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Exercise is one of the key factors in achieving healthy weight loss, boosting your calorie output in order to create the deficit needed to reach your goals. While typically considered to be limited to intense cardio and heavy weight lifting, exercise can actually encapsulate a number of different activities that can help you to achieve the same results without burning out your body or forcing yourself to do a workout that you don’t enjoy. Just as HIIT or high intensity interval training has a place in your routine and can net big results, so too can its low intensity counterpart, LISS.
Low intensity steady state workouts are just as effective on your body for weight loss, and while they may require more time to complete in order to burn calories, LISS makes for a great alternative to intense workouts if you’re easing into fitness or looking for an exercise you love. This summer as you work to achieve a healthier lifestyle, there’s one low intensity workout that health experts agree is the most useful for burning calories and helping you achieve the goals you’ve been working towards without overexerting.
Keeping your step count up is usually considered an accessory to add on top of another form of exercise, but walking is actually one of the best low intensity workouts you could do for weight loss as it can be incredibly effective for burning calories without requiring any equipment. “It is low impact on the body and you can go at your own pace for your activity level. It's also an activity that you can do for your whole life. Aim to do 30 minutes of walking everyday,” says Melissa Morey, MS, RD, CPT. Cardio is excellent for maintaining your overall health, and while it can often sound intimidating, walking is a great way to ease into it and burn fat without exhausting yourself, particularly if you’re just beginning to improve your lifestyle.
You will have to up the intensity of your regular stroll in order to reap any actual benefits from walking, but increasing your step goal to 10,000 steps and above can ultimately make it easier to lose weight as you burn calories and utilize a variety of muscles in the body. “It's a great full body weight loss exercise because you use your whole body, and you can do it every day without having to take rest days. To amp up the intensity you can look for hills to walk or add ankle weights,” suggests Morey. While a regular walking pace will still be effective in burning calories to some extent, turning up the intensity even slightly will help to boost your heart rate, improving your cardiovascular health over time.
There are a number of easy ways you can elevate your walking experience to make it a workout. If you’re fond of using the treadmill, add a bit of an incline to challenge your legs to help grow your muscles while burning off fat. If you’re walking outside, try walking to the beat of your music to pick up the pace, and select a route with more hills in order to challenge your full body. You can still burn calories with ease and create a body you’re proud of without going all out on a run or HIIT workout.
While exercise is one of the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle, that doesn’t mean you have to go all out and exhaust yourself everyday in order to reach your goals. Regardless of if you’re just getting into fitness, recovering from an injury, or are simply more drawn to low intensity workouts, walking is a perfectly valuable form of exercise to partake in for weight loss.
Increasing calorie burn, improving your cardiovascular health, and strengthening your muscles, walking is a great full-body low-intensity workout that can be just as effective in achieving healthy weight loss as any high intensity workout. It may take more time to see your results, but with a healthy and well balanced diet, you can rest assured that you’re doing something great for your body.
