Walking For Fat Loss

A few people have asked me recently about walking as way to lose fat. Since many of the routines at the site may be too difficult for people who  have been sedentary, I thought I would address their questions and help them get started on a walking program.

I believe that walking can be an excellent way to get started for people who have not exercised in a long time, or who have been sedentary...But, if you're reading this, and are not prepared to sweat a little, walking won't do a darn thing for your weight. You must be prepared to challenge yourself, if you want to see changes.

My recommendation to everyone, no matter your age or present condition, is to view walking as springboard to other exercise programs that will have a greater impact on your your body and promote more fat loss. In this article, I'll talk about how to make that transition, and even provide you a basic plan.

Can  you lose weight by walking?

You can most defintely lose fat by walking. But your weight loss results will vary depending on how hard you challenge yourself. For example, a person who weighs 150 lbs can expect results similar to this:

• Walking at 2 miles per hour will burn approximately 120 calories in an hour.
• Walking at 3.5 miles per hour will burn approximately 240 calories per hour.
• Walking at 4.5 miles per hour will burn approximately 300 calories per hour.

The first thing you should notice from the results is that you have to do a lot of walking at 2 miles an hour to burn any real calories. In fact, the 120 calories you would have burned walking at 2.0 mile per hour is equal to about 3 McDonalds chicken nuggets. if you want to lose weight walking this slow, you're going to have to cut your calories, or spend several hours a day walking.

Work harder, and increase you pace to 4.5 miles an hour, and you're burning almost the equivelant of a six piece Chicken McNugget - More than twice what you burned walking slow.

If you want to see how many calories you'll burn walking, or pursueing other activities, you can go to this link. It's a good resource for calories burned for various activities.

It should be obvious from this, that to lose fat from walking, you must work yourself...A liesurly stroll in the park looking at flowers is NOT exercising for weight loss.

Maximizing fat loss from a walking program

To achieve results, you're going to have to work, and you're going to have to build your conditioning in incremental steps. That's the heart of the program described here. It will allow you to take steps to build yourself to higher fitness levels and lose fat.

The higher you progress, the more weight you will lose. Start slow, if you need to...Progress from slow walking to fast walking...Progress from fast walking to intermittent running...Add other exercise options. Just don't kid yourself and think that 30 minutes of sauntering around the neighborhood is going to effect your weight much.

It's quite normal to take the easy way out, and go through the motions. After all, you can slow down you pace and not even know it. The best way to ensure that you are challenging yourself is to continually monitor your intensity.

Unfortunately, most of us do a poor job of estimating our intensity. Most people tend to go to light, and then there's the weird few that tend to go too hard. The best and most unbiased way to monitor yourself while walking is a heart rate monitor.

Monitor your heart - lose weight

Get a heart rate monitor. They're not that expensive, and you'll save yourself a lot of aggravation when you step on the scale. Here's a guide for how to use a heart rate monitor in your walking program.

First, you'll need to know your target heart rate. Here is a heart rate calculator that will help you establish the right heart rate targets.

Once you know your target heart rates:

• Start by walking at 50% of your max heart rate
• After a few weeks of walking at 50%, challenge yourself to 60% on alternating days. (ie. one day at 60% and the next day at 50%)
• Making progress? Add two days a week where you go to 70%. But, cut your time to half of what you do when you walk at 50% of your max heart rate. For some people this may mean that they start jogging. Or, they may alternat between jogging and walking to get the hear rate up and maintain it. Again, alternate days, where one day is at 50% and longer in duration, and the other is at 70% and shorter.
• Next, add exercises on the day you maintain 50% of your max heart rate. See below on how to do that.

For every 5 minutes you walk, do one of the following exercises. Do not repeat the same exercise more than three times on a given day. Following this approach, on an hour walk, you will do 10 exercises.

Here's some exercise ideas that you can add while walking:

• Weight less squats
• Lunges
• Pushups
• Crunches
• Hip lifts
• Jumping jacks
• Squat Thrusters - These are a little harder, so be prepared

Higher intensity and greater fat loss

By the time you've reached the end of this program, you should be jogging/walking at around 70% of your max heart rate. In addition, you will have added additional exercises to increase the intensity of your workout. Eventually, walking will be a thing of the past, you'll be engaged in higher calorie burning activities and losing fat like crazy.