version of me was brave enough to leave and have the courage to do all that walking.”

Last year she did a virtual walk of the Appalachian Trail but this January started the Walk1200km challenge.

“Because I walk every day, I’ve met so many people; everyone says hello and stops to talk. When I go back to Hamilton and walk and say hello to people they look at me like I’m a serial killer.”