Why Walking Is A Good Choice To Lose Weight
Other than fasting, the only healthy way to lose weight is by engaging in physical exercise. Regular walking has a low barrier which won’t deter most people from walking.
If you have to walk at some point in the day anyway, it makes sense to walk a little bit further. It’s easier to continue the exercise once you start it rather than gearing yourself up for an aggressive workout.
However, ideally, you want to work your way into brisk walking. This means walking at a faster pace than usual – approximately 1.5 to 3km/h. Brisk walking is shown to have similar health benefits as running but without long-term issues on your joints.
What we do know is that the exertion of a brisk walk helps to strengthen your muscles – and building skeletal muscle mass is the antidote for battling weight loss.
Experts predict that 2,000 steps (or 1.6 km) will burn around 100 calories. By burning 300-500 calories a day (10,000 steps) you should lose about 1/2 kg in just one week – provided you are eating healthy low-fat, low-carb foods.
Tips To Lose Weight Through Walking
If you are serious about starting a brisk walking program to lose weight, it will be more effective if you follow these tips:
- Add Variety
Choose routes that make you work harder. For example, hills and uneven terrain make your muscles work harder which is good for burning muscle and energy.
- Change the pace
Sports scientists say that changing the pace during a walking workout promotes faster fat burn. Fitness coaches also recommend walking for about 2 minutes at your normal pace, then breaking out to a moderate walking pace for a minute. If you can go up another gear, go flat out for thirty seconds.
Repeat the process for about 20 to 30 minutes and you will start to notice a difference in your weight loss goal in around three weeks. After three months, you will be down to a weight that is really encouraging. At this point, your exercise program becomes easy.
- Engage Abdominal Muscles
Weak abdominal muscles make your shoulders droop and press on your lungs. When your airways are constricted, you’re not able to breathe deeply which means you don’t get enough air into your lungs and tire more quicker.
To combat this, stand in an upright position, relax your shoulders and push them back. Pull in the abdominal muscles so that your spine straightens. This is important for holding the body upright and allowing air to flow through your diaphragm without restriction.
- Walk in the Morning
This won’t be a favourite with everybody, but morning walks are thought to be the best time to boost metabolism. Exercise in the morning sets your body up for buying fat and calories for the rest of the day.
But even if you can’t make time in the morning because of other commitments, squeezing a 30-minute walk in every day will contribute to your weight loss goals. The more you do, the more you lose and the less difficult exercise feels.
It should be noted that you should also be eating a healthy diet as part of your weight loss program.
If you need any more motivation, download the sweatcoin app and convert your steps into digital tokens. For every 1000 steps, you take we give you 1SWC that you can spend over 300 partners. So you can make money as you lose weight.
Credit sweatco.in