Walking to Lose Weight: First Steps for the Determined Pedestrian.

While dieting can help with short term weight loss, a more effective approach is to increase your metabolic rate. This is done by building muscle, and regular walking is one way to do this.

Increasing your activity levels is crucial to losing weight, maintaining a healthy weight, and increasing overall health and fitness levels. Walking when you would normally drive is a practical way to increase your activity and the number of calories burned during an average day, without having to go to a gym. If all this is new to you, start off with slow, short sessions and build your way up gradually. If you have any health concerns or medical conditions, be sure to check with your doctor for advice before you begin.

Low-impact aerobic exercise such as walking is ideal if you wish to lose weight. Used instead of jogging and other strenuous exercises, it places less stress on the joints. As long as you exercise at your target heart rate you will get all the health benefits of aerobic activity, maximising your weight loss whilst decreasing the possibility of injury. Walking improves your cardiovascular fitness, and recent studies also suggest that walkers live longer. Studies on walking for weight loss and general health from the British Heart Foundation show that walkers can expect improvements in overall fitness and in energy levels, in circulation and in stamina building. Walking also helps reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, helps lower blood pressure, helps reduce high cholesterol, aids weight loss by reducing body fat, and so helps maintain a healthy weight. It also reduces stress and creates a feeling of well being, increases bone density, which helps prevent osteoporosis, and minimises the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Walking is one of the easiest and least expensive forms of exercise. All you need is a good pair of walking shoes, comfortable clothing, and the open road. How do you start? As with any other exercise programme, if you’ve been sedentary up until now, take it slow and easy. Take care to maintain good posture as this will help you breathe more easily and also avoid back pain. Work a warm up, a cool down, and stretches into your routine. Start your walk at a slow warm up pace, then stop and do a few warm up stretches. Don’t start stretching before you’re fully warmed up. Think of your body as a car engine and your blood as oil. You need to lubricate your joints before you start. Continue your walk for as long as it takes, then end with the slower, cool down pace and stretch well. Stretching will make you feel good and help prevent injury.

A rule of thumb is that a reasonably active person, walking at two miles per hour, will use up around 100 calories per mile walked. Surprisingly, you’d expend a little more energy walking at slower speeds because the lack of momentum means that each step uses more energy. At higher walking speeds you use more muscle groups, which will also increase the calories burnt per step. Predictably perhaps, walking uphill does use more calories than walking on the flat at the same speed. However, walking downhill also uses more calories because you use energy to resist your downward momentum.

So what can you do to measure your activity levels accurately?

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