Calories and Your Body

Calories are units of energy that come from food, and are used by our bodies to allow it to function. Eat too many calories per day (more than you burn off) and you begin to gain weight. Eat less than you burn off, and you will lose weight. It’s a fairly simple math equation.

3,500 calories make up roughly a pound of fat. The average person consumes 2,000 calories per day. (Of course, 2,000 calories is the recommended daily intake of calories – as you can see from America’s obesity epidemic, we eat a lot more than the 2,000 average.) The recommended daily intake is 2,000 because that is the average amount of calories we burn per day just being alive, doing our daily routine with moderate exercise in between.

Keep in mind these numbers are guidelines only. Don’t take them to heart, because the calories we need to consume and burn per day will vary with each individual due to sex, weight, health conditions, metabolic rate, age, etc etc.

Knowing that 3,500 calories make up a pound of fat, you can lose weight by

• Reducing the amount of calories you eat to be less than the amount your burn each day
• Increasing exercise to burn more calories per day, so you burn more calories than you consume.
• Combination of Both

Combining a proper diet (preventing excessive intake of calories) and increasing exercise is the simplest plan to follow for losing weight. How much weight you lose will depend entirely on the diet and exercise, but because this series is about walking for weight loss we will look at how to lose weight walking.

How Much Weight Can You Lose Weight Walking?

Below are two examples of how much weight you can lose just by walking. We look at a person who weighs 150 lbs and one who weighs 250 lbs. We look at how many calories you can burn with the various types of walking available to you. We’ll look at the types of walking you can do later.

Calorie estimates taken from CalorieLab.com

Things to Take Away from the Above Example

Heavier People Burn More Calories – The heavier you are, the more calories you will burn no matter which type of walking you do. It takes more energy for your body to move your weight than someone who weighs less. As you lose weight, your body will require fewer calories to do the same type of walking.

Walking Does Not Have to be Boring – As you can see, walking does not mean you circle your block 20 times. You can walk uphill, walk with weight, walk fast, anything! We will get into the types of walking in a later article.

Walking Will Make You Lose Weight – If you have a steady diet (meaning your weight is generally the same – it does not jump up and down a lot day-to-day), adding something as simple as walking will allow you to lose weight. A 250 lb person can lose a pound per week but with brisk, uphill walking 1 hour per day 6 days a week.

Too many diseases are related to poor lifestyle, and they can all be helped by becoming more active. We’re not saying that walking is going to cure cancer (just help prevent it), but it is going to help you fight off a lot of problems that are caused by being lazy and inactive.

Managing Weight

The entire premise of this guide is walking for weight loss. So what happens when you get your weight under control to a manageable level? Keeping your weight within the healthy limits will lower your risk of sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart problems, and almost any other disease that is directly related to obesity and sedentary lifestyle.

Lower the Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

You are more at risk for a heart attack or stroke when you are sedentary. Even if you’re not diagnosed with it (when it happens it is too late for a diagnosis anyway), the chance of one happening is far more likely among sedentary people than those who are moderately active.

A Harvard study of 11,000 men showed that brisk walking five hours per week reduced the risk of stroke in participants by half.

A Nurses’ Health Study, which spanned 20 years, of 70,000 women shows that brisk walking can reduce your chance of a heart attack 30-40%.

Improve Mental Health and Self-Esteem

Exercise releases endorphins, you body’s natural pain killers. Brisk walking will release more endorphins than a slow pace, but any walking is better than none.

When you start to walk for weight loss (your diet permitting), you will eventually lose weight and start to feel better about yourself. When your self-esteem improves, life just gets easier and more enjoyable.

The List Goes on and on…

Remember that the body is a machine that consists of mental, spiritual, and physical parts. When you improve one part, you see improvements in the others.

The “vicious cycle” rule applies here.

No exercise means you’re probably heavier than you want to be. If you’re heavy, then you’re overweight and are more likely to succumb to a weight-related disease like Type 2 diabetes. You get diagnosed with one of these diseases, and it stresses you out mentally and financially. The stress turns to depression and depression leads to eating food for comfort (or not eating at all, which is just as bad), and so on and so forth…

When you take your health in one direction, it will lead to more of the same. If you keep a poor lifestyle, expect it to snowball into an even worse lifestyle as the years go by.

If you change your life and start becoming healthier, expect to see the benefits of what being healthy is all about.

Now get up, and start walking! You have no excuse!

Walking is the most common form of locomotion for us bipeds. We walk because it’s free and convenient. But let’s not bore you to death about the history of walking.

This series is going to outline everything you need to know about walking for weight loss: how to do it, what to do it, and what benefits you should expect to see.

Who Should Use Walking for Weight Loss?

First things first, who should use walking as a means of exercise for weight loss?

This guide is designed for beginners. If you have never been to a gym, do not know how to exercise, or generally have never been exposed to how fitness works, then this walking for weight loss guide is for you.

Many people with exercise and fitness experience will probably frown upon walking because it’s too slow or boring. That’s fine, especially if you have a means of exercising that is going to burn more calories faster (Running, Basketball, Weight lifting, etc)

But there are many people who want to lose weight but do not know how. One of the easiest ways to get started with an exercise program and losing weight is walking. Walking is a “step” (groan…) in the right direction towards fitness.

• Easy to Get Started – All you need is a pair of shoes and somewhere to walk. Sidewalks in the city, long roads in the countryside, or a treadmill.
• Fun for All Ages, Both Sexes – It doesn’t matter if you’re man or woman, young or old, walking for weight loss can be done by anybody.
• Cost Effective – There is no cheaper exercise to than walking. Chances are you already have shoes, and treadmill is certainly not required.
• Convenient – No need to get up and drive to a gym. Just step out your front door and you are ready to walk.
• Easy to Maintain – Too many people start exercising and give up quickly because it’s too difficult. Not true with walking. You never exert yourself too hard, so it’s always easy to come back the next day and walk again.
• Exponential Health Improvement – If you have a history of being sedentary, meaning no exercise whatsoever, you will see amazing health improvements by walking just 30-60 minutes a day, 5 days a week.