Walking for Fat Loss???
With obesity and disease
increasing dramatically, many fitness experts are recommending
walking for fat loss and fitness. Some are even going
so far as saying that walking is the best way to burn fat
and lose weight. I strongly disagree with this and am going
to show you why walking is NOT effective at burning off body
fat.
Yes, you read that correctly...
Walking is NOT effective at burning body fat and if your
goal is fat loss you might be wasting your time. I am not
saying that walking is not beneficial, I am saying that if
fat loss is the primary goal, there are far better choices
that will deliver far better results.
The primary benefits of walking are increased blood flow
and circulation, improved recovery, and a strengthened immune
system. There are several reasons why walking in not the
best choice when it comes to fat loss. Here are just a few:
1. Walking does NOT burn a lot of calories
The lower the intensity of the activity or exercise the
smaller the number of calorie s burned per unit of time.
For example, you can burn more calories in 15 minutes of
bicycling at a high intensity level than you can in 45 minutes
of easy walking.
2. Walking does NOT result in a large increase in metabolism
Another downside
to walking is that because it’s generally
low intensity it results in only a small increase in metabolism
that will only last approximately 1-2 hours after the walk.
On the other hand, metabolism increases are larger and last
longer (4-24 hrs or more) when you perform high intensity
cardio workouts.
3. Walking does NOT deplete muscle glycogen
Low intensity exercise like walking does not deplete muscle
glycogen levels and therefore, later that day if you have
excess calories they will likely be stored a s body fat whereas
if you deplete the glycogen the excess calories will primarily
be stored in the muscles.
So why then do
so many fitness and health experts recommend walking for
weight loss? One reason is that people don’t
want to hear that they have to work hard so they figure some
activity is better than none. Another reason is that the
body burns more fat for fuel when exercising at an easy pace,
however, the total amount of energy used is so small that
you end up burning off little body fat. That’s also
why when you choose the “fat burning” program
on your treadmill or bike it has you exercise at any easy
level. Yes, you’re burning fat, but so little that
you’d have to exercise at that easy pace for hours
and hours each day.
High intensity cardiovascular/aerobic exercise is much more
effective in burning off the excess body fat. In fact, several
studies have been done to prove this. In one study they compared
one group who did moderate level aerobics for 45 minutes
with another group who performed high intensity workouts
for 15 minutes. They did before and after fitness testing
including body fat analysis and found that the group who
performed the high intensity aerobics lost nine times as
much body fat!
Want more proof?
Compare the bodies
of a walker, marathon runner, and sprinter. If you are
not familiar with what a sprinter s body looks like, it
is very muscular and has little body fat while on the other
hand the body of a walker will likely have the opposite,
little muscle and more fat. The sprinter does little or
no low intensity exercise and does primarily short hard
bursts of work while the marathoner overtrains so much they
burn off both the body fat and the muscle and that’s
why they tend to look almost sickly thin.
So what should you do then if your main objective is to
shed those excess pounds of body fat?
Two things:
1. Perform some form of high intensity cardio 2-4 times
per week
2. Stabilize blood sugar to minimize the storage of new
fat
I know some of
you by now are saying “I can’t
do high intensity exercise, I have a bad knee” and
don’t worry, I have a solution for you. The good news
is that high intensity is all relative to you and your current
fitness level. For example, fast walking up and down hills
may be high intensity for you... it all depends. So don’t
think that you have to start running or something like that.
Just slowly start to increase the intensity of your cardio
workouts while also maybe decreasing the time because you
can either work hard or you can work long.
Also, you can make almost any activity or exercise high
intensity.... here are a few examples:
increase your speed
use an incline or hills
increase resistance
perform intervals ( the most effective method)
Obviously, some exercises/activities or better suited than
other s but the point is if you want to burn more fat and
make your workouts as productive as possible you need to
increase the intensity.
As with any changes
to your fitness program be careful and don’t over do it. Just because high intensity workout
s b urn more fat don’t think that you’ll get
even better result s b y doing it everyday - that will quickly
lead to over training and a loss of muscle which will only
make it even harder to burn off the fat
.
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