5 Mistakes Walkers Make that Sabotage Weight Loss Success
Hey Angels and Alphas,
People who make a habit out of walking know how helpful it is when it comes to weight loss. But what most of them don’t understand is that a lot of little things can end up having a detrimental impact on your fitness and weight-loss progress.
Today, we’re here to explore the most common mistakes walkers make that sabotage their success in losing weight and keeping it off.
If you’re someone who walks for weight loss, make sure to avoid these mistakes if you want to reach your goals within your desired timeline.
#1 NOT BEING CONSISTENT
While it’s always true that you need to build up your tolerance to exercise and slowly and gradually progress toward higher mileages and intensities, it’s also true that countless walkers and athletes, in general, tend to underestimate what they’re capable of.
Walking, in particular, is such a low-intensity activity that it can be done every day by the majority of people out there. By not being consistent with it and not doing it daily, you could be negatively impacting your overall fitness and weight-loss goals.
Consistency is what’s actually going to build the habits necessary for you to achieve the long-term weight loss success you’re looking for. Make sure to walk daily, or at the very least, try to get in a certain minimum number of steps every day.
#2 NOT INCLUDING ANY VARIETY IN YOUR WALKING ROUTINE
At first, you might believe results will come if you just go out the door and exercise. The problem is your body will adapt to whatever you’re doing. So if you don’t add any variety into your routine, you will likely hit a plateau at some point.
To continue working toward that weight-loss goal, you’re going to need to avoid always walking at the same pace and add a few higher-intensity intervals. The good news? These variations of workouts are just perfect for those days in which you might not have a lot of time to get in your number of steps.
Once your endurance starts improving, you can do similar training intervals during your walk by increasing your speed, jogging for a short period, or walking on an upwards elevation. All of these will add some intensity to your walking and allow you to burn more calories than usual.
#3 SITTING DOWN FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE DAY
Here’s a study that proves sedentary behavior is a leading factor in weight gain and obesity.
Even if you’re training for up to an hour a day and you’re getting in your 10,000 steps every day, sitting around for long periods between these two bouts of exercise will definitely decrease the amount of results you’re getting and seeing.
This is a notion most experts agree with, so while we definitely should be focusing on a near-daily exercise habit, we still have to make sure we’re not being sedentary for large chunks of the day.
If you’re in the office, just make sure you get a 3-5-minute break every hour so you can get up and move around. This will provide you with an extra boost in your daily steps and calorie burn, and it will help you break the cycle of sitting down for extended periods of time.
#4 WALKING ALONG THE SAME, FLAT ROUTES
Similar to exercise intensity, your body will adapt to the terrain on which you most commonly walk. While it’s always okay to walk on your favorite neighborhood routes most of the time, you should consider hitting an off-road trail once or twice a week. This will help you add some variety and burn even more calories in the process.
Hillwalking is another option that will give you a great bang for your buck, increasing your calorie burn while building some strength at the same time.
#5 NOT DOING ANY OTHER FORMS OF EXERCISE
Even though walking can be a great introductory form of exercise for people who are just getting started, achieving weight loss requires us to use various forms of exercise to get the best results.
For instance, walking up to five days a week and doing higher-intensity exercises on the days in which you’re not walking can be a great strategy for adding more variety and calorie burn in your workouts.
While you may be used to doing your walking routine as your main form of exercise, you should know that, when it comes to exercising for weight loss, you can’t go wrong with adding other forms of exercise such as swimming, strength training, cycling, HIIT, or other modes of exercise that will aid your calorie burn and help you build strength and endurance.
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