Walking for weight loss is a great way to get the ball rolling towards fitness. If you have not engaged in any exercise for number of years and you have reached the decision that you want to lose weight and are really prepared to do something about it, then exercise will play a major and vital role in your success.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you will have to do cardio 3 or 4 times a week for at least half an hour. Cardio exercises may include running, jogging, cycling, stepper, and aerobics and so on. However at the point of starting your fitness levels at the present time may not allow you to do these types of exercises. If you try to push yourself too hard, all that will happen is that you will give up trying and come to detest whatever cardio exercise you are doing.
Fitness and weight loss is progressive. Meaning that it is going to take time to get to where you want to be, and that it has to be done in stages. You are not going to start exercising on Monday and be fit the following Sunday. The same can be said of trying to lose weight. The more you try to force yourself initially, the less chance of success you will have. You need to accept where you are now and what your capabilities are at the present time. Once you have done this, realise that as long as you keep doing what you need to be doing on a regular basis, and increase in small steps, then you will eventually reach your goals.
Walking is a good way to start building your fitness levels so that you can do more different and difficult cardio exercise further down the road. The first thing you will need to do will be to make up a walking program, consisting of where you will walk, how long for, and how often. Previous generations were forced to walk everywhere as there were not many cars. There was never an issue of obesity or weight related problems for these generations.
There are many ways how you can incorporate walking for weight loss into your life. Find a park and walk around it, try to keep a brisk place and see how you feel after you have been around it once. If you feel it was ok try another lap. To keep losing weight and to keep getting fitter you must be progressive. This means you should always do more than you did last time. Even if it's only an extra 50 or 100 yards, you should always increase what you do. The more you do the fitter you get, the fitter you get the more you can do.
The best thing about walking is that it is free; there is no need for any gym fees and no need for equipment, apart from some comfortable walking shoes. As you become fitter and are able to do more and more laps, it will at some point become a little boring. It's fine when you are doing a few laps and you find that a little challenging. However after a month or two when you are doing 15, 20 or even more laps, you will began to become a little bored at having to walk for this amount of time.
Get yourself a personal CD player or even an mp3 player, which is relatively cheap to buy these days. Fill the mp3 player with lots of your favourite songs and listen to them as you walk. This gives your brain something else to focus on apart from the drudgery of walking greater distances.
A time will come when the walking becomes too easy. When you reach this stage, look back at how much you were doing to begin with compared to how much you may be doing now. You will find that you have improved beyond measure. This should make you feel proud and let you see how much improvement you are capable of. This should then motivate you to go to the next level.
The next level could consist of various methods; it will depend on your preferences. You could start jogging or running instead of walking. You could find an area of hills and begin walking up and down them. Hill walking is a fantastic way to get fit and burn calories. You could start cycling, start using a stepper, join an aerobics class; there are lots of different ways to improve.
Whatever next step you take you should follow the same pattern as before. Always do a little more than before. Your body can improve far beyond what you may think at the moment. Your body was designed to adapt and cope with change, and this is a fact. It will get fitter, leaner, and stronger and endure more, to cope with what you are doing, as long as you keep doing more in small steps Start getting the benefits and begin walking for weight loss.
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