#5: Walking Is Your Greatest Weight Loss Tool

While working out is important in all its forms, you’d be surprised to know that one type of exercise stood out for its ability to increase lifespans. And that exercise is walking.

Walking falls under a type of activity known as Aerobic Threshold Training (ATR); a training form that makes use of the body’s fat-burning engine.

It comes with a welcoming sentiment: that it doesn’t take a huge effort. It is simply ‘light activity’ sustained for a prolonged period of time.

Other activities that can be considered ATR too, like gardening, cycling, or dancing. So what makes walking so special?

Why Walking?

Walking takes the metaphorical cake as the best exercise you can do regularly. You see, you absolutely do not have to kill yourself in the gym to get great results.

The body can store anywhere from 400g to 600g of sugar (100g in the liver and the rest in your muscles). But after a 30 – 40 minute brisk walk, your body can potentially deplete a significant proportion of those sugar stores and turn to fat for fuel.

That said, a healthy person can theoretically go for a fasted walk in the morning, because it would increase the likelihood of more fat being thrown to the furnace (since the body will be in a fasted state).

Walking just half an hour before breakfast would have you cover over 2 km in distance with just over 3,000 steps. All that before your morning porridge.

A ‘post meal’ walk could also work. In fact, one 2022 meta-analysis found that walking after eating, for as little as 5 minutes, stabilised both blood sugar and insulin levels.

I guess there is some wisdom behind that post-meal ‘passeggiata’ in Italian culture.

Should we track our Steps?

For every extra 1, 000 steps/day taken; one’s lifespan seemed to increase. In fact, more daily steps per day have been linked to having better cardiovascular health, better sleep and a better mindset in general.

Researchers identified a 32 % decrease in death among those who added just 2,000 steps/day. And for every added 1,000 steps/day, the likelihood of premature death decreased even further. Sometimes by as much as 28 %.

Centenarian men and women do not hit the gym every day. Instead, they walk when they can, where they can. And not in one go, either. They would accrue steps over the course of the day.

In Malta, only 36 % of young adults and 28 % of our elderly achieve ‘sufficient levels of activity’. And by the World Health Organisation’s definition, a ‘sufficient level of activity’ is a 30-minute walk, thrice weekly.

The Take away

Never underestimate the power of a daily thirty-minute walk. In doing so, you’d have targeted stress management, your daily step count, your aerobic training time, and your mood.

As a bonus, walking with a partner (or even a dog) would give you all the benefits of social interaction. Though alternatively, you could listen to a podcast, or audiobook, and make the journey an educational one.

On a personal level, 10, 000 steps/day is a non-negotiable. That’s an extra 300 - 400 kcal’s worth of movement.

If you check your step count and notice its nowhere near that. I would suggest making adjustments to increase your daily tally by 1000 steps. Then simply adjust and readjust as time goes by.