Walking
Can you lose weight by walking? Absolutely. The question is, for how long. At some point, the body is going to plateau because it gets used to the activity. Just like eating the same food over and over. Initially, it might taste good, but that sensation starts to fade as you get accustomed to it. Walking is great because it is low impact and can be done for a long period of time. However, when people expect to lose a lot of weight strictly by walking, that is where you have to make sure you have a plan.
“It’s okay, I walk a lot.” Every so often I hear this and am dying to tell that person that it takes a lot of walking if its being used as a mean to lose weight. It all goes back to one pound of fat. There’s 3,500 calories in one pound of fat.
If you want a rough estimate (there’s no such thing as accurate, just a guess) of how many calories your walk is, check out: http://www.mapmywalk.com/improve/calorie_calculator/
Based on this calculator, I burn roughly 102 calories if I go on 1 mile walk at a 15 minute pace. The key to burning calories is elevating the heart rate. I’m a slow walker, so walking does not elevate my heart beat, so this estimate is probably less.
Lose weight by walking? Sure, why not. Or can you?
The ideal burning calories depends on how much weight you want to lose. Let’s just say you wanted to lose 2-lbs for the month, which means you have to burn 7,000 calories. Break that down into 8 weeks and you have to burn 875 calories a week. Divide this number by 7 days and there you go, 125 calories a day. In my case, I would have to walk at least 1.1 mile a day to burn close to 125 calories.
That doesn’t seem too much, but you know how life is. I’m not going to walk 1.1 mile everyday, so when I miss a day that means I would have to make it up. Now that 1.1 mile becomes 2.2 miles. If I miss two days, then forget about it, right? Now this is all theory and may not be completely practical because there’s errors to these calorie estimates. You might even have to do more than 1.1 mile. I know, crazy right?
In conclusion, the only way you can verify whether your program is working is based on your results. Can you lose weight through walking? Of course. But the question is, for how long? Once the weight stops dropping, that is when things need to be changed. If the weight isn’t going down, then chances are either the diet isn’t controlled or you are simply not burning enough calories.
Hope you liked this week’s blog. Stay tuned for more next Wed……………………Kei
Comments