Exciting information from a survey conducted by Consumer Reports and 21,632 of its readers in 2007 revealed that walking to lose weight ( 8 to 9 kilometers daily) is the most popular form of exercise used by those of us who have successfully lost and maintained weight loss. However most also include other types of exercise such as cycling or gym classes.
The idea of the research was to look at the actual experience of average Americans whether “naturally” slim, successful or failed weight losers. Turns out only 3 percent of the currently slim qualify as “naturally” that way, the rest continued walking to lose weight and other weight loss strategies for ongoing weight maintenance.
So for those who think of it as a one-off (the diet and exercise), as most of us do at some point, you can be assured that the majority of slim respondents keep up the same or very similar routine once the weight has been lost. Success requires the long term balancing of weight management and exercise techniques i.e. continuing in some form whatever was successful in the first place e.g. walking dvds.
Weight loss seems to require both exercise and dieting. Using either alone lowers success over the longer term.
Monitoring strategies such as weighing regularly, even daily, and using food diaries etc. worked for most although the majority did not belong to programs but did it alone. No one commercial diet worked anymore than another.
And most did not achieve success in weight loss at their first attempt.
So you can choose which group of average Americans most closely matches you- if at all, and learn something important.
Next post we will look at the way we can incorporate some of this information meaningfully into Walking to Lose Weight.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
[...] Following on from my previous post: Consumer Reports: Walking to Lose Weight is Key. [...]