2812: The Most Overlooked Way to Burn Fat

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Today's episode we talk about five reasons.

We give you five reasons.

While walking, good old fashioned, easy walking is the most underrated fat loss tool.

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Walking, it's one of the most, if not the most, underrated fat loss tool.

We're going to give you five reasons why you should walk and use this in your regiment.

Let's go.

Every time we bring this up and talk about this in the podcast,

it always reminds me of what a terrible trainer was.

It does.

I have to talk to people.

I have really, I have, you know, we all have our own little stories that we share about.

Like when we admittedly weren't the best trainers.

But I could like literally remember like scoffing at people.

Totally.

When I used to, we had this intake form that you would give somebody when the first time you met with them.

It's like a full questionnaire on their, you know, their exercise.

Yeah, their history, their medical history, their past history and working out.

What they currently do for exercise.

And, you know, a lot of times people I walk.

That's what I do for exercise.

You don't do anything.

Yeah.

Basically, that's basically checking off nothing.

And the laughing tongue and cheek now.

But it always makes me feel terrible because it's crazy how it's been a 180 for me.

It later in my career realizing that this is the first place I start with.

Damn, you're everybody almost almost every no matter what your goal is is actually managing their daily activity.

And it's, it makes me feel terrible because I was something that I scoffed at.

And made people feel like they weren't doing a good job or that doesn't count.

And yet here I am today.

It's almost always the first thing I peer into and the first thing that I start to move people in the direction of.

And so ironically.

So it can't even experience lifters.

Yes.

Yeah, it wasn't just beginners.

And that was the thing.

I always thought it was just like for the people that had no idea how to train.

And like this is just the first, you know, introduction.

But there's so much value in walking for so many different aspects.

We just had a conversation on the podcast earlier the other day when we recorded an episode about us not walking.

And like we're setting walking goals for ourselves.

For real.

And it's a very, very advanced lifters, I'd say.

And yet, you know, need more of that in our lives.

So it's interesting how, how valuable and how high I rank it today versus what I would have ranked it.

Yeah, I think someone listening might be thinking a few things, right?

There might be like walking.

It's not strenuous.

It doesn't burn a lot of calories.

Why is this like a great form of exercise or activity?

Again, to be clear, all forms of exercise, if done appropriately, right?

So apply it appropriately for the right person.

They all have lots of value.

Okay.

So, so almost any form of exercise, as long as it's done appropriately, is going to bring some value will improve your health, depending on which one you do, you get more stamina, more strength, more mobility, or flexibility.

And if we were to rank forms of exercise for like athletic performance and strength and stamina,

walking wouldn't make it too high on that list.

And yet, here we are saying that walking is this great form of activity.

It's this wonderful, wonderful form of activity.

So, I think we should explain why we're saying that when walking isn't the best for athletic performance.

It's not the best for endurance, it's not the best for building muscle.

It doesn't burn the most calories yet.

I place it at the top of of lists when it comes to just general activity.

And I place it at the top as one of the things for fat loss tool.

Yes, yes.

And so here's the thing that, so let me just paint the context.

We trained people for many, many years for decades.

And we have trainers that work for us now here at Mind Pump that work with people.

And there's a lot of things you have to consider when you're recommending a form of exercise.

And if you're not a trainer or you're not a coach, you might not even think of these things.

But a trainer or coach has to consider these things because you have to recommend something that's appropriate for somebody that has a high adherence rate that allows somebody to be consistent and so forth.

Otherwise, who cares, right?

If I recommend a form of exercise that someone's not going to be able to do is inconvenient, has a high risk of injury, or is going to take away from, let's say, our primary form of exercise, which is typically strength training what recommend.

It's not a great form of exercise.

So I'll start with the first thing.

And this is a big one.

This is a big one.

Everybody, a lot of people don't even think about this.

This is a big deal.

Walking is a low skill type of movement.

Meaning, if I took 100 regular people outside, just 100 normal people without major injury, all of them can walk and they won't get hurt.

I can't say that for pretty much any of the form of exercise.

It took 100 normal people out there and it's a good run.

In fact, I want you to run every single day.

