Fat March: Walking and Weight Loss

Fat March takes walking to the extreme with contestants walking from Boston to Washington DC. Considering you would have to walk 7 miles to burn off the calories in a Whopper hamburger, can contestants really expect to lose a significant amount of weight by walking?

Consider this:

• Walking is the most popular exercise of the most successful weight loss “losers.” For members of the National Weight Control Registry, over 5,000 members strong who on average lost over 70 pounds and have kept it off for 6 years, walking is by far the most popular exercise reported.
• Walking helps preserve lean muscle mass. As we age our metabolism slows by 2% per decade due to loss of metabolically active muscle. Since each pound of muscle burns about 50 calories per day, losing a pound of muscle could translate into a 5 1/4 pound weight gain per year.
• Walking helps keep your metabolism up long after you’re finished. Just 45 minutes of walking will keep your metabolism up for 20 hours post-exercise.
• Walking helps insulin work efficiently. By keeping your metabolism up, your muscles respond efficiently to insulin, allowing calories to be stored in muscle as glycogen. However when you combine long periods of inactivity with excess calories your muscles, already filled with glycogen stores, become less sensitive to insulin leading to a prediabetic condition known as insulin resistance. Your body responds by pumping out more insulin which promotes fat storage.

As you can see many of weight loss benefits of walking are not captured in a simple “calories burned” calculation. Of course, no amount of walking is going to overcome the caloric devastation brought on by a Whopper, which is why a combination of diet and exercise is always going to be key. But, I digress. March on!

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