10 reasons why you're walking but not losing weight, according to experts
Chances are, the majority of you reading this would wager that regular HIIT classes are more beneficial for weight loss than walking. We get it. An intense, max-effort session is surely going to do more for you than a gentle stroll around the park, right? Not necessarily, says leading sports and conditioning coach Andy Vincent.
‘Even if you do three intense sessions per week, the energy (or calories) burned is barely going to make a dent in your total energy expenditure across a week. In comparison, regular walking easily accumulates. It’s something you can do every day, without totally exhausting yourself, and without driving your hunger up too much. As the weeks build, the calories you burn stack up, and research shows these calories can be three times higher in total per day than a vigorous exercise class,’ he explains.
‘Of course, there are plenty of benefits from doing intentional cardio and strength training, like building muscle and protecting your heart health, but walking is a great way to lose weight.’
But what if you’re not losing weight? A little stagnation is normal, and it certainly doesn’t mean you should ditch walking altogether. Here are all the reasons you may not be seeing weight loss results from walking – and how to rectify them.
Meet the expert: Andy Vincent has been a strength and conditioning coach for 20 years, with experience working with UKSCA, Poliquin Group, AiM, FRC, EXOS, Precision Nutrition and more.
10 reasons you're walking but not losing weight
1.You’re gaining muscle
‘You’re not going to gain a significant amount of muscle from walking alone, compared to if you were to start lifting weights at the same time as increasing your protein intake, for example. That said, if you were previously very sedentary and have only just started regularly walking, you will initially increase strength and build some muscle, because the change in stimulus from doing very little to being active - even through walking - is enough to increase muscle tissue. This can mean that your weight stays the same, or even increases.
‘The type of walks you do will impact how much muscle you build, though. If you have been doing more hill-based walking on a treadmill or outdoors on hiking paths, or maybe you have been wearing a weighted vest or rucksack, you will likely build more muscle mass as this will increase the amount of tension going through your muscles, specifically in your lower limbs, like your calves, thighs, and glutes.
‘What’s important to remember is that even though your overall weight might stay the same, the composition is changing for the better – you may be burning fat but building muscle. That's a good thing.'
2. You’re walking too much too soon
‘If you have gone from being very sedentary to all of a sudden doing lots of walking, you will be burning considerably more calories, but your body will do its best to try to maintain homeostasis (a.k.a. energy balance) by sending you more hunger signals.
‘These will be more intense if you don’t gradually increase the amount of walking you do, which can mean that you end up eating more, which is why you may struggle to lose weight. An increase in hunger will likely happen whether you increase walks gradually or not, but to avoid feeling excessively hungry, the goal is to increase your walks gradually.
‘When it comes to knowing how you’re ready to walk for longer, or more frequently, listen to how your body responds: Do you get hungry immediately after a walk? Do you notice, all of a sudden, you’re getting really tired? If so, you may be pushing things a bit too far. If you feel fine, then maybe you could walk for another five minutes or so. Consider upping this each week, providing you don’t feel too tired or hungry.’
3. You could use more protein
‘A moderate to high-protein diet is a great idea for anyone looking to lose body fat. The two main reasons for this are that protein is often more satiating – helping to regulate hunger, and that protein has a higher thermic effect. By that, I mean it takes more energy to break down the protein that you eat than any of the other macronutrients, like carbohydrates, and fats.
‘You might believe that there are four calories per gram of protein. That’s incorrect. When you adjust for the thermic effect of breaking protein down, you end up with around 2.8 to 3.2 calories of digestible, or metabolisable, energy (meaning, how much you actually take on). So, eating more protein – as opposed to other macros – is a very smart way to eat a bit more and respond to your hungry cues, without overconsuming. You’ll feel fuller and more satisfied, but won’t actually metabolise excessive energy (i.e., calories).
‘Walking isn’t a form of training that demands a massive amount of protein—because you’re not placing a lot of stress on the muscles, like you would with weight or resistance training, and therefore your muscles don’t have significant recovery needs—but a higher protein diet is always a smart choice if the overall goal is weight loss.’
4. Alcohol could be hindering your success
‘The issue with alcohol is not so much that it’s high in calories. It's that your body cannot store calories from alcohol, so it converts alcohol to ethanol to burn immediately for energy. This means that all fat-burning and the use of carbohydrates as a fuel source are inhibited until all the alcohol you’ve consumed is cleared from your body.
‘A high enough dosage of alcohol is also a neurotoxin, meaning it can damage the neurons in your brain. This can affect sleep, which can lead to issues with cravings and an increased likelihood of binge eating.
‘While you shouldn’t drink over the NHS guidelines and I’d advise cutting it out where you can, I’m not saying you need to totally give up alcohol. In fact, walking after a day where you’ve been drinking is a good idea. Going to a spinning class to "sweat out" the alcohol is not very smart, because your body won’t be in the best place to put in a high level of performance. You’ll just dehydrate yourself further, and let’s face it, you’re not really going to achieve your maxes with a hangover. A nice walk outside can be a great way to get some light activity in, if you aren’t feeling 100% after drinking.’