Or I want you to cycle every day.

Or I want you to go do crossfit every day.

The risk of injury becomes really high.

Walking, everybody can still walk.

It's appropriate.

I got to play to anybody.

It's low skill.

I could tell my aunt to walk.

I could tell a bodybuilder walk.

I could tell an athlete walk.

Anybody to walk to increased activity and the injury risk is extremely low, which makes it very appropriate.

By the way, there's more that goes to this, but that alone makes it very appropriate form of activity that can recommend to anybody.

Well, and in the context of what you're talking about with starting a client and training them, it's one of the easiest things that you can build, like what you can get to them and consider them continuing that forever.

Yes.

Even the best, most intense program that burns the most body, that builds the most muscle.

The likelihood that that person can continue doing that forever or a long time is much lower than can I create habits around walking more frequently throughout someone's day and what percent or how likely can I keep them doing that forever?

Much higher than any other modality.

It is. And I also add this, like trying to burn calories manually is kind of a losing strategy anyway.

So yes, there are forms of exercise that burn more calories while you do them.

But if you've listened to past podcasts, past episodes, your better bet is try to speed up the metabolism through building muscle.

So if you want to try to burn more calories, better off teaching your body to burn more calories on its own, then try to burn it manually.

But does that mean there isn't any value to increased activity?

No, there's tons of it value to increased activity.

You have improved insulin sensitivity, which means you're not going to get these big spikes and drops and blood sugar.

That affects lots of different behaviors, it affects cravings and energy and mood, changes your eating behaviors.

It's also great for metabolic health, especially if you stretch that out over years.

And so walking is just a great form of activity that's low skill, low injury risk.

It's also this, it's very hard to pick a form of exercise that is appropriate for the person that is overstressed and overworked or the person who's well rested, slept, you know, is well fed, who can get after it.

What form of exercise is going to benefit both of them?

Walking.

Yeah, well, and two, like in settings, if you're in work setting where you're sedentary a lot, there's not a lot of exercise you can just say, hey, do this.

Within your work environment, whereas walking, you could plan that out where you could actually take these breaks and actually be somewhat productive with that with your body to also like spike your mood, spike your energy, get things moving,

and that has a cascading effect back into the training and the nutrition.

Well, back to your low skill point is that when you first made a client, you're learning a lot about that client to what you're talking about with.

There are other stress that they have in their life and right away after the first day I meet you, I can feel confident that telling you to walk X amount of steps or minutes in a day every day.

Fine.

It's fine for everybody without with knowing very little information.

I don't know if three days of full body routines is going to be too much for you right now.

I don't know if you can handle running for a half hour.

I don't know if you could handle some hit sprints post or pre workout or once a week.

I'm figuring that out.

As a trainer, when you first get somebody, the irony of how we started this conversation is that this is the first place I start everybody right away.

Because I know that it's got so many other benefits besides just creating more activity and good habits and good behaviors around this person, which you'll get to the other four.

And so right out the gates, I know we can start doing this thing.

But I really like it because it's recuperative.

Meaning it won't take away from your body's recovery ability that you're going to need for the other more important or intense form.

It won't just take away.

It will facilitate and speed up.

That's right.

More blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients flowing through the body is going to facilitate and speed up recovery.

I remember again, another mistake when I know you could definitely relate to this because we've talked about this before where you know, I thought go hammer the gym as far as possible.

Lay down, don't move.

Don't burn another color.

Don't burn the colors.

Let that let that would build the most muscle that's not true at all.

No.

In fact, I would have built more muscle going out for 10,000 step days of walking and moving that blood, moving that nutrients, moving that oxygen through my body.

It would facilitate that recovery faster than just laying there still.

Right.

In other words, someone who's interested in fat loss, a good routine typical person may look something like two or three days a week of strength training, the appropriate intensity compound lifts.

You've heard us talk about this before get stronger.

What other activity can I add to that that's not going to take away from the adaptation the recovery that I need for the strength training walking walking.

Now, if I took that same person that they were doing three days a week full body strength training and I'm having them do an additional two or three days of hit cardio.

