Are You Walking and Not Losing Weight?
The painful answer is that weight loss and weight gain are simple math:
If you eat more calories than you use each day, you gain weight.
If you eat fewer calories than you use each day, you lose weight.
To lose weight you need to eat fewer calories and/or burn more each day.
For sensible, long-term weight control and to reduce your health risks, you should both eat less and exercise more.
A pound of fat equals 3500 calories. To lose 1 pound a week you will need to expend 3500 more calories than you eat that week, whether through increased activity or decreased eating—or both
To track what you eat, use a food diary or app to be honest with yourself.
To track activity calories, use a pedometer or fitness tracker, preferably one linked with a food diary app.
The American Heart Association recommends 30 to 60 minutes of brisk walking or other moderate-intensity exercise almost every day of the week to help lose weight. That amount of exercise is also associated with reducing your major health risks.
Walking can be a great way to improve your health and lose weight. Unfortunately, for many weight-loss warriors, walking doesn’t always move the needle on the scale. At least not like they were hoping it would.
Case in point: In one meta-analysis, University of Michigan researchers found that, on average, participants enrolled in pedometer-based walking programs increased their step count by about 4,000 steps per day (about a mile or two). But, after 16 weeks spent hoofing it, they only lost on average of 3.13 pounds.
That’s because, first of all, people are just wired to overestimate their caloric expenditure and underestimate their caloric intake.
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