Is Walking A Good Way To Lose Weight?
Are you one of many people who would like to shed a few pounds and drop a few inches from your waistline? Or it could be that you would like to have a significantly reduced risk of heart problems or stroke? Increasing the strength of your lungs and heart, or bringing your blood pressure level down might be important to you. Maybe you want to have more energy, avoid depression and feel generally better?
It’s an extremely impressive list of health benefits. However, if you’re bracing yourself for a plug for the latest wonder drug or expecting details of a fitness regime suitable for an Olympic medal hopeful, then you can relax. Believe it or not, all of these benefits – and a few more besides – are available simply by doing something that you do everyday anyway – walking.
Walking is a great form of exercise. Almost anyone can do it – there’s no need to find the time to fit in a trip to the gym (and no expensive monthly membership charges either). You don’t need any special exercise kit and you can fit it into your daily routine when it’s convenient for you.
All that you really need to start your walking exercise program is a comfortable pair of shoes and clothing suitable for the ambient conditions. If you don’t already own one then, whilst not absolutely necessary, getting yourself an mp3 might not be a bad idea. The miles will fairly fly by when you’re walking along listening to your favourite music.
Walking for as little as 30 minutes every day on a regular basis will soon make a difference. You will begin to realise all of the benefits previously mentioned – and the pounds will start to melt away. If you can gradually build up to 10,000 steps a day – which is between four and a half and five miles for most people – you will look good, feel better, have more energy and be a lot healthier. Again, whilst it’s not absolutely necessary, you might want to pick up a cheap pedometer (you can find these starting at u nder $10 these days).Even an Omron pedometer - one of the best and most accurate brands on the market – is inexpensive these days. This will help you to keep track of how many steps you take. Most modern pedometers will also tell you how many calories you’ve burned or what distance you’ve covered if that’s how you prefer to monitor your progress.
If you haven’t taken regular exercise for a while, if you suffer from a medical condition, or if you are over 40 years of age then you should seek your doctor’s advice prior to starting out on any new exercise regime. However, as long as you apply a little common sense and start out gradually, a low impact, low injury risk workout like walking will, in all probability, be very beneficial for you. Leave the car in the garage and walk to work. Walk to work, walk to school. Take a fifteen minute walk around the block at lunchtime. You’ll be healthier, slimmer and you’ll feel a lot better before you know it.
You could also try using Fit flops exercise shoes. They’re specially designed to increase the amount of time that your muscles are active for during normal walking activities – so they will help to increase the effectiveness of whatever walking activity you manage to fit into your daily schedule.
