Walk It Off

Appetizer

Spend LESS time looking for a “good” parking space. In the amount of time you spend driving up and down the aisles in the parking lot at work, in front of Target, or at the mall, you could have just parked and walked up to the front door. By parking in the last row, not only will you burn extra calories, you will also avoid the traffic, shopping carts, and unattended children.

Main Course

In order to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you take in. The good news is that you don’t have to exercise all those calories away because our body uses most of the calories just to stay alive (whew!). However, if you don’t burn off the calories that your body is not using for its regular daily activities, they will be stored as excess fat (a big “No-No”).

What’s the quickest and easiest way to get moving? Just walk. Walk around the block, to the store, in the mall, up the stairs, in the park, on the treadmill…any where. Walking is my favorite form of exercise because it requires minimal equipment (just a good pair of shoes), it’s completely free (don’t have to pay a gym membership), and you can do it anywhere at any time. What more can you ask for?

Steps For Starting a Walking Program

(1) Invest in a good pair of walking shoes. There are several different types of shoes (for over-pronators, flat feet, trail walking, etc.), so ask for help at your local shoe retailer if you’re not sure what will work best for you. My personal fave is the Asics Gel-Walk Tech. These shoes are usually only about 60 bucks, and they’re good for most walkers.

Asics Gel-Walk Tech

(2) Find a good sports bra. We don’t want the “ladies” to be uncomfortable now do we? Enough said. Try the Champion® Seamless T-Back Sports Bra. It’s made from a great fabric called Double Dry that wicks sweat away from your skin, so it keeps you cool and dry while walking. I apologize if I sound like a bit of an advertiser here, but I worked at Champion for several years, and this is by far my absolute favorite product.
My Favorite Sports Bra

(3) Start nice and slow. If you haven’t been exercising regularly, you don’t want to try and break Olympic records on your first day of walking. Spend about 10-15 minutes walking at a comfortable pace 4-5x for a week.

(4) Begin to add 5-10 minutes to your walks each week until you work yourself up to 30-45 minutes as often as you can fit into your schedule. Once you feel comfortable with this program and it even starts to feel a little easy (Yea!), start to speed up your pace. Ultimately, you should aim to walk at a speed of at least 4.0 miles per hour (easy to program on treadmill) which equates to walking 1 mile every 15 minutes.

(5) Drink plenty of water before, during, and after your walk. This will keep you from dehydrating, and it just helps you feel refreshed.

Dessert

I had every intention of waking up at 5am today to go the gym like I regularly do. However, when the alarm went off, it seemed like someone was playing a cruel trick on me. Hadn’t I just fallen asleep? I wanted to get up, but I just couldn’t make it happen. When I finally did get up 2 hours later to get ready for work, I felt like crap. I should’ve just gotten up and made it happen. Then, my trainer called me (Yes, even trainers need trainers) to find out why I missed his 5:30am class. “Umm…well…I was kinda sore from our workout yesterday…and well…ummm…I was kinda tired…and…well…so…I… ummm…”

Yeah, right, OK.

About Cafe Physique:
The mission of Café Physique is to help clients reach and exceed their personal fitness and nutrition goals. If you’re in need of an a nutritionist in Atlanta or an Atlanta personal trainer – Café Physique is the perfect solution. We offer Atlanta yoga instruction, Atlanta prenatal workouts, and Atlanta personal training. We also have private sessions of pilates that Atlanta residents are raving about. We invite you to let a member of our Atlanta registered dietitian staff or personal training team develop and implement a realistic and healthy lifestyle plan to meet your personal goals.