If your results go the other way and even with a regular daily walking to lose weight schedule your weight loss has plateaued then you need to shake up your schedule in another way. The energy (calories) used from any particular exercise changes over time as the body’s muscles adapts to the process and economizes on the number of calories burned. Initially this is compensated for by increasing the amount of time and distance of walking. Total calories burned increases.

Eventually, however, you will meet the maximum time commitment you are able to make and at this stage when your walking for weight loss schedule needs intensifying then several options are available to you.

1. Increase the intensity of the walking you do by adding hills, steps, weights or intermittent running. Another way to increase the intensity of an hour’s walking to lose weight would be to do a high intensity walking DVD such as those from Leslie Sansone or  Kathy Smith’s Power Walk.
2. Break up your standard program with exercise groups such as aerobic step classes.
3. Use an activity  monitor which measures not only steps throughout the day but also the level of exertion during those steps. This enables you to increase the number of movements done at the higher level intensity rather than the lower end of your walking to lose weight.
4. Have a ‘bootcamp’ period of one or two weeks when you try different forms of exercise, such as boxing, aerobic dance, etc.

Remember that walking to lose weight on a smooth surface such as a path can allow you to walk at a brisker pace. Walking on natural terrain can increase the calorie burn though if your feet must grip, divert directions, go up and down inclines, change balance etc. Walking on a treadmill does not require the natural push off needed when walking normally. However you can walk faster, increase the incline and run for intervals.

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I’ve written about Nintendo Wii’s Just Dance! previously and it’s great for fun and burning calories but the truth is that just as with walking, to get started on an aerobic dancing exercise program nothing much is needed.

First requirement is somewhere to dance. This is simply space enough to move and wave your arms, in front of the bedroom mirror is a popular option.

Second requirement is great music. A good beat is important but it can range from drumming to disco.

Just as when walking for weight loss exercise, the right attitude is important. Start with ten minutes and see how your body feels the next day. Add more as your body can take it.

Walking to lose weight is fantastic for the lower body mainly the legs. Moving your arms in a natural swing keeps the joints flexible. Add weights and the arm muscles get a workout.

What walking to lose weight cannot do normally is use those abdominals.

This is where dancing to lose weight can shine!

Use Latin style dance movements, hula or twists to trim this area of your body.

Latin dancers, male and female, have the most beautiful bodies.

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The crux of the weight loss exercise argument is always about calories burned. Aerobic or fat burning exercise produces more calories burned in a shorter time than walking. Once I have a certain level of fitness which can sustain faster or more intense exercise without causing undue restriction to ongoing activities (the easiest way to derail an exercise program is to overdo it and force quit ) then walking to lose weight can be supplemented with very effective calorie burning for those occasions when walking for an hour is not an option for me.

Just Dance! for an hour would probably burn 500+ calories. Walking at a brisk pace would burn around 300. Time vs effort is the equation!

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Walking to lose weight outside offers the potential opportunity to do other exercises. Recently I was walking in a park with a friend-we were walking for weight loss as were many other people who were there-and discovered that the park had an outdoor gym with some interesting gym-type equipment. It was fun and added some more intense muscle exercises and a diversion to our walk.

When in a park or grassy area which lends itself to sport or activity it is more comfortable to do some exercises which wouldn’t look right in your suburban street. However you could do them at your house at the end of the walking for weight loss, or with the Wii.

My suggestion today is to add lunges -doing a set of 10 every half mile or 500 meters. They could be walking lunges or stationary.

Always allow your body particualry the leg muscles to warm up before lunging, and if you haven’t done them for a while or are new to them start gently and judge how your legs are coping before intensifying.

For far too many years I couldn’t ‘do’ lunges. For some reason the lunge fairy hadn’t stood on my shoulder and sprinkled the fairy dust and I reluctantly lunged. In case you had the same errors in your thinking as I did I will pass on my new way of doing lunges which now gets me rated as ‘very good’.

To lunge:

Stand with your feet slightly apart and take one leg back behind, with the heel of this foot off the ground and the toes on the ground and flexed, balancing and taking the weight.

The front knee must not come over the toes when bent so move the back leg further back if this is the case.

The ‘lunge’ is bending the front knee as the back knee moves towards the ground.

Stability comes from the placement of the back leg- not too close or they are impopssible to do, or too far back and balance is lost. Try until you can keep balanced while doing the lunge down and back up.

Don’t worry if your back knee doesn’t seem to go too far down at first. Unless you have a mirror it is hard to tell just how far you are getting that back knee down.

Walking to Lose Weight Hints:

1. The important leg in this exercise is the back one. Focus on dropping that back knee rather than bending the front one.

2. When taking the leg back, think ‘balance’ rather than taking a direct line backwards. It may be easier for you to take your back foot off line a few inches. Avoid going so far as to require your body to twist when you are lunging.

