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Walking for Fat
Loss???
by
Jesse Cannone CFT, CPRS, CSPN
With obesity and disease increasing dramatically, many fitness experts
are recommending walking for weight 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:
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.
To learn more about high intensity cardiovascular exercise please check
out the following articles:
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.
Be sure to also check
out my Burn Fat FAST! ebook and audio program here: http://www.burn-fat-fast.com
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