Walking is one of the safest forms of exercise known today. Depending on how often you walk, you can manage to easily lose one pound per week or more.
Think about it, in just a few months you can be 10-20 pounds lighter without spending hours at the gym and without going on a diet.
The landscape of park trails has changed a lot in the last few years.
If before the primary visitors were couples cuddling on park benches, now the protagonists are runners.
This is because of a heightened consciousness that having a sedentary lifestyle is incompatible with having good health and good physical form.
Nevertheless, many people opt to walk each day in order to lose weight. Doctors warn about the supposed danger of running for the musculature and the bones.
But what is the right amount of walking each day to help you achieve your weight loss goals?
When dealing with tamer exercises, these do not suffer as much but conserve the principal benefits of the activity.
To begin, circulation is stimulated, and it prevents the retention of liquids, like swelling of the knees and feet. Additionally, if we do it the right way, it is very effective for losing weight.
So then, the issue now is knowing what we are referring to when we talk about that “right way.”
There are many disagreements concerning the following questions: What is the best speed? What distance do I need to cover? And which surfaces are preferable for walking?
If these questions are running through your head, follow along with us and we’ll clear up all your doubts.
What intensity of walk do you need in order to lose weight?
In general, you will need about 45 minutes a day. That is recommended average. Still, the key to eliminating fat is not so much in the time, but in the intensity of the walk.
So when you leave the house, imagine that you have to get somewhere with urgency. This way, you will be predisposed to walk with greater speed.
Ideally, you will fluctuate between 3 and 4 mph. Luckily, these days it is easier to control this.
Thanks to devices developed to record these measurements, you can download apps on your phone that function with great precision.
With this, you will reach the recommended 10,000 steps a day at least.
If you follow this advice, you will burn between 74 and 88 calories if you’re a woman, or 88 to 124 calories if you’re a man.
Said figures should result in the breakdown of fat and not muscular mass.
Keep in mind that being skinny does not equate to being healthy, so your actions should follow in the proper direction.
For this, the key is to supplement this speed walk (also known as power walking) with controlled strength exercises at least twice a week.
With this strategy and a balanced diet, you will have the certainty that you will reach your goals.
You might observe a certain plateau when your body gets used to walking for weight loss. To avoid this, introduce some variations in the routine.
- Intersperse bursts of high intensity with other more relaxed periods.
- The transition from a state of rest to an elevated cardiac frequency boosts our circulation.
- As a result, the body consumes more fat quantity during stretches of high intensity than when we just maintain a constant rhythm.
- When we do the latter, our heart becomes accustomed to the work. For that reason, the effectiveness of walking for weight loss loses its potency.
Walk 10 minutes, no more, on the beach
I’m sure that when you’ve gone to the beach, you would have noticed that walking on the sand is much more tiring than stepping on the pavement.
The reason is very simple: when dealing with a much softer surface, the body tends to sink. That means that each step requires more work.
This translates to us using a much broader selection of muscles in these circumstances.
Having this in mind, many people choose this setting for their exercises.
It is a good option, for sure, above all because it works the soles of the feet, much neglected in other sports.
However, we have to take precautions, since it constitutes a solution with a very high impact on our organs.
For this, the ideal solution is to not exceed 10 minutes and to work your way up to full speed. If you do otherwise, you run the risk of suffering debilitating injuries.
With these guidelines, you will get to take the best game to your power walking. It is important to know how to do your exercises.
Remember that when you do it the wrong way, the least harmful thing that can happen to you is not that you don’t lose weight – you could be seriously harming your body.
Source: steptohealth.com