Calories burned walking when you walk 100 kms adds up to a significant calorie deficit and weight loss! This video is indicative of a fun attitude from these women doing the Oxfam Trail Walking Sydney for 2010. This fundraising program operates in several Oxfam countries around the world and exemplifies an opportunity for serious walking to lose weight people to combine fun, team work and philanthropy.
Pedals and Pedometer Steps recommends including activities to enhance your pedometer steps counting and to keep your interest alive for your pedometer steps program. This example of a special event walk demonstrates the opportunity to build pedometer steps and a walking to lose weight lifestyle.
Why is this such a good idea?
Pedometer steps counting is a great example of the tried and true method to not only losing weight but keeping the weight off once the activity level developed through walking for weight loss is continued as a lifestyle.
To develop your exercise or activity into a lifestyle choice requires building interest and variety, and friendships or family relationships into it. The charity or fun walk is a perfect opportunity to do this. What is appealing to me in this video is the fun attitude the girls have taken when recording the promotion. This Sydney event is in August.
The event began in 1981 as a military exercise for the elite Queen’s Gurkha Signals Regiment in Hong Kong, and has since grown into one of the world’s leading sporting challenges. Oxfam TRAILWALKER is a global event, taking place annually in New Zealand, UK, Hong Kong and Japan.
A quick walk around the block early in the morning is a great way to start the day and get your pedometer steps off and running. It should wake up your mind and body which is what we all need for a fun filled and refreshing day. Often inspiration will hit, as the peace and isolation of early mornings allows lots of clear thinking.This is also a great way to plan for pedometer steps later in the day. Perhaps a walk to the coffee shop or lunch place, pick up the kids, to the bank and to pick up the newspaper.
Just as a long drive to work can be an advantage- use this time to transition from home to work, partition home and family problems in a “later” file, review your mental ‘to do’ list for today’s duties- so a walk before work or other commitments which will benefit from forethought (and what doesn’t?) can do the same. The walk can act as a switch, alerting your brain that you are now seriously intending to get busy.
In the past it may have been that first cup of coffee or tea, a ciggie, reading the newspaper, etc. These are all transition rituals which allow your brain to switch from one mode of response to another. Now that you are a pedometer steps person it can be a short starter walk.
This doesn’t mean giving up pleasurable habits unless they get in the way of your well being. It is better to have a number of positive triggers which allow you easy phasing into and out of particular mind modes which best suit different tasks. For instance if today is to be a hands on creative day then relaxing, preparing my right brain for success helps me be ready straight away. This saves time.
Walking can be one of these positive triggers for you. It has additional advantages by adding to your pedometer steps count.
In these small walks much time can be saved by combining tasks.
Enjoy the challenge of finding the way to walk 10,000 steps and achieve more than ever in any one day, every day.
Hi to all of the Pedals & Pedometer Steps readers who are signing up for The New! Walker, the first issue is ready to go. I want it to be good so apologies for the delays but the button will be pushed soon.
I am returning to an ongoing topic of interest-what to do if you are injury prone or just want to get the best out of counting pedometer steps.
Normal bodily wear and tear is no reason for alarm. If you are someone who has been a couch potato for some time e.g. regularly looking for ways to avoid walking or hurting something by turning over in bed, then pretend that discomfort is your friend, and is really pointing to the need for preliminary checks before taking your vehicle on a long drive over many days.
Yep, zero to 100 mph is not likely for your “vehicle” which I’m sure you realize is meant to symbolize the equivalent type of ‘tune up’ required for your body.
More seriously, using pedometer steps is so good because it enables you to gradually increase your exertion so your body adjusts to these changed expectations in a comfortable manner. Muscles, tendons and joints can acclimatize to unusual (for them) extensions and contractions, given the correct encouragement.
Sudden movements, sudden load increases, sudden climate change-all ’shock’ the system. This can have a ‘wake up’ effect, and certainly the effort required by the body to cope means many calories burned, but it is ultimately not for the best.
