Walking for Fast Weight Loss: Not A Lark in the Park
Why walk? It is one of the only exercises that almost anyone can do. In addition, it is free and requires no gym membership or fancy equipment. You can do it anywhere, even inside on rainy days. It is also great for your overall health and your weight loss goals in particular. These and many other reasons makes walking one of the most favored forms of exercise.
If you’re a walking aficionado, you may be wondering how to amp up your walk for quick weight loss. The following tips will help burn more fat and get you slim:
Be very aware of how you move. Correct posture can help you walk more efficiently and effectively while cutting down the risk of injury.
* Walk with your head and back straight.
* Land on your heel and roll forward. Push off with the balls of your feet.
* Don’t walk like a pigeon! Keep your toes straight or you may wind up with achy hips and legs.
* Relax your shoulders and hold your head up high. Turn your hips in to correctly align your back.
To increase the benefits of your walk:
1. Get your arms involved.
If you are letting your arms swing loosely at your side, you’re missing out on some great calorie burning. Instead, bend them at ninety degree angles and curl them loosely.
When you stride forward, bring your arms straight forward and then straight back. Keep them close to your body. You may seem people who are throwing their arms up in the air and looking like they’re going to propel themselves off the ground!
Keeping the stride of your arms modest ? no higher than your breastbone ? and on pace with your legs, will help boost calorie burn and result in quick weight loss. Try it out for a few minutes at a time until you build up strength.
2. Don’t stagnate.
This may sound very basic, but if you have stopped seeing quick weight loss results, you may need to walk more. If you are doing thirty minutes, kick it up to forty-five a few times a week until that becomes easy. Work up to sixty.
After that, you may not be able to find time to walk! This is a good time to add intensity to your walk with hills or more brisk paces.
3. Don’t avoid the hills!
It doesn’t seem fair sometimes ? you work to achieve weight loss, and the second it get easy, you have to work even harder. Your body quickly becomes used to doing the same exercises. The walk that burned you so many calories when you started is a walk in the park for your body now. You always have to add intensity.
Nature provides intensity through hills and mixed terrains. Try a few hills at a brisk pace, and you’ll get your quick weight loss efforts back on track.
When you are inside, just a few pushes of the incline button can add instant hills. You can also achieve results even if you are doing walking videos. Simply add intervals of more brisk walking. You can even jog to keep up the intensity.
All this keeps your heart pumping and your body exerted. The key is to not let your body get comfortable.
4. Mix it up.
Your body needs a variety of movement. Walking is excellent, but to keep quick weight loss a reality, you should mix in some strength training and flexibility training into your workout routine.
There are different ways to add variety. You can cut your walk in half (keep it difficult, though) and use the rest of the time for weight training or you can devote two or three days to strength and/or flexibility workouts. Your weight loss efforts will be rejuvenated, and you’ll have the added bonus of sleek and toned arms.
Having a walk around the block is great, but for real weight loss, you need to make sure it is difficult enough to challenge your body.
Walking is a great tool for quick weight loss. To see that weight loss and maintain it, always keep your body challenged.