Walk Slow to Burn Fat? Does slower mean less?

Some­thing we do every day is walk. We hear walk­ing helps us lose weight, but what’s the best way to walk so you burn fat? Is there an opti­mum way to walk to get the most out of it and burn fat at a high rate? What about sugar? Is there such a thing as walk­ing wrong and burn­ing sugar?

What’s the BIG DEAL with walking?

Walk­ing, or a slow jog, when it’s done the right way sur­passes stair climb­ing machines, aer­o­bics, or even run­ning in its fat burn­ing abil­ity. It’s def­i­nitely the eas­i­est way to get car­dio in. Other added ben­e­fits are almost any­one can do it, it doesn’t mat­ter how old you are or what phys­i­cal con­di­tion or shape you’re in, and you don’t need to buy any expen­sive equip­ment. Any­one sig­nif­i­cantly over­weight can even walk to get fit. You can walk any where; even in place.

What does walk­ing faster do?

Well obvi­ously, it makes you feel bet­ter. Here are the ben­e­fits for walk­ing faster accord­ing to James Sundquist, Direc­tor of Med­ical & Sports Music Institute.

Increas­ing Your Walk­ing Speed:

1. You reach a higher Tar­get Heart Rate.
2. You shift your goal from los­ing weight over to increas­ing your fit­ness and level of  endurance.
3. You increase the flex­i­bil­ity of your mus­cles and joints.
4. It changes your Weight Loss results.
5. You’ll fin­ish same dis­tance in a less amount of time.
6. You’re mus­cles become tone
7. You slow down the Osteo­poro­sis process and build stronger bones.
8. You increase the chances of injury due to impact.

What does walk­ing slower do?

Wendy Bum­gard­ner, an About.com writer also has a great arti­cle with infor­ma­tion on walk­ing slower to burn more fat. She says mod­er­ate walk­ing is more effec­tive for burn­ing fat than intense walk­ing. I learned about this trick years ago from Michael Thur­man and Provida®. I’m fond of his Six Week Body Makeover and absolutely love his sup­port com­mu­nity. You have to pur­chase his prod­uct to gain access to all his secrets but any­one can join the community.

So, how do you walk to burn fat?

There’s a trick to get­ting into an opti­mal fat burn­ing zone and stay­ing in it. You’ll need the cor­rect heart rate and you’re going to need to breath from your abdomen. By mas­ter­ing proper Breath­ing and con­trol­ling your Heart Rate you can take some­thing as sim­ple as walk­ing and turn it into the ulti­mate car­dio exer­cise and fat burn­ing activ­ity you can do. This is espe­cially true if you have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of weight loss needed.

Breathe Your Way to a Thin­ner You!

We know fire needs oxy­gen to burn, we’re taught this from early on in child­hood. When you drop and roll you’re suf­fo­cat­ing the fire to put it out. Your body needs oxy­gen to burn fat much like fire needs it to burn a piece of wood. The more oxy­gen your body is get­ting the bet­ter it will burn off fat. Do you know the def­i­n­i­tion of aer­o­bic? It means some­thing that causes oxy­gen to be present. To opti­mize the fat burn­ing process you’ll need to work a spe­cific kind of mus­cle fiber called slow-twitch fiber and you’ll need to do this with oxy­gen present. If you think of when you try to get a fire burn­ing, you blow on the fire to get it to catch and burn caus­ing flames. You’re blow­ing oxy­gen into it to get it to burn faster and hot­ter. It works the same with fat! Get as much oxy­gen as you can to as many mus­cles as you can to stoke your body’s fire…ugh fat-burning.

How do you Stoke Your Fat Burn­ing Fire?

1. Low and Rhyth­mic Work­out – the inten­sity level needs to be low and you need to keep your rou­tine at a steady rhythm. In other words, make your work­out a low inten­sity level exer­cise and main­tain a spe­cific rhythm to your work­out. Walk­ing is per­fect for this since you con­trol your pace and how you’re doing your walk­ing; flat ter­rain, hills, or mixed.
2. Abdom­i­nal Breath­ing – A very spe­cific and on pur­pose way of breath­ing. By con­sciously breath­ing from the abdomen you can increase your energy level, reduce stress, influ­ence bet­ter health, and opti­mize your fat burning.

• AMSA – abdom­i­nal breath­ing tech­niques to increase energy.
• Health Style – Walk­ing for fit­ness is train­ing smarter not harder.

Teach Your­self the Technique

The trick to using abdom­i­nal breath­ing dur­ing walk­ing in your ideal heart rate zone is easy.

1. Breathe in through your nose for 4 steps.
2. Exhale through your mouth for 2 steps.

By fol­low­ing this breath­ing pat­tern from your abdomen you’ll send a max­i­mum amount of oxy­gen to your mus­cles AND increase your body’s fat burn­ing abil­ity to its max­i­mum. Just remem­ber in through the nose for 4 steps and com­pletely exhal­ing out through the mouth in the next 2 steps.

Are you a walker? What’s your tech­nique? Use it for a fit­ness con­test, GettinPhitJust4Me.