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:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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