Is Walking Enough Exercise For Weight Loss (The Truth!)

There is no way that walking is enough exercise for weight loss. Or is there? If you would have asked 16-year-old Eric this question, I think he would have given you a very different answer than what 26-year-old Eric is going to give you right now. Kind of. I used to think when someone told me they walked for exercise, I literally laughed in their face. I know, slap a big idiot on my forehead right now. Truth is, walking has so many benefits from a weight loss perspective. We'll first start with the calorie burning perspective. You've probably heard before from either myself or another 1,700 trainers on the internet, to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. What they may not have told you though is how you burn calories on a day-to-day basis. This is called your TDEE. Otherwise known as your total daily energy expenditure. You can see there are four main components of your TDEE: your BMR, which is your basal metabolic rate; your NEAT, which is your non-exercise activity thermogenesis; your TEF, which is your thermic effect of food; and then your EAT, that is your exercise activity thermogenesis. We are going to take a peek at the NEAT. Part of it right there. This part takes up 15% of your total daily energy expenditure for the day. Walking, generally speaking, would be thrown into this NEAT category. So let's just say, very simple— this is not the right truth, but like, let's say, very simple— walking takes up 15% of your overall calorie burn for the day. I think that's pretty important From a weight loss perspective. Would you agree to that? Now, some people might say, well, Eric, if you're intentionally walking, then that would be considered exercise. You could potentially argue semantics on that. I might say, well, if you're walking to the grocery store and back and you park farther away, or if you're walking around cleaning your, you know, cleaning your apartment, cleaning your house, if you're, you know, walking the dog outside, whatever it is, I wouldn't necessarily say that is dedicated High intensity exercise. And that's how I will typically break that down is in the total daily energy expenditure, how your metabolism works. That EAT component at the top of that list is your dedicated higher intensity bout of exercise. Again, I personally, I don't consider exercise as a 20-minute walk on your lunch break. It may be exercise in the terms of like you are literally moving your body, but that's what I, that's what I view it as. I view it as just more movement. with your body throughout the day, which I would have that fall under the NEAT category because it's not lifting weights or HIIT boot camps or spin classes or any of that stuff. That's what I would say is dedicated higher intensity bouts of exercise. So we can also talk about those like higher intensity forms of cardio in particular because a lot of people will say, well, Eric, if I can, you know, burn calories walking, clearly I can burn more calories doing my higher intensity HIIT boot camp class. And what I will say to that is, number one, the calorie burn that you will get, the difference in how many more calories you would burn through a, you know, a HIIT boot camp class is really not going to be that much of a difference. And we will talk about why in a second, especially if you are just getting more steps throughout your day and you are taking more walks throughout your day. You know, if you're somebody who's getting 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,000 steps per day, the difference in calories burned from doing a A HIIT boot camp class is not going to be that much, not to mention, even if you were like, well, Eric, I don't care, I'm going to burn more calories. Cool. What HIIT cardio does, that very high intensity, very fast-paced, very high heart rate, what this is going to do is it is going to add more stress to your body. It's going to increase your cortisol more and just add more stress. What this does to your body is— Because I like to think you watching this, you probably don't live like a stress-free lifestyle, right? You probably have kids or you have a spouse or you're going to school or you have a job or you have any other things going on in your life that is high stress. HIIT cardio adds to that stress. What then happens is you are going to start under-recovering from your workouts. And when you start under-recovering from your workouts, you have more cravings. You have less energy, there's more hunger, there's less willpower, you're way more tired and exhausted. What do all of those things typically lead to? They typically lead to you overeating on the calories that you are consuming. Which, if let's just say you did burn 150 extra calories from your HIIT boot camp class, but yet because it added more stress and you're under-recovered, more hungry, more tired, you on the back end turn around and you don't stick to your diet. You eat an extra 300, 400, 500, 600 calories because you have more cravings. And now, yeah, you've burned more calories in the, in the upfront short term, but then on the back end of that, you're actually eating more calories, which is then taking you out of that calorie deficit, which is making you not lose weight. And there's nothing worse. Trust me, I have coached plenty of people who have been in this scenario. There's nothing worse than killing yourself doing HIIT cardio and just like putting so much effort into the gym and then just not being able to be consistent with your diet, which makes you not see any progress because nutrition is really the main driving factor for you losing