Regular exercise is an important piece of your overall health, including your weight.
It helps you stay physically fit and healthy, which can reduce your risk of developing certain conditions like diabetes, cancer and heart disease. It generally helps you live a longer and healthier life.
Additionally, it is a great way to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
Walking, for example, is low-risk and perhaps the easiest exercise you can incorporate into your daily routine.
So are you walking to lose weight? Here’s how walking can help you lose weight and keep it off. We also give you a few tips on how to incorporate walking into your day-to-day routine.
Walking helps you burn calories
Every complex chemical reaction that allows you to think, breathe, move, and function requires energy in the form of calories.
Daily calorie requirements differ from individual to individual. Factors affecting your calorie needs include your activity level, weight, height, age, genes, and sex.
It is well known that weight loss typically occurs when you burn more calories than you consume. In fact, active individuals tend to burn more calories than those living a sedentary lifestyle.
Unfortunately, with our work environments today, most people tend to spend most of their days sitting.
It can be noted that a sedentary lifestyle increases your risk of health problems and contributes to weight gain.
Increasing your physical activity through regular exercise like walking can help reduce these risks and burn more calories.
Walking on routes with hills increases the intensity of your walk, thereby burning even more calories.
Walking helps reduce belly fat
Having a lot of fat around your midsection has been tied to increased risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In fact, women with a > 35-inch waist circumference and men with a > 40-inch waist circumference are considered to have a health risk of abdominal obesity
Doing a regular aerobic exercise like walking every day is among the most effective ways to reduce belly fat.
In fact, individuals on a calorie-controlled diet who walked for 60 minutes, five times per week, for 12 weeks have been found in one study to lose more body fat and drop inches off their waistlines, compared with those on a diet alone.
Walking helps preserve lean muscle
Calorie restriction and weight loss often come with muscle loss, in addition to fat loss.
Fortunately, walking can help preserve lean muscle when you lose weight.
Lean muscle preservation reduces metabolic slowdown that often comes with losing weight. This makes it easier to maintain weight loss.
Moreover, regular exercise decreases muscle loss that often comes with aging.
Walking helps you maintain a healthy weight
Some people who try to lose weight end up experiencing weight regain.
Fortunately, and interestingly, walking can contribute to maintaining your weight.
Not only does walking help increase the number of calories you burn per day. It also helps build more lean muscle, causing more calories to be burned even at rest.
Walking at least 150 minutes per week has been shown in a review to maintain a stable weight. You can try walking 30 minutes per day for 5 days every week.
Walking can help boost your mood
Studies have shown that physical activity can help reduce feelings of stress, anxiety and depression, and improve your mood.
During exercise, your brain is more sensitive to the hormones that help make you feel happy: the serotonin and norepinephrine.
Apparently, walking is a form of exercise that most people enjoy.
Enjoying a physical activity has been shown in some studies to increase the likelihood that you will do it in the long term.
On the other hand, physically demanding exercise can be unsustainable for most people. Therefore, walking makes an excellent choice if you want to do an activity that you will enjoy doing in the long term or even for life.
How Many Steps A Day?
Walking to lose weight? You might also want to know how many steps a day to lose weight.
A 2011 study found that healthy adults should take 10, 000 steps a day. This is a reasonable target for them, but they can take anywhere between ~ 4,000 and 18,000 steps per day.
However, your goals should be taken into account when setting a specific number of steps to take. This doesn't mean that you should focus on that number.
It is highly important that you start small, at least in the beginning, and increase your movement throughout the process.
Incorporate Walking Into Your Lifestyle!
Being more active provides a lot of benefits beyond weight loss. It reduces your risk of developing certain health conditions, improves fitness and mood, and increases likelihood of living a longer and healthier life.
Therefore, walking at least 150 minutes per week is recommended. This target is achievable.
Here are some easy ways on how to incorporate walking into your lifestyle.
- Build in a daily walk habit.
- Walk your dog every morning.
- Commute to work instead of driving.
- Take a brisk walk during your lunch break or after dinner.
- Take the stairs.
- Go to the store on foot.
- Go for an evening walk with a friend or family after work.
- Look for a walking group.
- Motivate yourself to walk more by using a fitness tracker to log your steps and weight loss calculator to monitor your progress.
Don’t underestimate the power of small steps. So start small and then gradually improve as you go along.
Conclusion
Walking is a great exercise that can be easily incorporated into your daily life.
Walking more often not only helps you lose belly fat and body weight, but also provides other impressive health benefits like improved mood and reduced risk of certain diseases.
The number of steps to take depends on the goal you want to achieve. However, take note that you should not focus on that number, but rather on improving your movement as you go along.
Combining regular exercise with a well-rounded diet can help you better manage your weight and achieve your long-term goals.
Using a weight loss calculator can also help you track your progress, and this can be a great way to get and stay motivated!
