When it comes to exercise strategies for weight loss, walking is completely underrated. It’s time to change that. It has many advantages, including that you don’t have to wear spandex, you don’t have to go to a special gym to work out, and you can even get a medal for it (more on that below). And there’s no learning curve.
Walking coach Michele Stanten points out that not only will you lose weight, but the heavier you are, the easier it will be to do so. She is the founder of MyWalkingCoach.com and the author of Walking Solutions.
How much weight you can lose by walking varies from person to person, but Stanton has seen women lose between 14 and 22 pounds within eight weeks of starting walking. Men tend to lose weight faster. (Calculate that if you start now, within a few months you’ll lose a size or two.) Others lose weight more slowly, and interestingly, sometimes those who lose weight more slowly tend to keep it off for longer.
It is not surprising, but still helps to remember, published in the journal of nutrition, the study found that when people’s diet contains fewer calories than usual, reduce the amount of fat the people who walk more, compared with those who only consume fewer calories, fasting insulin levels are declining health.
In order for walking to really work for your weight loss, keep a few things in mind.
More than you’re doing right now.
There is no magic formula that tells you how many steps, miles, or hours you need to take to lose the weight you want. In the beginning, the key is to do more than you do now. “If you have a job that requires you to be on your feet all day, you need to do more than that,” Stanton said. “But if you have a sedentary office job, then taking a walk after dinner every day may have a real effect.”
Many people say to keep to a baseline of around 10,000 steps a day for good health. If your goal is to lose weight, you may want more than that once you get into the habit. But you don’t need to start here. First determine the baseline. “Don’t try to walk 10,000 steps the next day if you normally only walk 3,000. It’s really frustrating. Five thousand a day for a week. Then the next week it goes to $7,000.”
Push it.
The best way to lose excess weight is to challenge yourself from time to time — a brisk walk, a slow walk. The study found that people who walked at intervals lost more weight than those who walked at the same pace all the time. A study of patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a study between pedestrians within three minutes of fast walking and alternates between the average speed of the three minutes walk, not only to enhance their physique, than the steady state of the pacers better control of blood sugar, but also changed their body composition, abdominal fat and body fat were decreased.
Of course, if you really want to change your body structure, you’ll want to add strength training to your life. Pros: It makes you go faster, Stanton says. Also keep in mind that healthy stress management, sleep, and food all contribute to weight loss.
Make it yours.
You don’t need to walk for hours every day to lose weight, but it’s important to get into the habit of walking every day. Make it part of your daily routine – do something you don’t even think about – even if you just walk for 10 or 15 minutes on certain days of the week.
Ideally, you need two or three interval walks, or shorter, faster, more intense walks throughout the week, a few hours of long walks, and the rest can be short, moderate-intensity walks. Shorter times are great for a walk with your partner, your dog, your friends, or just yourself to clear your head.
Don’t just save walking for exercise; Do it anywhere you can (whole parking, away from the store stuff). Taking the stairs is a very familiar piece of advice that may fade into memory, but it burns more calories than walking on a flat surface and also helps build leg and hip muscles.
Find a hill.
Tyler Spraul, a certified strength and training expert and Exercise.com’s head trainer, says walking on the slopes raises the heart rate and helps activate the gluteus maximus, quadriceps and calves. Depending on the slope, he explained to NBC News, you can get similar benefits to running without increasing stress on your joints.
“Increasing slope is a great way to increase cardiovascular challenge, and you can get the same benefits from jogging or running without the same wear and tear on your knees,” he said. “The extra effort can burn more calories and, depending on your weight and cardiovascular endurance, more fat.”
Don’t let other people’s sense of runner superiority bring you down.
Walking burns as many calories as walking.
Make walking easier by ignoring these myths.
- Hand weights help you burn more calories. What they really do is make you walk more slowly, which cancels out any benefit of carrying extra weight. “You’ll get more bang for your buck by increasing your walking pace,” Stanten says.
- To go faster, take longer steps. Exactly the opposite! To go faster, you need to shorten your stride and take more steps per minute. “When you reach your foot out in front of you too far, you get more impact on your knees and hips and your foot is acting as a brake,” Stanten says. To train yourself to shorten your steps, count how many steps you take per minute (or 30 seconds, if your mind drifts quickly) during a speed interval. Then try to take more steps than that for the next minute.