is walking a good strategy to lose weight
what's going on everybody schuyler diehm here men's fitness coach and in this video we are going
to be talking about the impact that walking has on weight loss and as always we're not just going to
be looking at it from a calories in calories out standpoint we're going to be looking at it from a
holistic angle taking a lot of different factors into account so normally when people think about
exercise for weight loss they tend to think of things that are more intense right high
intensity interval training maybe running on a treadmill or an elliptical maybe lifting weights
but one of the things that's not included enough in conversation is walking right is walking a good
strategy to lose weight and i truly believe that walking is one of the most undervalued strategies
to lose weight now of course it's always going to be calories in calories out so if you're consuming
a ton of calories and you're not burning enough calories with walking you're not going to lose
weight but with the right diet you can actually set yourself up for more success with walking and
so in this video we're going to look at a couple cool studies and we're going to dive into four
specific reasons why i believe walking can be one of the best strategies to lose weight so with that
being said let's dive into it so reason number one of why walking can be so effective for weight loss
is that it's actually been shown in studies to counteract the effects of weight promoting genes
now there's a study reported at the american heart association's annual meeting that found that
walking for about an hour a day can reduce the weight promoting effect of certain genes by 50 now
this is crazy right because when we think about the expression of our metabolism the expression of
our motivation of our hunger signaling it's a lot deeper than just calories in calories out when we
look at it at a biological level there are certain gene expressions that truly do decide how we act
what we eat how much we eat and so to have walking be shown to improve gene expression not just by
a little bit but by something as big as 50 is massive it really really is because it comes down
to not just walking and burning the calories that you burn during your walk this walking can now
affect every single other area of your life and so this is what's so cool about looking at things
from a holistic angle is it's not just calories in how many calories you're eating versus how
many calories you're burning it looks at all these different lifestyle factors that impacts how you
operate right and that's why i truly believe one of the best strategies for weight loss is fasting
combined with exercise like walking and weightlifting and so if you're a beginner and you
are looking for how to do that make sure you check the link in the description of this video for
a guide we put together on how we use this and why it's so effective right i don't believe in
counting calories i don't think it's an effective strategy for losing weight for most people and i
also don't believe in diets that allow you to cut out your favorite foods and so we show you how to
lose weight without cutting out your favorite foods without super boring long workouts and
without counting calories so the number two reason of why walking can be so effective for weight loss
is that it actually helps tame your sweet tooth so there's a study done in a journal called plus one
now in this study what researchers did is they wanted to see the psychological effects and
physiological responses for overweight individuals with sugary snacks and so what they did is they
took 47 overweight individuals and for three days they told these people to stay away from sugary
snacks and so a group of these individuals were ordered to do nothing and to just use
mental control and then the other group was ordered to take 15 minute walks every single day
and so after these three days were up they ordered the participants to do two tasks the second being
handling sugary snacks and when they were handling these snacks they were basically measured of where
their cravings were and so what they found was that the people who had been walking 15 minutes a
day had actually drastically reduced their sugar craving and so this shows that something like
walking something that's super light not intense can actually reduce sugar cravings right and so
we can look at it from that angle but then we can also look at it from the angle of a lot of times
when we get these cravings we're bored and if we replace just going directly to food with a short
walk we can actually override that boredom to reduce that craving and to stop moments of eating
so that's reason number two reason number three is that walking can actually reduce hunger in general
now there's a little asterisk here this walking does need to be outside because walking outside
allows you to expose yourself to more vitamin d now there have been studies done on the impact
that vitamin d has on the hormones left in and growing which is your satiety hormone right being
full versus the hunger hormone what they found is that more exposure to vitamin d can help regulate
these hormones which is going to help curb those cravings for food right curb the hunger for
just wanting to eat so obviously if you're walking outside most likely you're going to be exposed to
more sunlight even if it's a cloudy day you still are getting that exposure to vitamin d
if you have your skin showing and so there is a little bit of an asterisk here you can't just walk
on a treadmill and see these results but if you are walking outside this is a great way to make
sure you're curving your hunger and reason number four why i believe walking is one of the best
strategies to lose weight is really because it's a quick form of exercise that can be done anywhere
right sometimes it's very very difficult to get yourself to go to the gym especially if you
haven't built that habit sometimes it's difficult to get off the couch sometimes it's difficult to
think about pushing your body to an extreme level with hit training or even just running
on the treadmill for an hour and so with walking you can literally take a couple minutes and just
go outside right all it takes is putting your shoes on even if you live in an area where you
may not even need to put your shoes on right and you can just walk outside barefoot and so
with that you can do this easily but you can also multitask right if you want to listen to music or
a podcast you want to call someone you're in a meeting where it's just voice you want to bond
with someone right like one of the best ways to get exercise if you're with your significant other
is to just go for a walk together because you can talk and you can walk and so by far it's
one of the simplest ways to get your body moving without a lot of mental resistance of not wanting
to not feeling like it and that's truly why i believe it's one of the best forms of exercise
so those are the four strategies now with that being said what is a good way to walk so the
first thing i'm going to preface this with is if you really want to see the impacts of walking make
it a brisk walk right don't just go out and just kind of stroll and stop every once in a while and
take some breaths like that's going to be good for stress relief that's going to be good for
mental health but in terms of getting the real benefits of walking it's a good idea to walk
briskly walk up hills walk fast pace get a weight vest and walk with that but just moving your body
in a more intense way than just a casual stroll is going to be really helpful for you now if you are
a super super busy person there are two strategies i would recommend to get the most out of walking
number one is to either carve 30 to 45 minutes to take a walk if you are creating a morning routine
you're waking up early one of the best ways to wake yourself up is to just get outside and go
take a walk right even if it's 30 minutes even if it's 45 minutes but if you are the type of
person where maybe you can't carve that out maybe you can't find a lunch break to find that time
three 10 minute walks a day is an incredible incredible strategy for fitness right and it's
super easy if you're sitting at your desk if you're in an office it's easy if you've had a
long streak of working and sitting down to get up and take a ten minute walk outside or around your
building it's not something that takes a lot of time so literally just breaking that into three
sessions during the day maybe one right before work or maybe a couple in the middle of work
whatever it needs to be to make it happen that's what you need to do right and so it's super super
simple so that being said again if you want to see incredible incredible results it's not necessarily
about doing everything at once it's about taking those small steps daily both literally
and figuratively so i'm curious leave me a comment below what are your thoughts on walking right do
you enjoy as much as i do like i personally love love walking i'll put on a weight vest
i'll go on a walk i'll walk with my girlfriends like i'll find the time to walk because i know
i feel so good after i do it but with that being said make sure if you are looking for
more ways to simplify the process of fitness and losing weight that you subscribe to the channel
check out the link in the description for our free guide and of course as always make sure to
eat smart move more sleep deep and be grateful for this moment i'll see in the next video