Walk Your Way to the Body You Want

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Keeping it simple, when you workout to change how your body looks, there are two primary considerations

What we think of as cardio

What we think of as strength training

Strength training is how we have muscles so we do not look standing blobs of clay whether we are skinny or fat. This can be anything from Pilates (yep, have to be a type of strong for Pilates) to body building. But you know that one already.

And you know that as you become stronger, your body burns more calories at rest. Not to mention your body looks better and you feel better.

But this is about the cardio. Because we often get this wrong. Or we misunderstand.

You do not have to run 3 miles to do cardio.

Actually, all you have to do is walk.

Get 10,000 steps and do not eat like an asshole and you have a pretty strong combination for losing weight and for leaning out.

But we think we need to do super crazy workouts. And until we are willing to do those workouts, we have no hope of changing.

False.

We want to increase our daily steps (activity) for a few reason:

1) Low intensity daily activity like walking is what makes up the bulk of our daily calorie burn. Even if you have a friend who does 1 hour long high intensity CrossFit workouts, they are still burning more calories outside of those workouts in their day for the walking or moving they are doing.

2) Walking requires the body to work so you are also getting to use your muscles more each day which makes them feel better. Walking 10,000 steps can help joints feel better, and tightness to start to go away because our bodies are meant to move. And movement is how we make our muscles remember how they are supposed to feel.

3) Our bodies are wired for movement, not sitting still all day. And when we move towards what our bodies were originally intended to do we do begin to feel better in our skin. Getting our steps in often results in improving how we handle stress, how we see the world and problems we are trying to solve, and how we feel about ourselves.

A NOTE: Nobody is capable of being more of a waste-man than me. I have days I truly feel like I am programmed to just vegetate on a couch. I can lose 4 hours (easier before the kid arrived) in a blink to a comfy couch. I understand if you feel like you actually are not meant to move. That maybe you are unique and you are actually meant to sit.

There are seasons where we will move less. And maybe you have strung a few of theses seasons together. But I promise, if you start at a level appropriate to you (for example, if you really don’t like to walk, start by just walking 800 meters or 0.5 Miles. Move your body for a week without doing too much and see if anything feels better. I think you will surprise yourself.

What about your gym workouts?

The gym absolutely counts as activity. This is not some backwards world where working out is now a bad thing. The gym has always existed for one reason: to give us an efficient way to collect activity in a compressed period of time.

What you do not want is to only move during the hour you are at the gym and then to sit the rest of the day. Yes, there will certainly be days where that is what happens because work is crazy or life is crazy. But we really should be moving steadily throughout our day. If work requires long periods of sitting then yes, we have to increase activity before, during, or after.

It is just important to note that when it comes to the cardio part of losing weight or changing our body, a 1 hour workout is not going to cut it. You would be better off getting your 10,000+ steps (Ideally both can happen).

Ideas on How to get Your Steps In

Family Walks - Walking after you eat anytime has a really good impact on your digestion and your health. So an after dinner walk becoming a thing you and your loved ones do is a great idea for all involved!

More steps at work - we spend the most time here. Whether we can volunteer to go grab whatever is downstairs, or we can walk a lap or two every few hours, or we can just give ourselves a way to pace a bit during our work, going 8-10 hours of the 16 hours we are awake without moving makes it really hard to get our steps in.

Tok & Tred - Check this blog post out but this is pretty straightforward. Leverage a guilty pleasure as a reward for walking. Get on a treadmill, set the pace at a brisk but comfortable pace, and start scrolling.

Have big step days 2-3x p week - Just like calories (It does not matter if you are in a caloric deficit today if across the week you go into a surplus) the goal is to increase your average daily steps across the week. So if there are days in your week where you can get a super high step count, and then on the other days, you just do what you can, that still works.

Go for a walk today. In whatever form or fashion is most interesting to you. But quit making the excuse that you are not a gym person so you do not have a hope of being healthier or looking better naked. That’s a lie. Walk your way to your goal.

Start easy. Consistency is what matters!

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