The 3 factors of fitness walking that can help you lose weight
1 - The length of your sessions: The more you walk, the more you burn!
The longer you sustain the effort, the more your muscles will use the energy from your fat reserves to function and continue walking. Walking is an endurance sport, and as such, maintaining a constant pace is more important than your speed, especially when you are looking to lose weight.
During physical exercise, the body uses 2 sources of energy: sugar (carbohydrates) and fat (lipids). At the beginning of your session, the body draws on the sugar reserves to supply the muscles. Later on, it is the fat that will provide the primary source of energy.
In order to slim effectively with fitness walking, your sessions must exceed 30 minutes, because that is when the muscles will begin to tap into your fat reserves.
2 - Your walking speed: When your technique helps to burn off more calories!
The more quickly you walk throughout the session, the more energy the muscles used in fitness walking will require. In order to find out how many calories are burnt when walking for an hour, it all depends on your speed:
• At 5 kph, 240 calories are burnt
• At 6 kph, 300 calories are burnt
• At 7.5 kph, 380 calories are burnt
(please note: these figures are given as typical values and may vary from one person to the next.)
If you walk faster, you will need to master all the techniques of fitness walking: correct heel-to-toe transition and the right arm movement. These are the techniques that will exercise the muscles of your body most effectively, from head to toe!
3 - Your basic energy requirements!
This is what is known as the "basic metabolic rate". Depending on your weight, age and height, the human body has different requirements for maintaining the vital functions, which affects how much energy it consumes.
"A few extra pounds should not require a strict diet. The right balance between a healthy diet and regular fitness walking sessions is an excellent way to lose a little excess weight. " - Dr Bacquaert, IRBMS.
Given that fitness walking exercises all of your muscles, it has a positive impact on your muscle mass: you will develop your muscles and, given that they expend a lot of energy, they will burn off more calories even when you are resting! This is what is known as increasing your "basic metabolic rate".
Consequently, the length of your fast walking sessions, your walking speed and the increase in the basic needs of your body when fitness walking will help you lose weight effectively as well as keeping the weight off. Activate your body to recover your figure!