Diet Secrets – Walk it Off
Walking off those excess Pounds
Walking is a great way to diet
Simple Diet Trick
With your wedding coming up soon, you are probably thinking that it would be a good time to shed those extra pounds ahead of your big day. Trouble is that it will only get busier and setting aside time for exercising will be difficult.
People with a successful record of weight loss reveal that the secret to weight loss is to find simple daily activities that you can slightly modify and turn into fat burning exercises. The most common daily activities that is also the most effective fat-burner is walking. For a 150 lb individual, walking at an average pace will burn 200 calories per hour. Increase your pace to a brisk walk and you will burn over 300 calories per hour.
It is simple to transform your daily walking into a fitness program.
Image via Wikipedia
1. Extend your normal walking times
Its as easy as parking your car at the back of the shopping center parking lot instead of search for a front row spot. Make it a habit to walk around the mall not once, but three times. Take a walk during lunch time instead of sitting behind a desk. Take a walk after dinner. Get a simple pedometer that measures walking steps, program it to your length of stride, and attach it to your belt or skirt. The pedometer will measure your daily walking distance and some pedometers will also measure calories burned. Watch your pounds disappear as your increase your daily walking distances each day.
2. Plyometrics
Plyometric exercises jumping rope in the park
Plyometrics are exercises that contract and expand muscles in rapid sequence, and help to jump higher and run faster. Adding simple plyometrics activities like hopping, jumping, and skipping moves to your walk is a fun way to spike the intensity. You’ll burn up to twice as many calories — and significantly more body fat — per minute than you would just walking at a moderate pace.
3. Go Outdoors
Walking up and down hills can burn tons of calories and fat, so you’ll work that stomach area off faster than you would on flat terrain. Uphill walks are great for strengthening and shaping your lower half — plus, you’ll feel stronger and go faster on level ground. Find a nearby nature trail and enjoy nature as you burn calories.
Image by Justin Liew via Flickr
4. Add Weights
By simply carring a backpack with heavy objects like books, the additional weight will burn more calories. Get some hand weights and carry them while you are walking. My favorite trick is to get leg weights that I can wear under trousers — I get the added exercise benefit all day long. Get a gym bag with a shoulder strap and fill it with your walking gear — walking shoes or sneakers, change of clothes, MP3 player, water bottle, etc. — and carry the bag with you for a quick change and added fat-burner weight. Example, adding just 10 extra pounds burns an additional 35 calories each hour walking.
5. Use Stairs
If you have stairs, use them. Climbing stairs can burn as much as 600 calories per hour. The additional workout strenghtens the surrounding muscles around the leg joints and boost circulation and respiration also. Use the mall stairs instead of the escalators. If you use a school running track, alternate walking up and down the bleecher area.
6. Get an MP3 Player
A trick I find very helpful is to listen to music or self-help audiobooks while I walk. My mind focuses on the music and is distrcted away from the physical tasks and makes it easier to accomplish my walking exercises. I get so engrossed in the listening to music that I don’t realize how quickly I achieve and exceed my walking goals.
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More Benefits
In addition to being an excellent fat-burning exercise, you will get these additional health benefits with walking as an exercise.
Walking is an cardio exercise that assists to reduce high blood pressure and enhances blood circulation. The lower leg behaves as a venous pump, contracting and pumping blood through the feet and thighs and leg returning to the heart, decreasing the strain on the heart. At a Colorado University research study found that women that walked just 1 to 2 miles each day decreased blood pressure levels by almost 11 points in three months. Harvard School of Public Health in Massachusetts researchers from that women who walked 30 minutes per day lessened their likelihood of stroke by 20 to 40 percent when they increased the pace.
Walking boost strength and not only works the leg muscle groups, but will also work the core and arm muscles. It strengthens muscle groups that support the joints, in particular, the leg and abdominal muscles – and even arm muscles if you “pump” them as you walk.
Walking physical fitness programs allows you decrease low density lipids (“LDL“) levels, which keep these bad cholesterol levels under control. When low density lipids levels are excessive, it brings about the dangers of high cholesterol levels and circulation risks.
Another key advantage of going for walks is that is can also help lower stress and tension. A leisurely walk particularly in the countryside is both relaxing and rejuvenating. Just the act of going outdoors and inhaling fresh air can alter your frame of mind. Even walking around town or simply to the local shopping center provides you with a way to relieve your stress.
Image via Wikipedia
Want more help?
Prevention magazine offers an 8-week Walking Fitness Program that can burn off to 22 lbs in less than 2 months.
By making some simple changes in your daily routine, you can take your normally walking to a level that can easily burn unwanted fat calories with little or no additional effort. Moreover, energetic walks are ideal for improving health problems associated with obesity for example: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, strokes, high cholesterol, and hypertension.
Related articles
- Which burns more calories, walking or running? (cnn.com)
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- Too Cold to Run? Burn 250 Calories With This 30-Minute Circuit (fitsugar.com)
- 14:234 (thinnerthirties.wordpress.com)
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