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I am looking for ideas to add to and improve my walking experience. It seems that there is a constant stream of ideas from walking accessories, Iphone applications, and medical research to the latest fad nutritional supplement.

Each New Year we tend to look at the coming year and focus on some aspect of life, maybe very specifically-I’ll take the dog for an hour walk every day- to the general, such as using all the latest “help” available to continue the walking to lose weight program. This is an ongoing commitment to walking to lose weight as it is a lifestyle change into an active person for you.

One way to keep the attention on walking for weight loss is to ensure fresh ideas overlaid on the basics.

The two new ideas to grab my attention for 2010 are the iPhone apps such as Weight Watchers and the chili supplement which has incorporated calorie burning by metabolism enhancement.

iPhone:

I am a big pedometer fan and find the low tech versions to be fantastic for those starting out with walking to lose weight. If you like to play with a bit more technique however a more advanced version such as the one mentioned on the right could be more to your liking. The sales link is to my Amazon affiliate account.

The various iPhone apps with every weight loss concept covered are enticing. Sometimes this can be an illusion, especially if the technical side is not a joy to you. There is not a way for the iPhone to magically cause weight loss or do the walk for you. I am considering it, not as a specific weight loss tool, but the technical side requires some commitment on my part.

Chili

Protective encapsulation protects one’s stomach from inflammation and the supplement increases calories burned without walking, etc. I’m not sure why this is supposed to happen.

However 2010 is the year for new and fresh ideas for walking to lose weight and weight loss for me.

Anyone wishing to make comments on the Iphone for weight loss, or the chili supplement are welcome.

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Walking for weight loss enhances your mood, and reiterating my original premise, the right mood is a must for keeping at weight loss. And this depends upon lots of things such as your metabolism. Weight bearing exercise revs up your metabolism as well as toning your body.

Tip: Try something new! Whenever the old routine is getting tired, add a small change in some way. It may be the major injection your walking to lose weight routine needed at this point.

A couple of weight loss tips:

try a new (and easy) low fat snack recipe-this dill dip appeals to me because I love dill;

go to the library or video store and borrow a Walk Away the Pounds DVD, see if you like it;

make one day a walk everywhere day.

Use your imagination, look at what others are doing and without abandoning your already established walking for weight loss process, add some spice. Try it, if you don’t like it then forget it. Alternatively you may find it works for you, so give walking for weight loss tips a chance!

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Can using an extra 100 calories daily lose weight when we know that a pound of fat is made up of 3500 calories?

Yet it does. Over time, and more quickly than these figures suggest.

Sometimes it can be easy.

Other times it takes a combined effort of diet and extensive exercise.

There is a magical process which works to make the calories in and out equation more productive than it looks from this information.

It occurs when a number of aspects of diet and movement, metabolism and body chemistry combine in such a way that weight loss occurs quicker than the simple burning of calories suggests.

All things being equal the benefit of calories burned through exercise is more than simply a withdrawal from the fat bank account but the increased metabolic rates and standing body rates of ongoing life support.

Knowing too much can be discouraging and  irrelevant unless you are selectively using monitoring of behaviour rather than results.

The connection between food and calories made by recording food and calories eaten can be insightful and effective.

The connection to exercise is more problematic-it has more than a calories burned impact, dependng on the type of exercise it can effect metabolism as muscle uses more energy for maintenance than fat. And walking for weight loss can provide a way of feeling in control. it offers a solution after the horse has bolted i.e. having overeaten then walking can ameliorate the guilt or physical affects in addition to the calories burned walking.

Recording pedometer steps helps motivation towards achievement of a target such as 10,000 daily steps. It allows the user to become conscious of their movement and liable to add extra when possible. For eating the recording of food as it is eaten becomes a means of avoiding unconscious eating.

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Others are puzzled by the popularity of walking as a weight loss strategy. Some do it and question its success. Also starting a walking to lose weight program, if you do it around others, can attract lots of attention. There are many options for walking whether inside or outside, or doing it alone or with friends or a group. Look at Walk Away the Pounds as a less public alternative to walking in a gym.

It’s simple with this basic understanding:

What is required of you when walking to lose weight is relative to the activity already existing in your life.

1. If you are already active and then start following recommended walking times you will find little response. This is natural because you may not be adding much, if anything, into your active life -perhaps even doing less than normal. Or you might be adding to your eating allowing the exercise to stimulate your appetite and then rewarding yourself with food or drink. The purpose of additional exercise is to create a calorie deficit, stimulate your metabolism, divert the mind, increase well being, and improve sleep. All these things and others combine synergistically to enhance weight loss.

2. If you haven’t been particularly active before but focus on the specific time requirements or distance recommended, and then stop for the rest of the day, you may not be adding to your exercise at all; if you stop other exercise when adopting a weight loss routine it has to be because the amount of exercise you’ve added more than substitutes for your normal activity.

