Walking To Lose Weight

This is to be the first in a series of articles about the effect of your attitude on your success when walking to lose weight. It will ask the questions which you may not ask yourself when you consider the option of walking as a healthy lifestyle for weight loss.

Walking to lose weight for some people is easily integrated into their life and achieves their weight loss requirement of say 5 pounds. If you don’t fall into the category of needing only a little tune up (losing up to 10 pounds) but need to lose more, then inactivity is likely to be a major cause. If you are more than 10 lbs overweight and very active at work or daily, than the cause must be what you eat.

So for those who are majorly inactive, and overweight, walking is a real life saver. It is relatively easy to do, and there are generally no fancy requirements but taking the time to do it often means making the time and this is where attitude can really affect your results.

Are you miserly in your attitude towards making time for walking for weight loss?

Do you let every minor deterrent be a good enough reason to not walk?

Check back with me over the next few weeks as I put together a few posts on the sneaky way an attitude overhaul can change your lifestyle for the better by walking to lose weight. Let me know if your attitude is affecting your walking schedule and any ways you may have found to get through them.

For example: does the weather stop you? do you need company? don’t feel like it? feel too tired?

Contact me through Walking to Lose Weight if you wish to contribute a guest post; leave a comment below or tweet me @walk2loseweight.

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Walking to lose weight is still a favorite way to exercise for weight loss as its so practical and has lots of other benefits but I am continuing from a previous post about my new delight in Just Dance! the Wii dance game which shows an animated professional dancer to follow as best you can, and aerobically exercise and gain points for getting it right.

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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One of the frustrations for walkers or runners is that a favorite route will go off road onto paths or byways which make the distance traveled when walking to lose weight difficult to tally. While a pedometer is an obvious answer, there is also the mapping software available at Running Map and Google GMaps Pedometer which is a similar system with the extra finesse of calculating calories burned as well.

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The starting point is always relevant when walking to lose weight.

Your starting weight, your fitness, your current level of activity.

Since the Walking to Lose Weight blog caters for the exercise-challenged and adds calorie burning rather than focusing on decreasing calories consumed, it does not mean that diet is considered irrelevant.

Responsible eating is required for successful weight loss even with the addition of walking to lose weight on a daily or thrice weekly rate.

Initial impact from adding exercise should be the loss of weight but over time one’s body acclimatizes and uses less energy for the same workout. This then requires two changes- the walking quota must increase and the diet modified to cut out obvious excess.

Tips:

1. At all times the increase in walking to lose weight should not result in higher calories eaten.

2. Drinking will need to increase to balance moisture loss but should be made up of water or low calorie drinks, or vegetable juices such as carrot. Check for the calorie information. Do not assume that a flavoured drink of any kind is low in calories unless labeled as such. Fruit juice can be very high in sugars.

3.Look at your existing diet particularly what you drink. Alcohol, sodas, fruit juices, milk drinks are generally high in calories unless made with low fat dairy products, artificial sweeteners or are unsweetened. Replace with water or other low calorie drinks.

4. Balance your food intake. Avoid cutting down on food early in the day and then becoming so hungry that you eat any and all the food you can find, later in the day.

5. Unless you have the time and willingness to shop and prepare foods which are low in calorie and fats become a low calorie shopper. Look for and sample the different low calorie versions of many foods ensuring you are never without a low calorie food option when  hungry. Try to identify those items you enjoy as snacks or meal substitutes. E.g. raw carrots, low calorie yogurts, low calorie frozen meals, low fat milk.

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When weight loss and fun combine it’s the best of both worlds. The thrust of this blog is that walking to lose weight should be enjoyable at the least and fantastic if you’re lucky!

I’ve had the WiiFit for some time and have always been a big fan. It has always supplemented walking for weight loss, and gives guidelines, weight management advice and some fun exercises.

Since Christmas though I am an avid fan of ‘Just Dance’ the Wii dance game. Watch the trailer below to get the idea. The point of using such a way to exercise is to let the fun take over, not worry about the scores or what you look like. The beauty of it is that anyone dancing doesn’t have time to look at anyone else and crticize.

Some of the the advantages of dancing for weight loss is presented in this article Kelly Osbourne Shows Off Weight Loss.

Dance like no one is looking, at home and lose weight. As with walking to lose weight these are normal activities which are natural and easy to do. Add a little gadgetry and a good time can be had by all!

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