The American Heart Association has just one word for you: Walk!

The association launched Jan. 8 the "Start!" program to get more Americans to improve their health through walking, especially when they're at work.

From Jan. 8 through Feb. 5, sign up by visiting the heart association's website or calling 1-800-AHA-USA1 - and you'll get up to 12 recorded "wake-up call" from actress Jane Seymour, singer Vanessa Williams, "Wheel of Fortune" letter-turner Vanna White, sportscaster and former Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome Bettis, and Subway spokesman Jared Fogle.

In addition, you can use the heart association's online fitness and nutrition tracker to enter what you foods you ate each day, how much exercise you got, and how many calories you took in and burned.

Working too long, exercising too little

According to the Dallas-based association, more than 1.2 million Americans suffer heart attacks annually, and cardiovascular diseases cause 870,000 deaths, by far the country's top killer.

Health experts blame the lack of exercise as one reason why 65 percent of Americans - about 195 million people - are overweight and at higher risk for diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and cancer.

To compound the problems, Americans are generally working 164 more hours than they did 20 years ago, and many of those jobs are sedentary in which people move hardly any at all, association leaders said.

But Dr. Raymond Gibbons, the association's president and a professor at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., said you can gain two hours of life expectancy for each hour of regular exercise.

Four benefits of walking 

Gibbons, who came up with the idea of the association's walking program, said brisk walking for 30 minutes a day can:

•  Lower your level of LDL "bad" cholesterol;

•  Lower your high blood pressure;

•  Help overweight people lose weight and maintain the loss;

•  Reduce risk of strokes.

The association's program focuses on walking because it has the lowest dropout rate of any exercise, plus it's the cheapest, he said.

"I'm excited to be part of this groundbreaking new movement," he said.

Give the fact that so many workers are sedentary for as many as eight hours a day, association leaders hope to recognize "fit-friendly" corporations that provide walking routes, promote walking programs and allow employees to wear tennis shoes on certain days.

One company getting in on the action is AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company in Wilmington, Del. Company president Tony Zook said in a statement that AstraZeneca offers "nutritious food options" in its cafeterias, on-site nutrition counselors, indoor and outdoor walking paths, and a fitness center.

For more information

•  Fitting in Fitness

•  Walking: A Step in the Right Direction

•  Exercise Walking

•  Walking for fitness: How to trim your waistline, improve your health

Source: American Heart Association

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