Walking is One of the Best Exercises to Lose Weight!
Our ancestors didn’t have to make time to walk. They were already walking.
Up until the last two hundred years, humans walked and ran for their lives. The cavemen had to walk and run from predators. Up to the twentieth century, owning a horse was a sign of relative affluence or a sign that you were a farmer.
People thought nothing of doing all their errands on foot, walking to work, taking a stroll on dates, and doing walking tours of their property. Our founding fathers, for instance, used to inventory their tobacco fields by doing daily walks around their farms. George Washington bragged that he could cover five miles in an hour on foot.
Cars and suburbs changed all that. Now, a typical American gets up in the morning, drives ten to thirty miles to work, parks his car, spends all day crunching numbers in an office. Then he gets back in his car and drives home, and spends his evening watching sports or other television programs.
This is not a healthy lifestyle. Sedentary lives that feature no exercise lead to cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.
You may be thinking, “But I don’t have time to go to the gym,” and “I hate exercising.” Or maybe you’re thinking, “I’m in such bad shape, if I play a game of tennis, it will kill me.”
So don’t.
You heard me. Don’t get a gym membership. Don’t waste money on a treadmill. One of the best exercises to lose weight is walking.
And the great thing about walking is that you don’t need any new equipment (except maybe a decent pair of shoes), and you don’t have to get in shape first before you can start doing it.
You may be asking, “Can you lose weight by walking?”.
Well, the answer is YES!
Walking is a great exercise for weight loss. Not only does it burn calories, it builds muscle and staves off chronic disease. Several studies show that people at risk for diabetes can prevent its onset by walking for ninety minutes a day.
You can incorporate walking into your day with relative ease. If you live within five miles of your job, consider walking to work. You can always get an Uber home if you’re too tired to make the trek back.
Think about what errands you could run on foot. Maybe you’re too far from your dentist’s office to walk there, but could you pick up a prescription at the pharmacy that’s only five blocks away.
What about that convenience store down the street where you go for emergency milk and bread? Could you walk there just as easily? Could you walk to your neighbor’s house, to have dinner with friends, to a movie?
Below are some tips for getting the most out of your walks.
1. Choose an environment that makes you happy
Many people like to walking to lose weight in nature. Maybe you want to start your walking regime in a nature preserve or a national forest. You can make wilderness walks more interesting by learning to identify birds or wildflowers. You might even find that birding or flora watching becomes a lifetime passion.
Other people hate being outdoors. In that case, go to the mall to do your walking. People watching at the mall is fun, and you can drop into your favorite boutique for a new pair of jeans when you drop a size from all that walking.
2. Walk briskly for at least thirty minutes
Scientists tell us that, to get the most weight loss benefits, we need to walk at a brisk pace for the first thirty minutes. During that time, your body burns off the calories that you’ve stored as sugar for quick energy. After thirty minutes, you start burning fat, but you can go at a more relaxed pace.
It’s not rocket science to lose weight by walking. The faster and longer you walk, the more weight you will lose. People who are significantly overweight, i.e. more than twenty pounds overweight, will see the fastest results. If you are only trying to drop five pounds, it will take longer, but you will eventually see the results you are expecting.
3. Use a fitness tracker
People get vastly different results from walking, with one person burning three hundred calories in thirty minutes and someone else only 112.
If you are serious about losing weight by walking, consider buying a fitness tracker that tells you how many steps you have walked, your heart rate, and blood pressure. These trackers typically go around your wrist, like a watch.
Fitness trackers keep you honest about how far you have really walked during the day. There are even some trackers that will approximate how many calories you’ve burned using metrics like your current weight, age, number of steps and heart rate.
If you find, using your tracker, that your walks aren’t burning as many calories as you need, you can increase your pace and/or the amount of time you spend walking. When increasing your pace, it’s better to increase the number of steps you take per minute. Taking longer strides can result in injury.
4. Wear or carry weights
If you are not achieving your weight loss goal by walking and you don’t have time for a longer walk, you can make your walk more effective by adding weights. These can either be ankle weights that you strap on right above your feet. Or you can carry small barbells.
If you are new to weights, use lighter ones starting out. One or two pound weights are good for beginners and won’t cause injury. But even one-pound hand weights will definitely up the calorie burn.
5. Keep your arms moving
Even without weights, if you swing your arms while walking, you will lose more calories in a shorter time. Swinging your arms also helps your feet move faster. The arms and legs work together to create forward momentum. Can you lose weight by walking without swinging your arms? Of course, but why not maximize your caloric burn when you can 🙂
6. Wear the right shoes
Some people hate walking just because they are wearing the wrong shoes. When you really commit to walking for weight loss, you will want to get walking shoes. Walking shoes are not engineered the same as running shoes.
Make sure that your shoes are a good fit. When you try them on in the store, they should have plenty of room in the toe. Keep in mind that feet swell while walking, especially in warm weather.
And, if you have never done any serious walking, you may find that your feet go up a size. This is because the feet of walkers spread to make their walks more efficient. Be sure to notice if your shoes no longer fit.
7. Take the dog
You don’t need a dog as an excuse to go walking for weight loss. But dogs are great for reminding us to walk. A dog will wake you up in the morning for her walk. She will bark at you and escort you to the front door. Some dogs even bring their owners a leash.
A 2019 study showed that dog owners more often meet fitness guidelines recommended by the American Medical Association. That’s because dog owners, on average, spend two hundred more minutes a week walking than people without dogs.
So, walk your dog. If you don’t have a dog and if you don’t live in a no-pet apartment, consider getting a dog.
In conclusion, walking really is the best exercise for the majority of people. It’s the ideal exercise for people who are overweight or out of shape. Walking rarely results in injuries which discourage most people from keeping up with their exercise regimes. And, with walking, you can start out at a slow, easy pace and accelerate as you lose weight and strengthen your endurance.
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