5. Your walks may not be high-intensity enough
‘Now, I’m not saying walking is too low intensity to bring about weight loss. Weight loss is achieved when the energy you burn day-to-day, through movement, is greater than the energy you consume through food. The intensity of the workout doesn’t actually affect weight loss.
‘That being said, it does affect fat loss, specifically visceral fat. If you want to target the fat stored in and around your internal organs (known as visceral fat), high-intensity interval formats are better for this. But that doesn't necessarily mean doing HIIT - you can apply the same theory to the walks you do. For example, try hill walks. Find the steepest hill nearby, charge up the hill as fast as you can for up to a minute’s worth of total work, walk back down, and repeat this for bouts. You can also add a weighted vest or ruck to make this even more intense.
‘Walking is so versatile. You can gradually increase your overall step count day to day, but a weighted vest and/or a steep hill are great ways to incorporate interval training – all without any impact on your joints, like you would with, say, a run.’
6. If you don’t incorporate higher-intensity walks, you may not be walking often enough
‘I group walking in two categories: 1) your daily step count, incorporating general NEAT exercise, and 2) walks incorporating intervals, using hills and/or a weighted vest or rucksack.
‘If you’re doing a lot of hiking and hill walking that is really taxing - either because of the overall intensity, or because they’re extra-long - you need longer to recover. So, providing they’re high-intensity enough, two or three walks per week should be enough for weight loss.
‘If you’re not incorporating those types of walks, you could go for a gentle stroll two or three times a day, every day. These shouldn’t be longer than 20 minutes each, and it’s essential that you keep an eye on your hunger cues - don't increase the frequency if you start to feel significantly hungrier. If you’re doing enough of these daily, gentle walks, you may not need to incorporate the longer or more intense hikes to hit your weight loss goals. But if you're not doing enough, you might want to consider incorporating the high-intensity forms of walking.’
7. You haven’t maintained a walking routine for long enough
‘If you have effectively reduced your total energy intake slightly, and increased the amount of energy you use day-to-day through your walks to create enough of a caloric deficit, you should start to see changes in body weight and body composition after a couple of weeks. But this won’t happen if you haven’t been consistent.
'Patience is a virtue. There is no point trying unsustainable methods like intermittent fasting, or cutting out carbs – you want to focus on sustainability. The results will come, they just might take longer than you’re expecting.’
8. You’re not in a calorie deficit
‘Simply put, if you’re not losing weight through walking, it’s likely that you're consuming more calories than you are burning through physical activity. I’m not saying you should track calories; food-labelling is wildly inaccurate and the metabolisable energy from food differs from person to person, based on your gut microbiome and the fibre content of your meals. For example, some fibres are indigestible which means you consume fewer calories.
'It’s impossible to track exactly how many calories you consume, so I recommend using your hunger cues to tell you whether or not you are overconsuming, while also having a general awareness of the energy composition of the meals that you’re consuming; for example, avoid things like butter, oil, and cream. There’s an easy way to cut some calories out without too much thought.
‘To keep your body feeling energised throughout the day, you should also aim to consume two to four balanced meals, containing protein, carbs, and fats. It may also be smart to reduce or eliminate snacking, simply because the more often you consume food, the more often you’ve got to use willpower to make smart decisions. If you have three or four evenly-sized meals, you should feel satiated enough to avoid snacking between meals, rather than grabbing a coffee for breakfast, having a light lunch, then being ravenous by the evening and overconsuming.
‘There are lots of myths in the weight loss world, like the concept that eating calories late in the evening will impact weight loss. That is not true. If the overall amount of energy you consume across one day keeps you in a caloric deficit, eating too often or too many meals doesn’t matter.’
9. You’re not getting enough sleep
‘If you don’t sleep well, the problem is that when you wake up you may feel more susceptible to cravings since poor sleep can cause an imbalance in your hunger hormones, meaning you feel hungrier. You’re also more likely to overuse stimulants such as caffeine, which can hinder sleep further the following day, and so the hunger cycle continues.
‘When it comes to sleep, aim for between six to nine hours a night; some people will do fine on six, others need more. Try to be fairly consistent with your sleep and wake times; avoid alcohol and caffeine close to bed; try to eat your meals at least two hours before going to bed, and get your hydration done earlier in the day to avoid toilet trips during the night.'
10. You’re doing other high-intensity forms of workouts too late in the day
‘The great thing about walking is that if you’re doing it at a low intensity, it’s not going to spike things like cortisol, which should mean it won’t impact your sleep, no matter what time of the day you go out for your walks. On the other hand, if you were to do a late afternoon or evening spin class, WOD, or lift weights, the intensity of these workouts is far higher, and you are going to elevate cortisol during a period of the day when cortisol is – and should be – decreasing ready for sleep. Choosing to walk more and do fewer late-in-the-day high-intensity sessions is ideal.’
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