Well, it's going to take away.

I'm going to have to really scale down the intensity of volume of the strength training oftentimes so that they have some of that ability, the recovery that they can use for the hit cardio for walking.

It doesn't take away.

It often adds to that.

So it's just a great addition to a strength training routine.

Also, when you start talking about hit and more volume of training intensity, other things like that, you also have to consider calorie deficit.

If they're in a deficit, having them walk more, you'll lean them out.

The body will tap into fat.

The body will utilize fat to fuel them through that muscle down with walking.

No, you have to do a lot of walking.

Yeah, the amount that someone would have to do and the deficit walk like 40,000.

Right.

So that's another great positive.

Again, I don't need to know a lot of information.

They could be in a place where they're not even in a calorie surplus or maintenance.

It could be in a deficit and I can add a bunch of walking in there.

And most likely it was going to happen.

They're going to just lean out from that.

They're just going to lose muscle preserving.

Yeah, it's very muscle preserving versus if that person who's in maybe extreme calorie deficit, I'm training.

And then I also stack high intensity cardio on top of that.

I sacrifice their body, potentially pairing down muscle.

That's right.

Or that's way less likely to happen with walking.

Here's one of my favorite things with walking.

It's a very easily stacked with other habits.

So one of the obvious ones is you could put on some headphones, take a scroll,

scroll, listen to a book, really get lost in the book or whatever.

But here, that's an obvious one.

But my favorite habits with walking look like this.

You're at work.

You've got, you're there till five o'clock or six o'clock.

You can go on a walk and have a meeting.

You go on a walk and have a conversation with your friend.

You can build your relationship with your wife when you get home on a walk.

You can make the walk so meaningful that it's not even about the walk.

It's about hanging out with that person, connecting with that person,

and making it something entirely different.

In fact, this is one of my favorite reasons to walk later when I get home after work.

Is that going to hang out with my wife?

Yeah.

Like the kids will start out with, yes, start out with the wife.

And then it's like, okay, it's bringing the kids, okay, it's bringing the dogs.

It was just like this whole thing.

But again, everybody comes back in a better mood and then, you know, a lot of this stuff.

I feel like it's like unresolved energy, you know, gets expressed.

There's other habits that are great to stack it with too.

Most of us end up going to the grocery store at least once a week.

Park your car super far from where.

That's right.

You know, intentionally go to the grocery store instead of maybe instacarding it.

You go to the gym probably or some other place.

Park far away.

Like, there's walking.

There's a lot of ways that you can make walking, you know, five, ten minutes here

there in all these things that you do every single day on a regular basis

that increases this activity increases.

I'm so glad you said that.

Oftentimes, exercise needs to be scheduled and done kind of all at once, right?

I'm going to go running today.

Well, you typically don't do three, you know, ten minute runs.

It's typically one thirty minute run or something like that.

With walking, you split it up throughout the day.

If you work in an office, you do three ten minute walks.

That's thirty minutes.

In each one of those, you can stack with, take your coworker with you.

Or any discuss this thing with my boss or my employee.

Or I got to work on this idea and I'm going to be on my phone.

But why don't I go for a walk while I do it?

And you can split up the walks throughout the day.

By the way, the data shows if you do it that way,

especially if you do it post-prandial, meaning after a meal,

you actually get better health effects.

It's actually better for you to split up a bunch of little walks

than it is to do one long walk, especially if it's after your meals.

I mean, Justin's notorious for this.

And as I've gotten older, I've reframed the way I look at this at home.

It's just, you know, many times now,

choose to like clean up around the house or organize a closet

or wash one of my car like this becomes like a thing that I do it

not only because that thing needs to get done, but now it's like,

oh, you know what?

There's my activity.

Here's my activity doing that.

And I remember when we talk about this,

when the first tools came out, now you have the Fitbit,

the Aura Ring, all these things.

There's so many competitors.

At one point, it used to be just the body bug way back in the days.

And, you know, they partnered with 24 Fitness,

so we were some of the first people to get to test those things out.

And by the way, this is back when I wasn't a good trainer.

