Walking is a great form of physical activity – it is free, safe, and easy to do on a daily basis. Just as any other workouts, it reduces your risk of developing such health conditions as diabetes, stroke, or heart attack. Needless to say, physical activity in any form is crucial for maintaining good fitness level, strengthening your physical and emotional health, and supporting your wellbeing.
Walking is accessible to the majority of people, so it is easy to incorporate it into your day-to-day routine. It is suitable for any fitness purpose you might have – may it be adding more exercises into your life, or simply trying to improve your overall health. It is one of the best and safe ways to burn some calories, get your muscles to work, and gently raise your heart rate. But is it possible to use walking for weight loss?
How can you lose weight by walking?
Just as all forms of exercise, walking can be beneficial for both weight loss and its maintenance – combined with a healthy diet, walking will be a good addition to your regular exercise schedule; as a result, it will be much easier for you to lose weight.
However, it is not the amount of trainings you need to be securing the most: it’s more about your daily calorie intake. To get rid of some unwanted pounds, your body needs to burn more calories than in gets. Even high calorie-burning exercise could not compete with a lot of high-calorie products, sugars, and fats you might consume.
So, workouts alone would not be enough to help you lose weight – but as soon as you have adopted a nutrition plan that suits your health and fitness goals, you can count on walking. It will be beneficial to your weight loss plan, even as your main form of physical activity.
Benefits of Walking
Sedentary lifestyle that most of us lead isn’t doing anyone justice. Lack of physical activity negatively affects both your physical and emotional wellbeing – and the easiest exercise to incorporate into your daily routine is to start walking.
Everyone knows how to do it, and most of us need to do it from time to time anyway – and people are more likely to stick with the activity that they understand and know how to do.
Research shows that most people love to walk, but they are hesitant to adopt somewhat intense fitness strategies – like regular jogging or cardio – into their day-to-day life. If it is easier to stick with walking alone, so be it! It’s easy to do, no special equipment is required, and your chances of getting injured are considerably low.
Even if you hate working out, you can really lose weight by walking – even if it’s your primary physical activity.
Ready, Set, Go
Consistent, regular work is a key to success. The common number of steps per day is somewhere around ten thousand – you can aim to walk this much if you can, but every organism is individual, so your pace might be a little different from common.
Before setting a goal, track your steps for 2-3 days to figure out what is your average daily step count. Then, you can start working from there. It is perfectly okay if you’re not going to hit ten thousand steps every day. Listen to your body and start slow – if your number is somewhere around 3000 steps, try to raise it to 5000. If you’re already walking a lot, try increasing your pace instead of adding more steps.
Remember to listen to your body. How soon do you start to feel tired? What walking speed feels like the most comfortable? Do you need to speed up – or should you be slower, but make it a longer walk? Listening to yourself will help you see walking as a pleasant experience, and not just a boring routine.
Pro-tip: how to lose weight by walking quickly?
People tend to adapt to the most comfortable energy-saving pace when they walk. To burn more calories, try walking faster than you usually do. You can do it more efficiently by using intervals: 30 seconds of walking fast, then recover for 60 seconds. If you don’t like to set a timer, try using landmarks: walk fast for a block, then return to your regular speed for the next two blocks.
