Walking to lose Weight: 3 Tips for Success

Fitness walking is an exercise that burns calories, builds muscle, strengthens bones and is easier on your joints than high intensity activities such as jogging.

Because of this, walking to lose weight is one of the best physical activities for sustained weight loss and improved physical health.

There are many emotional and health benefits associated with walking. Read this article on the many benefits of fitness walking for more information.

There are three important components for success when walking to lose weight.

These components of walking for weight loss are: burning more calories than you consume; interval training; and strength training.

When walking to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. There are two ways to do this:

1. Increase your activity (burn more calories)

2. Eat a lower-calorie diet (consume less calories)

Fitness walking will burn calories. Research shows that 60 minutes of activity, such as brisk walking, on most days of the week is necessary for weight loss.

If you don’t have an entire hour a day to dedicate to exercise, you can break up your walking into 10-minute, 20-minute or 30-minute periods throughout your day, which is just as effective as walking for 60 minutes straight.

How many calories will you burn by walking? Read this article to find out how many calories are burned by walking. A free calorie intake chart is a great tool to help you track your daily caloric intake, how many calories you burn while walking and much more.

You'll have more success with walking for weight loss when you burn calories and reduce your daily caloric intake. It is never a good idea to try to lose weight just by eating fewer calories. No!

Why? When you eat fewer calories, you actually slow down your metabolism. This causes your body to act as if it’s in starvation mode and hold onto every calorie it can.

You’ll notice I haven’t advised you to go on a diet. That’s because I don’t believe in them.

What feelings and thoughts come to mind when you think of going on a diet? Going hungry? Denying yourself the foods you love most?

And what happens when you deny yourself something you love? Do you find yourself craving it even more? I sure do! And that leads to sneaking into the kitchen late in the evening to binge on those foods.

Instead of dieting, consider making a lifestyle change to include healthy, low-calorie foods that are nutritious and fulfilling.

If you are eating the right foods you will never feel hungry or need to count calories. Read this article on how to say NO to diets and lose weight by making a lifestyle change. Additionally, here are some great healthy tips to weight loss.

You may want to consider the benefits of organic nutrition. Organic foods are grown without pesticides or other chemicals. Additionally, research has shown that some organic foods retain more nutrients than conventionally grown foods.

It's important to eat something before walking. Certain foods will give you energy and to fuel your muscles. Read this article on the best foods before exercise. Another great weight loss tip is to eat foods that naturally burn fat. For more information, review this web site on foods that burn fat.

The second component of walking to lose weight is resistance training. Fitness walking will raise your resting metabolic rate, also known as your metabolism, which is the amount of calories your body burns to sustain itself.

This means that your body will naturally burn more calories throughout the entire day, even when you are sleeping and watching TV!

How does fitness walking raise your metabolic rate?

By developing lean muscle mass in the muscles you use to walk – legs, buttocks, stomach and potentially your shoulders and arms (if you pump your arms or use weights while walking).

Lean muscle mass is critical to boosting your metabolism because your muscles are responsible for burning calories 24/7.

When you build muscle, you increase your body’s calorie burning potential throughout the entire day, not just while you are walking.

This is how you can raise your metabolism and the amount of calories your body naturally burns every minute of every day, which is important for successful weight loss.

So how much strength training is needed for weight loss? The American College of Sports Medicine recommends:

* “Eight to 10 strength-training exercises, eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise twice a week” for healthy adults under the age of 65.

* “Eight to 10 strength-training exercises, 10-15 repetitions of each exercise twice to three times per week” for adults over 65 and for adults ages 50 to 64 with chronic conditions, such as arthritis.

We lose more lean muscle mass as we get older so it is necessary to do even more strength training as we age to retain muscle and bone mass.

Visit this site for in-depth information on muscle fitness, including exercises that you can do at home to strengthen all the major muscle groups in your body.

Strength Training While Walking

The second component of walking to lose weight is strength training. You can certainly carry hand weights while walking to build muscle in your arms and shoulders.

However, many experts agree that it isn’t a good idea to hold dumbbells while walking.

Walking with dumbbells requires you to close your fists around them, which is unnatural for walking and can lead to strain in your arms, shoulders and back.

Read this article on recommendations for which walking hand weights to use.

While using the walking hand weights keep your arms naturally at your sides and never lock your joints.

To build muscle in your biceps and shoulders, raise your arms above your head and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 12 times.

Ankle weights can also be worn, but they tend to throw off your natural gate, which can make you trip or strain the muscles in your legs. I don’t recommend wearing them for this reason.

Strength Training Plus Walking

Although you can incorporate a few arm and shoulder exercises into your walking routine with the use of hand weights, you’ll also need to dedicate some time just for weight training.

It doesn’t need to be much time, just a half hour, and only twice a week. You can accomplish this in your own home.

The third component of walking to lose weight is interval training.

Interval training is an important part of walking for weight loss as it helps your body to burn even more calories. Interval training means rotating bursts of intense activity with bursts of lighter activity.

The bursts of lighter activity are also called recovery periods because you are allowing your heart rate and breathing to slow down a bit to prepare for the next high intensity interval.

Research shows that interval training will help you burn more calories and improve your cardiovascular fitness because it keeps your body from adapting to a particular activity.

If you perform the same exercise routine day after day, your body will adapt to that exercise and will reach a plateau.

This results in fewer calories burned because it is no longer challenging for your body to complete this exercise routine.

Interval training will add variety and challenge to your walks to keep your body challenged and to burn as many calories as possible. This article will help you use interval walking to burn more fat calories.

Another technique to burn more fat and calories is walking backwards. Mix in interval walking and walking backwards into your fitness routine and you'll burn fat and calories quicker than simply walking alone.

By now, I hope you see that weight loss isn't just about how much or how little you eat.

Walking to lose weight is a proven way to lose weight because you will burn calories while building muscle. And fewer daily calories plus increased muscle mass (which burns even more calories) is the perfect combination for weight loss.

In addition to weight loss, you'll find that walking to lose weight offers many more emotional and health related benefits. Once you reach your weight loss goal, you may never want to stop walking!

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