Your body’s muscles have rested for a long time (if this is the case) and need preparation, and that preparing enables you to build up the muscle strength. Once released, with the strength to do it, the result is phenomenal.
Use a pedometer and count pedometer steps for the best results.
On the other hand it may be that over time you have allowed small encroachments into your well being without attending to them. They have just not seemed to be worth doing anything about. ‘It comes with age’ is a favorite excuse. Maybe there are technological or medical answers but you haven’t looked or persevered with the options. Do what you can, seek answers, and know that feeling good about your body helps a lot. High expectations for short term results is a pressure cooker environment to which most of us do not respond well.
If twenty years of putting on weight, something wrong with your feet, wonky ankles, etc., have stopped you exercising then be prepared for the long haul of working through these issues. While you do that, finding alternate ways of feeling good about the changes you’re making will help. In other words, find a way of enjoying the new way whether or not your weight changes. There is less tension involved and less need to give it all up if you don’t lose weight in the short term.
What do I mean?
Learn to love aspects of the new diet, or food, or paths you are walking. Find advantages in what you are doing even if initially it seems like failure. The old adage that success is on the other end of failure is always true. Oprah wasn’t Oprah from day one. You only have to look at old tapes to see that.
Pedometer steps counting is truly a feature of the modern age. Walking itself as a leisure activity or necessary means of transport has been with us forever.
As with technology of other sorts the pedometer is a means of increasing our satisfaction with the ongoing process of walking for health (weight loss in particular) or fitness (training). Logging pedometer steps whether online or in a journal is part of the self interest movement of the last 20 years. We are more engaged with a process when it not only relates to, but includes, us. On the one hand it acknowledges that “we” make a difference, at least to our own results. On the other hand it streamlines the process to fit like a glove.
The weight loss dream has far too many components for easy assessment. We all know the nightmare of the scales and its lackluster performance as a guide. For some twenty years have gone by without the right combination of the stars and good fortune. Well the time is now. Never have we lived in such a choice- full, abundant society where many more suffer the diseases of excess than lack. Over whelm when it comes to finding the ‘right’ weight loss program is more likely to be the difficulty. Copying someone else’s successful process can have limited success for weight loss in the short term but for longer lifestyle choices then the changes must be one’s you choose.
The New Walker will be my new walking for weight loss e-letter. It is a combination of news and anecdote, thoughts, questions and answers and philosophy of life. Pedometer steps are my favorite way to get someone hooked on the new wonder ‘drug’ of exercise and activity as an anti-depressant, stress relief, mental and creative stimulant and mood enhancer. This is not to mention the other feel good benefits to the body and disposition.
One of my ‘new’ discoveries has been the benefits of walking after eating a meal. In the books of the 1800s and early 1900s, it was often mentioned that the family but particularly the head of the household would go for an evening walk after the meal. It aids digestion and generally makes me feel good by adding pedometer steps. If for some reason (!) you have eaten too much it also is one way of lessening any guilt and even reducing the effects of any excess calories.
The new walker does have most of the characteristics of the old except that the deliberate introduction of activity into a lifestyle previously devoid of much exercise from necessity, is different, because to exercise or not is now a choice.
Pedometer Steps and Walking to Lose Weight are my favorite blogs to write as the benefits of walking have helped me feel good every day. Am I claiming a happy ever after scenario? I am claiming the processes and tools to being happy every day in a healthy and loving work, home and family environment. The process requires implementing, adapting and using those tools with as much enthusiasm as possible. The New Walker is one way to get some input into your new lifestyle in a comfortable manner.
Please sign up for the FREE e-letter, The New Walker, in the column on the right if you’re open to making changes over time which will enhance your life, give you confidence and the desire to live your life lovingly,
Start Walking, Get Running, and Lose Weightis filled with common sense strategies for managing the food you eat and simple but very effective exercise plans that ease you into shape.
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