Walking is an Effective Way For Weight Loss

When people talk about losing weight lots of images come to mind - diets, running, cycling, daft pills and patches. But it is not essential to follow such methods, it is easily possible to lose weight via everyday activities - and one of the best ways is by walking.

For many people walking is something they do everyday but rarely think about when it comes to losing weight, burning calories. But it is a very powerful technique that exercises the muscles, burns calories and ups the metabolism.

Calories and walking

Now it is impossible to say exactly how many calories you will burn by walking as it very much depends on how much you weigh and how fast you walk, but the average person will burn 100 calories per mile walked if they walk at a semi-brisk pace (about 4mph).

When you also consider the metabolism boost that walking can give you, meaning you will burn more calories when resting, you will soon understand how powerful walking can be for weight loss. Just one hour walking a day will have the average person burning an extra 700 calories a week.

Perfect for beginners and those with problems

If you are looking to lose weight and have not tried exercising much before, if you are very unfit, or if you have any health problems walking could well be exactly what you are looking for. Unlike most high intensity exercises walking puts less stress on your body. You will be able to gradually improve your walking performance without putting your body under any undue strains.

It is also perfect for anyone with joint problems. Running, cycling, etc. can put a lot of weight and stress on joints - far from ideal for someone with bad knees, for example. But by walking on grass or sand (avoid concrete as that still causes some joint stress) you can greatly reduce the amount of stress that you put on your joints.

Increase weight loss

Walking is also very useful because you can scale it up as you lose weight and get physically fitter. It is very easy to increase the pace that you walk at, which will in turn look at burning more calories. But there are other methods to increase the amount of weight lost whilst walking.

Hill walking is very powerful for burning calories. The increased effort required to power yourself up a hill taxes your muscles and fitness more, requiring more energy and so more calories to be burnt.

Similarly you can increase the weight loss by pumping your arms as you walk. By pumping your arms at pace you work your arm muscles as well as your leg muscles, and get the blood pumping around the body more efficiently.

Other techniques include simply walking further and walking on sand which increases the muscles used for balance.

Walking is an excellent, low impact method of losing weight for anyone who wants to start off burning calories without having to invest in equipment or who are worried about their health for other reasons.

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