Walking To Lose Weight

5 things you can do this December to avoid after-holiday remorse:

1. Carry a small (30g) pack of walnuts, cashews and almonds in your bag for those emergency hunger pangs. Avoid buying inappropriate food when out. Have healthy on-the-go breakfast foods to grab for those days where you’re behind before you start. Again avoid putting yourself in the situation where hunger forces poor choices.

2. Think differently about any social occasions you are attending. See them as opportunities to get together, acknowledge and appreciate an occasion (Christmas), people (family/friends), music or other event. This way the food becomes incidental as your mental efforts go into looking to enjoy other aspects of the occasion. If the food is not what you would like to eat, then don’t. Again, enjoy the other aspects of the occasion. If the food is just what you like but not within your calorie or portion choices, then eat and drink something before attending, only eat what is superb, and then only a tiny portion.

3. If the event is likely to be stressful, take action! Limit the time you are there, take something to do you know you (and hopefully others as well) will enjoy : arrange for alternate opportunities which will help you cope or eat or exercise better e.g. if guests normally continue eating and drinking after lunch, jump up and suggest a walk. You go whether others do or not. Avoid eating for comfort!

4. Distraction can be a great way to avoid stressful situations so suggest exercise (an active game) or other ways to avoid more eating and drinking (look at photos, holiday dvds).

5. If you are staying up later, doing more etc., make an effort to keep this moderate. Good sleep and adequate relaxation adds resilience. Don’t overload your agenda. Take a catnap during the day (short) to bolster reserves.

Generally if you have walked inches off, come the pre- and post- Christmas/Hannukah periods, steadfastness falters somewhat. No excess is insurmountable but it still makes it a lot easier if you have some idea of what you want to do to maintain your focus on walking for weight loss, during this time. I have probably done it all- from attempting to maintain a high rigidity of diet and then secretly using a transgression (or maybe not so secretly!) as a reason to throw away the rules etc., to incorporating alternative or diet foods and drink.

However whatever method you favour, quickly getting back into your walking to lose weight routine is the simplest way to ongoing success with your program. In other words, even a total neglect of the “rules” can be corrected, if changed quickly.

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‘Resolution’ may be the word which best describes an effective approach to walking to lose weight!

New Year’s Resolutions

I just love this blog post about gym membership and New Year’s Resolutions! which also applies to walking to lose weight. I have been a gym member for a number of years and switched gyms a year ago. I am non-regular in my attendance as I use its services to supplement my walking and activity program. When I feel the need (as I do now) to increase my weight loss, I start attending more frequently…

I have decided I am ready, having achieved a good steady program of regular walking and 10000 steps a day, to make it more fun by adding in variety. So the gym is going to see more of me for the next, I don’t know, six weeks. This blog describes the horror of regular gym users when the post Christmas crowd descends on the gym to temporarily clutter the environment. I have found that this also happens throughout the year but I suspect she’s right about the New Year’s resolutions as well. I did it that way many times before I became disillusioned with the excited approach. Now I try for the joyful approach! Enthusiasm helps you get started and keep going initially but for the long term, remember to practice determination with joy.

How To Be Resolute!

This blog post is amusingly true and the suggestion of getting started now is a good one. It requires a lot of things to make fitness or weight loss happen if you’re starting from scratch or not far off. A burst of enthusiasm is not going to do it on its own. Get started the right way! Set yourself up for success!

Be very certain of the reason for your weight loss or exercise effort. Pay attention to how you are seeing what you are doing. Are you dreading the activity? Do you want instant results? Are you prepared to be happy with short term success i.e. reduce a dress size ot two for a special event and then put it back on?

If you have thought beyond the weight loss result – to the desire to maintain or continue reducing- then you will require a long term approach. If you are only focussed on a specific result e.g. to pass a fitness test or look good in a wedding photo, and can go flat out over several weeks, you will probably succeed and then put back on even more than you took off, after the event.

Either way, see yourself as successful (generally) when you want to achieve something. You are prepared to do what is necessary and make it fun, doable and effective. Believe that this is possible and know that at times the memory of your positive belief is the only thing which will keep you going.

In other words you keep on coming back, to the gym, because you know even though it isn’t obvious right now, it does what is expected of it. Find those activities, events and options which are attractive to you because you already have a predisposition to do them. Join a workout group if you like group activities. Get a trainer if you like individual attention, not if you prefer to hide at the back of the class.

You can, however, develop, given the time, knowledge of the gym, the trainers, the classes and different pieces of equipment which will help you orchestrate a fulfilling program. For long term success, remember that this is a relationship. Take the time to get to know it. Let the gym be what it is. Put up with the typical idiosynchracies of this type of exercise program.

Most of all, be resolute! Be very, very resolute!

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Walk with intensity. Have fun. Walk as if you know you are losing weight with each step you take. Keep iin mind the end result you want.

