Walking To Lose Weight

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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Walking to lose weight becomes a part of the planning process for me when I am consumed with the details of a fully committed calendar over several days.

Normally I would have written something for this blog but I probably won’t be posting again until next week.

I’m away for a 4 day business seminar and have been generally busy for the last few days. Sometimes working can seem to get in the way of my committed walking for weight loss lifestyle, but also, sometimes it is normal for priorities to be reordered for a little while. This is one of the reasons for making walking to lose weight a lifestyle.

As preparation I have been making walking and weight loss through dieting a priority for a limited time. Not as a one off diet but at an increased intensity, returning to the previous sedate program afterwards. By allowing for the normal flow of priorities, by anticipating that changes are coming, give thought to new ways of keeping weight loss a primary commitment.

Eat less when uncertain as to exercise options.

Be discreet about cutting down if food and drink are important with this organisation’s culture. You can still do it but leave the table often, or be going somewhere after, preventing over indulgence.

Planning for business trips or seminars, budget and review times, can be stressful. Walking is a great de-stressor; walk and meet with associates at the same time. Others may be tired of sitting. They do not have to know this is a part of your walking to lose weight program.

Less eating more talking. Network, make friends by concentrating on this aspect rather than the food.

Fill up your time with relaxing small talk not high pressure interviews. Think of this as a game where you are carefully assessing these other people.

Wear a pedometer and count steps to get a better idea of how much walking you have managed that day. It is easy to run up and down stairs a few times to get papers or other things and add effectively to the day’s steps.

If you are staying at a hotel use the facilities such as a treadmill or you may find taking your Walk Away the Pounds DVD the easiest way to walk.

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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.

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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 book Lose 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.

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Walking Paths

This may be the best aspect of walking to lose weight, the opportunity to become familiar with the various walking paths, scenic and otherwise, as well as local shopping centres, streets, parks and football fields. Neighbours will get used to seeing you leave for that early morning walk or nod and say hello as you pass. Some areas are friendlier than others and learning which is which becomes part of the fun of choosing to walk outside for our exercise.

I have many alternative routes and walking to lose weight gives me the opportunity to explore other areas.

An advantage for those walking in the local urban environs is it enables me to get to know where to get the best options in calorie conscious food. It can take time and questioning to determine which are actually the best choices when out.

Often dieters will immerse themselves in the details of preparing calorie conscious meals and snacks, which is a good way to go if you are responsible for others’ food but also if you cook for yourself alone. Challenges abound when shopping and cooking with unaligned family needs.

A strict but time-limited diet does require specific purchases and in some ways this is a little easier as the decisions have already been made. However the everyday and ongoing weight regulation which ensures a lifetime of happiness with our weight requires a build up of good, on-the-spot, food purchasing choices.

A walking route which includes the local cafes, coffee places and take aways provides food for thought!

How often have you made a decision expecting it will be the best from a diet view and it isn’t? For example I eat a slice of unbuttered raisin toast for breakfast when out. Generally the butter is served separately and I don’t use it. Very occasionally when I am eating somewhere new it may come already buttered. I have options- I can ask for it again without butter, not eat it or give it to someone else. For the future I’m reminded to ask for unbuttered raisin toast.

There is an advantage eating somewhere where you already know the best diet food option for you, particularly when joining others. Back to local food purchasing. When out and about particularly when walking to lose weight use this time and energy to look for suitable places for you. Getting to know what’s out there increases your chances of having an easy diet day.

Walking for weight loss increases every chance of success!

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