When people are trying to get in shape, lose fat and improve their health, they most commonly gravitate to running or high intensity boot-camp style workouts. The general thought is: I need to do more cardio, which burns more calories, which equals weight loss. Here’s an alternate strategy that might be more helpful long term. First, let's start with the benefits:
Pain/dysfunction:
Many people have some type of pain, injury or chronic condition that prevents them from exercising regularly. OR they develop an injury from working out and stop exercising due to pain, or from fear of being (re-) injured. This type of exercise rarely causes pain and almost everyone can do it, no matter their current age or activity level.
Low/no barrier to entry:
No gym membership required. You do not need special gear or equipment. No specialized training or programs are involved, and you don’t need to be particularly athletic. Anyone can do it virtually anywhere. It costs nothing. You don’t need to talk to people or expose yourself to social interaction.
Difficult to overtrain:
It's almost impossible to overdo this exercise. You can and should do it every day. It will rarely cause injury or make you feel worse. It will not cause delayed onset muscle soreness that affects your ability to perform daily tasks or other types of training. It has no negative impacts on sex hormones (most notably in females with exercise), it actually has positive hormone benefits all around (reducing cortisol, increasing dopamine, regulating blood sugar levels, etc).
Supplements strength and other forms of training:
This activity is great to complement gainzzz from strength training, running, martial arts, etc. It's an active form of recovery: it's great for recovering from other forms of exercise, enhancing mobility, blood flow, and low impact activation of muscle and joints, while not taxing your muscles or metabolism.
It won’t rob your gains and actually enhances the benefits of other types of training through active recovery. It places low calorie demands on your metabolism, meaning you are not competing with muscle growth like other forms of cardio (ie. if you’re strength training AND doing cardio, but not eating properly, your body needs to decide if it's going to grow muscle, burn or store fat, or burn muscle because muscle is super expensive metabolically to maintain).
Improves other aspects of health, relationships, etc:
This activity typically gets you outside in the sunlight, which gets you exposure to vitamin D and away from your phone/tablet and work/life stressors. Exercise in general is proven to be effective in treating anxiety, depression, improving mental health as well as improving heart health, brain health, blood vessel health, and blood sugar regulation. If you choose to do this type of exercise with a friend or partner, it can be a great way to connect with others.
It does increase total calories burned, and also preferentially targets fat as a fuel source because of the duration and type of activity. Unlike running, it doesn’t cause the body to choose between sparing or burning muscle for fuel, and people generally will not alter their calorie intake around this activity (runners typically drop calories to lose weight, while increasing their running levels, which actually stagnates fat loss - muscle is usually burned to spare energy, or the body just holds onto everything because the calorie surplus is too high based on the low calories that are offered through the diet).
So what's the secret to exercise?
Drummmmmmmm rolllllllllllllll please……
Walking. Add it to your daily routine. 10k steps/day. Do it.
It sounds too simple. It is. And most people still won’t do it. But unlike running/cardio and other forms of high impact exercise, it's sustainable for life. You won’t burn out after 8 weeks, get bum knees and tendonitis or overuse injuries from a high intensity program. Or get injured and be afraid of getting started again. Or not have time to go to the gym. Or (insert excuse).
You can do it in as little as 10 minutes, spread out several times a day. That’s actually a great way to get started. Habit stack around your meals: after each meal, take a 10 minute walk. It helps with digestion & mood, and not doom scrolling on your phone, or wasting time gossiping about people at work. Instead of driving around the parking lot searching for the closest spot, choose the furthest spot to get more steps in!
Strength training is hands down the best for long term weight loss, muscle gain, fat loss and improving long term health markers. Walking is an excellent hack for fat loss that is low barrier to entry. It's less intimidating to get started. It's an easy habit that's sustainable for life.
Dr. Nathan Weber
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