Trying to find time for exercise while working full time can be difficult. Depending on your commute time and meal breaks, it can be even more difficult to schedule multiple weekly exercise walks that will burn enough calories to help you lose weight. Walking for maximum efficiency and creating an eating plan that reduces overeating will help you meet your fitness goals.
Types of Walking
Depending on how fast you walk and the terrain on which you walk, you’ll burn more calories. Walking at 2 mph, a 160-pound person will burn more than 180 calories per hour, according to the Mayo Clinic. Raising her speed to 3.5 mph, she’ll burn more than 275 calories per hour. Adding one-minute jogs every five or 10 minutes will further increase your calorie burn.
Walking up hills requires you to use your calf, hamstring and glute muscles more strenuously, and burns more calories than walking on a level terrain. Walking downhill requires you to use your quadriceps more to help slow you, and gives you a recovery from an uphill walk. If you walk on a treadmill, raise and lower the incline, if it is adjustable on your machine. Consider adding stairs to your walking routine to use different muscles and burn more calories. Walking stairs during you lunch hour lets you get quality exercise time in each day and reduces the amount of walking you’ll need to do when you get home. The American Heart Association recommends multiple, shorter workouts each day if you can’t schedule a 30- or 60-minute exercise routine.
Add Resistance
Walking is not a full-body workout, so you won’t get the same calorie burn you would on a rowing machine or using an elliptical machine with moving arm poles. Carry light dumbbells while you walk and perform a variety of arm exercises such as biceps curls, chest presses, triceps extensions and flyes. Start with light weights or strap-on wrist weights. While 10-pound dumbbells may seem light in your hand, consider whether you’ll be able to hold them without putting them down during a 30-minute or hour-long walk.
Daily Calories
To lose a pound of weight each week, you’ll need to burn 500 calories more each day than your recommended daily number of calories for weight maintenance. This means that if you can eat 2,000 calories each day without gaining weight, you’ll need to eat only 1,000 calories per day to lose 2 pounds of weight each week. This may be too few calories to maintain good health, and the weight may come back once you stop dieting. Create a weight-loss that cuts some calories and burns more through exercise. For example, eat 1,400 calories each day and burn 400 extra calories through exercise to lose 2 pounds of weight per week.
Read the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s free download, “Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” talk to your doctor, or use an online calorie calculator such as LIVESTRONG.com MyPlate to find your daily calorie number.
Eating Plan
Use food labels to create your daily meals and snacks. Food labels let you see how many calories each meal and snack has and lets you know whether you’re getting enough nutrients for good health. Start with a healthy breakfast that includes whole grains and lean protein. Eat a healthy mid-morning snack whether you are hungry or not — this will help prevent overeating at lunch. Have an afternoon snack and a healthy dinner, keeping your meals about 400 to 500 calories and snacks about 100 to 150 calories.
Many people don’t like to exercise on a full stomach or start exercising too close to bedtime. If you have problems exercising when you get home from work because you are too hungry to work out before you eat, consider having a larger afternoon snack and smaller dinner. This will prevent you from coming home so hungry you skip your workout.
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