weight. And if you're doing all this HIIT cardio, it's going to make it so much harder to stick to nutrition, Which then makes it that much harder to actually see weight loss progress. So again, for that reason, it's why I like doing walking and getting more steps during your day than doing these very high-intensity HIIT bootcamp classes. Whereas walking, on the other hand, walking can actually promote recovery, both physical and mental health, which is the next part. Let me ask you this. When have you or anybody that you've known ever gotten back from a 10-minute walk, whether it's just walking outside with your dog, with the kids, just around the block, whatever it is— when have you ever gotten back from a 10, 15, 20-minute walk and felt worse? Never, right? You always get back from that walk and you feel less stressed. So when you feel less stressed, what do you think you're going to do with your choices, with your nutrition for the rest of the day? You're usually going to make better choices with your nutrition. Now, because you've walked and you've taken some more steps throughout the day, you are going to be able to obviously help with that calorie expenditure, but you're also going to make better choices with your nutrition, which helps you stay in a calorie deficit, which helps you lose weight. You're going to get back from that walk and you'll have more energy. You'll be wanting to, you know, you will cook that healthy dinner now because you're less stressed and you have more energy. Which again, all of this feeds back into you having a positive feedback loop with your weight loss because now these things are kind of playing off of each other, right? You're walking, your nutrition, you're walking, your nutrition, your mental health, your energy, your focus, all of these things, your stress management, all of these things are coming into play which are now aiding in you to help you eventually end up losing weight. Oh, if you can't tell, 16-year-old Eric thought no way was walking enough exercise to lose weight. 26-year-old Eric absolutely believes walking is enough exercise to lose weight. But notice how I said it's enough exercise to lose weight. I don't think it's enough exercise in general, and let me explain what I mean. Of course, losing weight is going to be very beneficial for your physical and mental health, and that can really get you a long way. But I believe every single person should be doing some sort of resistance training, some sort of strength training In their weekly workout routine. Now again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to start there right away. I have a client, her name is Nadia. I'll put a picture of Nadia right here. Nadia has been with me for over 3 years and she's an amazing client and she's an amazing friend of mine, a true friend of mine at this point. She's incredible. But her weight loss and her health journey really just started with her walking and with her tracking her food intake. That's it. We were walking 3,000 steps per day and then 5,000 steps per And then 6,000 and then 8,000 and then 10,000. And then she added in 1 day a week of workouts and then 2 days a week and then 3 days a week. And now she works out 4 days a week consistently, gets 10,000 steps, has lost over 40 pounds, and is in the best shape of her entire life. But that started with walking and tracking her food intake. So I'm not saying that it's bad if you're just walking right now, but I do think, and I do know for a fact, You do want to be able to work in some extra strength training in your workouts because there's just certain health benefits you're not going to be able to get from just walking, whether it's bone density, right? Whether it's talking about metabolism, strength training helps with your metabolism as well. Whether it's getting core strength, protecting your hips, protecting your lower back, all these incredible things. Not to mention the mental health benefits from lifting some heavy weight and feeling strong and getting more confident in yourself, which is going to then relay into all other areas of your life as well. So I'm a big believer of, of course, get your walking in, but I do believe we should be working in some resistance training at least 2 to 4 times a week. That's what the majority of my clients have. The majority of my clients have fell into that 3 to 4 times a week mark. Um, and so I've found that to be a very realistic, very sustainable rate of workouts per week, lifting workouts per week, to be able to, you know, be able to be consistent with Because that's the biggest key. I don't need you being a bodybuilder. I don't need you going to powerlift. If you want to do that, that's awesome. But 3 to 4 times a week of resistance training is going to be way more than enough for you to see progress and make it a sustainable lifestyle change for you. If you want some extra help with your resistance training, with your strength training, I will drop some totally free workouts here below, as well as I will drop below my coaching program, which is the Clubhouse. And inside of the Clubhouse, we have New workouts every single month. We have in-depth training programs you can follow 3 times a week or 4 times a week. We have exercise technique videos going over every single exercise, how to perform it correctly, how many reps to do, how many sets to do, all of that good stuff. So I'll link that here below. And other than that, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to subscribe to it, give it a thumbs up, and you can also check out this video here above, which I think you might like as well. Hope it helped, and we'll chat soon.