This is back when I was still trying to like kill my clients

in their workouts and burn as many calories as we could in the workout

because I thought I had to do that with everybody.

And I remember all my clients I got on those body bugs.

And, you know, we would sit down when we'd meet once a week

and look at their report from the week.

And I remember many, most, not a couple or anomalies,

most of my clients burned a majority of their high calorie days,

not with me.

How is this possible?

I'm open to shit out of them for a sour.

It's got to be like, help.

But it was on their Saturday when they did yard work

or they went to the mall or they were just active

and the calorie expenditure, even though you're making the case

that it doesn't burn a lot of calories, it really adds up

when you make it a part of your life.

It does.

When you compare a sedentary day and everybody has normally

at least one of these a week when you just,

you sleep in for two hours.

You don't have to go anywhere and do anything.

Maybe you'll watch a little TV or you come in early that night.

Well, that day of steps compared to another day

when you would consider your high activity day.

Maybe you move a lot, whatever, go grocery, all the things.

The calorie burn is actually pretty significant.

No, that's good.

I've seen thousand calorie burn differences.

That's a good point because walking so accessible

because you could track your steps and just try to move more.

Cumulatively, it is more calories.

You're right.

You're like a 20-minute hardcore intense cardio session

is going to burn more than 20 minutes of walking.

But typically what happens is if you're tracking this

and you're trying to hit 10,000 steps today,

you do more of it.

And overall, it does add up.

And that's what blew my mind was, because again,

this is back of my...

So I saw the same thing.

Not good trainer days when I was trying to burn a lot of calories

with my clients.

And I'm going like, well, this is crazy.

Well, the reason why that happened, I saw the same thing out of them,

because I actually thought that the program was wrong.

I had to go through a couple of times.

What it was is that people would train with me

typically on the work days.

Yes.

So they'd come...

It's a sedentary job.

That's right.

So they'd come see me.

They'd work out the thing in the morning.

We'd have an hour hard work out.

You would see on their chart, spike in calorie burn.

And the rest of the day, there was nothing.

Yeah, they had this crazy 500, 600 calorie burn with you.

Yep.

And that's an intense workout, right?

That's you really.

That's circling them, moving them, hitting them with some

cardio.

So you get like 600 calories burned over their maintenance that day

that they'd train with you.

And then they have a day where they burned a thousand calories

more.

And it's just...

They were just...

They were just busy all day.

Yep.

And it's like...

And I remember...

What did you do?

And they're like...

I didn't do...

I didn't do anything.

I just walked...

I just had this.

I did that.

And I was like, oh my god.

What a day.

I had a client went to the mall.

And she was at the mall all day with her teenage kids.

And I'm like, what did you do?

Yeah.

It's like nothing.

Like, this is crazy.

Yeah.

The other thing, too, is that what makes walking so great when one of the reasons

why walking...

When people try to increase their steps, one of the reasons why they're more consistent with

it is it requires no setup and no equipment.

Yeah.

I don't got to go change into my workout clothes.

I can go for a walk in my work clothes.

I don't need to go to the gym.

I don't need special equipment.

I just go for a walk.

Because there's no setup, because it's so convenient, I end up doing more of it than if it were like,

I have to go on this run.

I've got to get my shoes on, better change my clothes.

I'm going to go on sweaty, then I go shower or whatever.

It requires no setup.

You just go for a walk.

It makes it super easy.

That's part of why I think it's so underrated also is there's this myth around sweat is correlated to fatburn.

And that you need to be sweating and exhausted in order for the body to burn fat.

It's so not true.

Your fat being utilized as energy is being in a core deficit.

That's right.

If you can create a core deficit through walking and never sweating all day long.

You can burn as much body fat if not more body fat.

And I would argue more because of the point you're making right now.

It's really easy to make it, you know, when you're dressed in work clothes,

they're just, oh, you know, I have a lunch break every day.

Instead of me just eating lunch and sitting with my coarser at the lunch.

How about I think I had 15, 20 minutes of that time with a walk.

That's right.

And then I park further and you create these habits and all of a sudden you become a person

by the way average American steps less than 4,500 steps a day.