However if you are frail, underweight or under-exercised to extreme weakness, the only way forward is to build up your muscle strength before taking on extensive walking.

A couch potato who adds in a 10 minute walk morning and evening will respond well to wearing a pedometer all day, finding out what is their normal daily step count and being motivated in bringing them up to the 10,000 recommended daily steps for weight loss. Any significant increase in walking for this person is likely to lose weight.

However, an active person may not find adding walking has an effect on weight loss. Normally though, an additional one hour daily walking will cause weight loss.

Generally diet modification is also necessary for weight loss. Think about what you are eating. Instead of mindlessly looking for what appeals right now, consider the impact on you real goal, to lose weight. Being a little bit hungry is all right. Eat wisely if still hungry and always drink water before you are thirsty. I.e. consciously drink water or diet drinks, after you have exercised, increasing the amount depending upon the temperature of your body, and the weather.

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I get out the Leslie Sansone’ DVD, pop it in the Mac, pull out the weights and my step, and away we go. Every time I do it again after a while away I am surprised anew how tired my body feels. It is harder than doing the equivalent time walking. Also I have added in the step when I am short of space so when she walks forward for four steps, I go up and down on the step.

When walking to lose weight there are a few additions which enhance the likelihood of doing the required walking. An essential is a way to measure your activity. Using your watch is the simplest. Eventually you need to modify this to ensure that the requisite energy is being used. Then a pedometer becomes a good companion for walking outside or counting steps. Over time as you become acquainted with how much walking is needed for you to get the results you want, you will get to know how much distance is necessary. With Leslie’s DVD the 3 programs are divided into 1,2 and 3 mile distances. This makes it easy to add in an extra mile if you need that distance to bring your step count up for the day.

There are lots of good exercise DVDs available but every one has different space, time, equipment requirements. I’ve bought and not used more than once the Billy Blanks’ and Jillian Michaels’ DVDs even though these are good. Recently Jillian was quoted as saying that the weight loss lifestyle is hard but at least “Walk your lunch hour. Do a video in your living room for 30 minutes.”

There are some special aspects of the walking series which make me return to Leslie Sansone. She makes it seem easy, to get what you need from her simple routines. If you need extra such as a competitive element, or challenge (other than losing weight) -even a mental one- than the more complex systems are probably for you. The beauty of walking to lose weight is it’s simplicity. It can genuinely add value by providing more than weight loss.

The benefits of walking for health and general well being are numerous.

Leslie is friendly, inclusive and not intimidating, for either beginner or advanced. She explains really easily what she is doing and why it helps to do it this way.

Walking is easy, everyone can do it, but there is a learning component when doing it to lose weight and once you understand the significance of some of the moves and changes she recommends it is easy to modify what you are doing when walking in general. This way you get a higher calorie burn.

Her DVDs are a good demonstration of how walking can have a significant weight loss impact.

She adds weights and other accessories which are all well designed and explained. I have hand weights which I used before I got around to filling her Walk Away Weights with water. I really like these new type of weight-they’re easy to hold but require a different action, balancing the ball and keeping the fingers outstretched rather than gripping. The disc style weights are usually too big for me to hold comfortably and gripping the handle of the dumb bells can aggravate any arthritic problems.

The Walk Away the Pounds series is a real workout without being intimidating and requiring intricate techniques. If you have a preferred weight obviously you can use that and it can be modified in any number of ways, to suit your situation, such as my addition of the step.

Lots of people use DVDs for their regular way to walk or like me, supplement their normal daily activity when necessary. Either way it is a pleasure to walk with Leslie.

Walk Away the Pounds with Leslie Sansone

NOTE: The link to Amazon is for U.S. and Canadian purchasers only, because they work with North American DVD players or multi-format players only. For International purchasers this can be determined by checking your player manual.

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It is effective for toning or adding aerobic levels of exercise when a routine is not having the muscle and heart training effect. Once a body has adjusted to a level or type of exercise it works less at it, meaning less energy (calories) is required and it’s fat burning decreases but all that has to be done to re-stimulate the calorie burning is to shock the body into working again by changing or increasing the intensity of what you are doing.

It works brilliantly on a treadmill, or in an exercise class or with a personal trainer. Walking or exercise dvds should have higher fat burning options.

An easier way to add intensity to a regular walking to lose weight routine other than increasing the pace is by varying the terrain. In some way increase the energy used during a normal route by walking off the path, on gravel, or grass and an uneven surface. Anything which makes you lift your feet higher or sidestep, alter pace etc. will require more energy e.g. walk up that hill you normally avoid.
I also find that varying the walking surface for one walk a week to a “harder” one then normal also has an effect. This could mean walking on the beach or on a bush track instead of a treadmill or concrete path.

This increased intensity also works to stimulate renewed interest for you in what you are doing. The same routine can become comfortable but ‘phoned in’. Your body needs to know it is working! And to get the natural high which results from pushing just a little harder.

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