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!
Losing weight can be life saving. Exercise can be fundamental to a meaningful life. Walking to lose weight combines both. For many people it is easy to start and keep going. Instant success. This is good.
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.
It’s a discovery that is exciting me. I seem to have found the key for Wii Fit, walking to lose weight and me. Regular readers of this blog will know how I like to avoid weight monitoring and prefer checking out the clothes and how they fit. I do however have the occasional weigh in for confirmation purposes. This I have taken to doing on the Wii Fit. It is a fantastic mechanism for the detail work- weight, BMI, goals, time frame. The introductory trailer above isn’t working properly but this link to it shows some Wii Fit features for measuring progress.
I’m doing brisk walking of at least an hour daily, and my clothes are getting looser.
But today with the weather not so good, and feeling frustrated with my work/life balance I woke up feeling more reluctant than usual. Inspiration hit, perfect timing to get out the Wii Fit. Now generally if I want to walk inside than I get out the Walk Away the Pounds DVD, I use it a lot. I am definitely a fan of Wii Fit but ever since I changed my walking program to one hour I haven’t returned to the Wii for exercise. In the past I found that I could get to about 30, maybe 35 minutes Wii exercise before getting bored.
I started using Wii Fit on November 24th and since then have lost 6.8 kg (just under 15 lbs) and just over 2 BMI % points.
So I get it out, which is not that difficult because I haven’t actually packed it away this time, just tidied it up. As usual I remember why I find it so much fun, it asked me how I was and then about Gaz, a friend who hasn’t been around much, then inquired as to how Gaz is looking, has he lost weight? I said he had put it on just to see the response. It advised that it was best not to mention “it”.
I have lost 2.4 kilos in the last 30 days. About 5 lbs. Today it is raining and windy and generally unpleasant. And I am feeling less than enthusiastic about my weight loss than usual. Generally I feel super confidant about the weight I am losing because I’m doing brisk walking of at least an hour daily, carefully monitoring what I eat and my clothes are getting looser, or actually fitting, in some cases.
So I need a boost and the Wii Fit test is the way to do it. I anticipate a good result but have had times when the answers are not what I wanted to hear. This is where an attitude of resilience comes in. Ignore the poor results unless it is gives you good information.
The fitness tests let you check out your history and then I take a different approach with the exercises. Take jogging. I have always found it difficult to work out the desired 60% running speed. And I can’t find a way where swinging my arms to burn those extra calories feels right. Until today. I decided to play with the options and increase the standard distance to a round the island run…but this time I walk. Marching on the spot and it works really well, and I can swing my arms and burn those extra calories (if I want to). So a marching action works for anyone who is turned off by jogging.
Then the hula hoop-I have seen a couple of videos with girls doing this and it has puzzled me because they do it in a sort of lazy way to my mind but…
turns out that is the way to get the best result! That is score highly on the Wii for that exercise.
I tried it on a few other of the games and it is a very successful strategy. This is very motivating. It helped me get to 62 minutes without really trying by doing some muscle exercises, balance games and aerobics.
Slowing down allows you to refine the posture and other details, check the balance monitors, succeed at the game and feel in control.
Interval training is a popular concept for increasing the fat burning of regular exercise say walking, jogging or running. It’s very popular on the treadmill particularly when walking to lose weight, because it works really well with the ease of buttons to press which alter speed or gradient, and you can measure heart rate for hitting specific target rates.
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.
Not only is it a good idea for those of us who are reluctant to work up a sweat but it is an easy way to include all the fancy fad exercises and dance routines or maybe boxing or weights into a workable time frame. And of course it is effective for toning or adding aerobic levels of exercise when a routine is not having the muscle and heart training effect.
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.
Using calorie control while walking to lose weight ensures that the energy expenditure is greater than calories consumed in a given period, say a day or week, and the net result is weight loss.
There are many fans of the kick-start approach which hits while motivation is high with an intense effort whether exercise or diet, with the idea that this large weight loss results in continued motivation to make the ongoing changes necessary to keep it off, or keep going if more weight loss is necessary.
A review of the bookLose Weight in a Flash, prompts me to ask the question, does losing 65 lbs count as success if you then put 40 back on even if you maintain that net 15 lb loss? Lose Weight in a Flash bases it’s direction on an “impressive” result where participants started their weight loss program with a 900 calorie a day diet and 2000 calories burned in a week exercise program. They then move to a more moderate diet for the longer term. The initial loss of 65 lbs resulted in a net loss of 15 lbs after 5 years. Because sustained weight loss is statistically unlikely, medical opinion considers this 15 lb net result remarkable, but is it?
At what point in this 5 year study did they maintain anything? Or has it been a slow return of 40 lbs? And then would you call putting on 40 lbs in 5 years slow?
Once again this is is proof that the super-charged, quick start diet does not have the long term effectiveness of slower weight loss with ongoing modified lifestyle.
