Of all the different exercises to lose weight – and there are many – walking has to be one of the best. You will often hear people comparing different exercise modes and discussing how many calories per minute or per mile a particular form of exercise uses up. The fact is that such details aren’t really all that important. If cycling burns more calories than jogging is pretty much an academic question if you don’t do either of them on a regular basis.
Regular physical activity is the key to increasing your metabolic rate and burning calories more quickly twenty four hours a day – whatever you’re doing, and not just when you’re actually taking exercise. Even although walking may be a low intensity exercise method, it can actually produce better results than many high impact, high intensity exercise techniques simply because it’s much easier for people to stick to it and perform it on a regular basis.
Health professionals seem to agree that walking 10,000 steps a day will provide many health benefits including, but not limited to, weight loss. Check out the list of benefits below:
- Reduced risk of heart disease and stroke
- Lower cholesterol levels
- Lower blood pressure levels
- Reduced risk of certain forms of cancer
- Better sleep patterns
- Building of bone density
- Improved muscle tone
- Less susceptibility to anxiety and depression
- Reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease
- Weight loss
It’s a very impressive list of benefits from a low intensity exercise which you can fit into your day whenever it suits you best and which won’t cost you a fortune. Walking is something that you already know how to do and which requires no special equipment. All you need is a comfy pair of shoes and you can get cracking.
10,000 steps a day is about four and a half miles. That includes every step you take throughout the day and it’s easier to achieve than you might think. The key is to walk a little bit further than you usually do a little more often than you usually do and to do it on a regular basis. Here are just a few suggestions for building walking to lose weight into your daily routine:
- Leave your car at home and walk to work, school or the shops.
- Instead of using the elevator, take the stairs.
- Walk around when you are talking on your cell phone.
- If you travel by bus or subway, get off a couple of stops early and finish your journey on foot.
- Go for a short walk – say ten or fifteen minutes – at lunch time.
- If you do take your car don’t feel guilty. Just park in a faraway corner of the lot so that you have further to walk to reach your destination.
- Instead of sending e-mails at work, get up from your desk and go and talk to your colleagues now and again.
Those are just a few suggestions – there are any number of different ways that you can build walking into your day. Get yourself a cheap mp3 player so that you can listen to music as you walk along. Get yourself an Omron pedometer so that you can see exactly how many steps you’ve taken and how many calories you’ve burned. It’ll help to keep your motivation up.
Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you need to be starting an exercise program that’s suited to a professional athlete in order to see the benefits. A little extra walking on a regular basis will soon produce results that you can see and feel. You’ll be delighted at how quickly you notice a difference.