The last good weeks of summer are yours to enjoy.
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| I like this time of year a lot. The days are still long enough for an evening walk, but not for much longer. By late September, as sunset creeps earlier each night, it really makes a difference to your days, as the window for spontaneous outdoor time closes. Today, we look at what the research says about making the most of it, with a few low-effort ways to do exactly that before the weather makes the decision for you. |
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Let’s investigate!
Tim Snaith
Newsletter Editor, Healthline |
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Written by Tim Snaith
September 9, 2026 • 3 min read |
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A 2019 study tracking nearly 20,000 people found that just 120 minutes a week in nature meaningfully improved health and well-being. That’s only 2 hours, split however your week allows. It could be a single long hike or four shorter walks; it didn’t seem to matter to the results.
Sunlight also does something artificial light can’t fully match. It shines with roughly 200 times the intensity of a typical office light, and that’s what your body needs to keep your internal clock synced day and night. This should also shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and deepen the quality of rest. Here are some ideas for how to make the most of what’s left of the season:
🗺️ Explore something nearby. A local park, trail, or beach explored in September often looks different from how it did in June, with thinner crowds and cooler mid-day temperatures that make longer visits more comfortable.
A 2024 review in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine found that parks and natural settings are linked to stronger social connections and a greater sense of community, on top of whatever exercise goes on there. Then there’s the whole forest bathing thing.
🏋️♀️ Move a workout outdoors. Swapping one gym session a week for a walk, jog, or bodyweight routine in the yard costs nothing and asks little of your schedule.
A 2025 study comparing indoor and outdoor walking found that outdoor routes consistently produced lower perceived exertion at matched physical intensity, meaning the same effort felt easier simply because it happened outside. That gap tends to make the habit easier to sustain over weeks rather than days.
🧺 Eat a meal outside. A weekday dinner moved to the porch, a thermos of coffee taken onto the steps in the morning, or a Saturday lunch packed for the park all count. Research on mindful eating, the practice of paying full attention to a meal, links a slower pace with greater satisfaction and better awareness of fullness, benefits that a porch dinner can deliver almost by accident.
🌆 Watch the sunset. Early fall light arrives at a lower angle than summer’s, casting longer shadows and warmer color across the sky for longer. Morning sunlight gets most of the research attention, but a 2025 study found that natural daylight lifted mood at multiple points throughout the day, including in the evening. A sunset walk gets credit on both counts.
None of this requires much planning, just an awareness that the season is changing and a conscious effort to take advantage of it. The evidence says it’s better to be out there living it than to watch through a window or a bunch of other people’s reels.
Four more ideas, including one built around a single overnight outdoors, are waiting on the site for anyone who wants to keep going. |
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| 🍂 Over to you: Are you ready for the fall? How do you make the most of it? Email wellnesswire@healthline.com to share with us! |
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| Until next time, |
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Take care of yourself, and we’ll see
you again soon! |
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| This edition was powered by |
| a change in the weather. |
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