Walking…The Natural Way To Lose Weight

By Michael Tuccelli

Forget those fancy gym memberships, expensive equipment or anything else to lose weight. You really don’t need pills or a special diet either. You might be surprised to learn that you can easily lose a decent amount of weight in a safe and natural way just by taking a long walk every day.

Many people young and old who are overweight, especially those who have arthritis or other problems have  discovered the benefits of walking. It is the safest form of exercise and most people can at minimum take a walk around the block every day.

The idea is to walk at a brisk pace that gets your heart rate elevated. The fact is that you won’t lose much weight by just lumbering or strolling along. You need to get a bit sweaty for this or you will not be optimizing your bodies ability to burn calories and or body fat.  It is possible to lose weight by walking slow but it will take quite a bit of time. You need to walk at a rapid pace and keep it up  for at last an hour.  The faster your heart pumps the more weight you will lose.

The key secret is….the more you walk the more lean muscle you will develop. Lean muscle burns more calories as you use it. This means that you burn more calories because you have more muscular mass.

So now you are probably asking yourself “how much weight can I lose by walking”.  Keep this in mind. A pound of fat equals 3500 calories.  In order to lose that one pound a week you will need to burn off 3,500 calories. When it comes to losing weight it is the amount of distance that you cover that matters. Walking for a long time at a slow pace will not do much for your weight loss efforts.

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