Walking for Weight Loss Testimonial
I recently read an inspiring article on walking as an effective means of losing weight. This is from the UK’s Mail Online (November 22nd) and I want to talk to you about a couple of aspects which affect weight loss success.

One man and two women tried out the claim that 6 months of brisk walking for an hour a day could lose up to 2 stone. Generally they had to be convinced that walking could work for weight loss. They had to ride through an early plateau with little loss before the evidence became obvious. They each lost over 1 stone in less than 6 months.

This seems like normal walking for weight loss to me. A way to increase weight loss is to make a change to your routine by regularly adding extra effort, such as increasing your walking miles each month, or adding variety, for instance, by using different muscles through a different approach such as using steps.

Fat Cells don’t die!
An interesting article on weight loss specifically points out the longevity of fat cells. This is bad news for long term weight loss because once having been ‘fat’ and developed a large number of fat cells, the body does not kill them off but leaves them as potential recipient cells for fat deposits, at any time in your future you allow that to happen.

Many of us have gradually put on successive layers of weight, used eating for stress release, are not former athletes who have the “gene” for exercise, have had little nuisance reasons which have kept them from activity.

This highlights 5 important points when walking for weight loss:

1. For non-athletes and the obese or injured, walking is most likely to be the most effective exercise for weight loss.

2. Weight loss needs to happen over a reasonable time for long term maintenance.

3. Activity needs to be a part of your lifestyle even after the desired weight loss has been achieved. It is not a ‘band aid’ which temporarily performs a function but an essential like vitamins.

4. Your life needs to involve other activities besides eating.

5. Variety within an activity is important to lasting commitment. Use dvds such as Walk Away the Pounds.

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Do You Twitter While You Walk? If not you may be one of the many who don’t understand it’s appeal for walkers and when walking to lose weight. I like it a lot.

Twitter is called micro-blogging and it enables you to comment on what you are doing right this minute in 140 characters. This is enough to succinctly record something. Others can see your words if they are following you and you can see theirs if you are following them. Once you know someone’s Twitter ID you can find their twitterlog which is simply the list of their comments chronologically. Or you can search a topic such as walking to lose weight and review the results.

This is useful also to contact others as you can send a direct message to a someone else. You can use your own name as an ID or a made up one such as mine: walk2loseweight.

The messages sent over Twitter are called tweets.

Reasons to Use Twitter.

When walking to lose weight and making the process as simple and natural as possible it is really good to put in lots of positive reinforcement. As it goes on, the support of others can become more important but less available. After all 2 weeks is a long time for most “diets” so the initial enthusiasm others may have shown may be reduced to luke warm and that willing listener to the details of your walking progress, is showing signs of flagging interest.

Many like to walk alone and others find it their only option. It is a regular repetitive activity. Find ways of making it fun if you can such as dvds. Everyone does it differently- look for what works for you. Walking for weight loss requires attention to detail such as keeping record of times, steps, distance etc. For example I keep a nightly record of my daily steps.

Often when watching what you eat distraction works as a way to counter eating urges. Twitter is perfect for this. Write about your temptations or something else entirely. If you must describe your temptation remember that distraction works better if you find a reason NOT to eat whatever it is!

It is fun. How often have you had a very interesting question you’d urgently like to ask someone while out for a long walk. I do. Sometimes I will get the answer as well. This requires setting your phone up to send tweets.

It becomes a record of your progress.

If you find a link to a great website you would love to share with like minded people, twitter it.

By following others a sense of community is created.

If you can send text messages you can tweet.

Make It Simple.

One of the simplest methods of reporting your progress and keeping the momentum going is to use Twhirl which enables you to keep your Twitter messages open on your computer screen. A beep sounds when a message comes in either to you or from someone you are following. More importantly for me it allows easy messaging, giving options for shortening urls, doing searches etc.

It can be a distraction so I don’t always have it on.

The other important application is for the phone. Install what is necessary to send and receive tweets via text messaging, depending on your phone. Some only work for sending messages.

Keep your message simple. I don’t have a specific purpose behind my tweets except to add fun and a ‘walking with a friend’ feel while I’m walking. How tweet it is!

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How Do You Like Your Walking? Keep It Easy!

A reason to enjoy walking as a life enhancing weight loss activity is the ease with which it fits into a life. Of course I mean the walking which became my exercise of choice in a world which actually requires us to discipline ourselves to get enough activity.

When you start with the end in mind (as Steve Covey teaches) which, in this case, is weight loss, by learning to love exercise through walking daily, and doing all that is necessary to integrate it seamlessly, then it all becomes intra-related, like many circles overlapping.

It’s basically about living an inspired life by: adopting a positive worldview; planning for success; making it play; giving it time or money; taking one step at a time.

Depending upon how much you have to alter to get the end result is how long it is going to take, unless you have access to paid help. In other words quick and easy isn’t the norm but the exception. Quick exists but it is generally not cheap, or easy.

Walking for weight loss can be simple. Just add enough walking to lose weight.

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