You also become the average American who steps 4,000 or less to the average American

or who's now stepping 8,000 steps every day.

And I'll tell you right now if you take a person from four to 8,000 to double their activity.

You've doubled their activity and movement.

And they don't even feel like they've worked out real hard.

Yes.

And that does add up.

It does.

And lastly, you know, walking does and it does this quite consistently and quite well.

It typically gets us outside.

Now other forms of exercise do as well.

But because walking requires so little setup or no setup,

I can do it whenever I want or need to change my clothes.

I end up going outside a lot.

I end up going outside a lot more than I normally would.

And that has its own health benefits.

Like getting sunlight is good for you.

It's very good for you, especially when you compare to not getting any sunlight.

Most people, especially people who work off this jobs,

get so little sunlight that when they go for walks,

part of the health benefits and the mood lift that they feel is just getting out in the sun.

It also gets you outside around people.

And this may not have been a big deal 30 years ago.

But these days, it makes a big deal to be around people.

And that is rejuvenating and can encourage relationships and converses.

It gets you out.

It gets you out from the cave.

We're so locked in to be able to do it.

I don't think that this is talked about enough.

I think that it's one of those kind of afterthoughts that,

yeah, yeah, we know getting outside is important.

Like everybody knows.

And you think because you walked to your car,

you do this like, yeah, I get outside.

But to your point about today versus 30 years ago,

the average person spent several hours outside compared to today,

where we've now completely flipped out.

So this has changed a lot.

And we don't have a lot of history to show all the detrimental stuff

to not getting any sunlight consistently.

We haven't had enough generations age and get older to see that.

And so I think we'll look back 40, 50 years from now and talk about this period of time

when we've got under a bunch of fluorescent lights,

locked ourselves indoors for eight, ten hour days,

all the time for decades on how detrimental that was to our health.

And so I think this isn't talked about enough how important it is for us to do.

There's definitely some kind of physiological benefit to being in nature

and not artificial environments.

And I remember listening to a guy in a podcast,

he was trying to like define it.

And he was like, you know, certain doses of it,

whether it was like in a park or whether you're immersed in a field

or you're actually in a forest where there's no other signs of civilization.

And he was like, that's like the mega dose.

And there was some kind of like calming effect to that.

And like your brain received, you know, a lot of benefits.

Is anybody who's ever wore an office job consistently for weeks or months

and then taken a vacation to the coast or the forest for three days?

Can't tell me you don't feel that.

I definitely see something too to seeing very far versus like,

you know, always seeing things right in front of you.

That's right.

And so, yeah, from that perspective,

you don't really get that unless you're really observing like a big expansion.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, it's funny that how,

but well before the science has got up to even prove any of what you're saying,

humans have naturally gravitated that.

That's it.

We're going to live by the coast and in the trees and see long,

the horizon, like, I mean, we just naturally have done,

there's a reason why we've naturally gravitated with it.

And by the way, this is for centuries.

And when we did everything outside already,

when we still gravitated that today,

we're locking ourselves in these boxes with blue light on us all day long.

You cannot tell me.

Some of the best health you'll see in populations are in cities that are coastal.

So the weather's decent, so they go outside a lot.

And then these are older cities that where driving is inconvenient.

You know, think of like San Francisco.

Filter a walk.

You have to walk everywhere you go.

And people have longer lifestyles.

I can speak personally.

It's like, like, we, we produced this podcast, this show,

we're locked in this kind of sound,

proof room all day long.

And if I don't go outside a few times a day,

man, by the time we're done here, I feel totally fried.

I looked up the data, by the way,

the majority of Americans spend roughly 30 minutes,

total a day outside.

Total.

Yeah, outside.

Wow.

And what was that just 30 years ago?

Yeah.

I mean, you were outside quite a bit.

Yeah.

So, you know, going for walks tends to put you outside.

It's low skill.

Anybody can do it.

It's recuperative.

It won't take away from your other more intense exercise.

You stack it with other habits.

It's pro-relational.

That's my favorite part.

It requires no equipment, no setup, and you go outside.

Walking, phenomenal form of activity.

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