Walk off Belly Fat:
Fun Way to lose weight

"Walk off belly fat by enjoying 'every walk of life'."

One of the easiest and yet the most ignored way is to 'walk off belly fat'. If you do not quite enjoy running or jogging or if you have bad knees or back, walking could just be the thing for you. But, you feel you do walk frequenly enough. So, what’s keeping you from losing weight? Well, as with other aerobic activities, to be effective, the 'walk off belly fat' program needs proper planning and implementation.

Walk off Belly Fat:
Science Behind It

So, how exactly do you go about this? Well, to begin with, lets have a look at how to go about this. Ideally, your goal should be to lose a pound of weight per month. This may not sound much but if you are persistent in your effort, at the end of a year, you will be more than satisfied with what you have achieved.

To lose one pound of fat, you would need to burn 3,500 calories. Now, if you divide this into two equal parts, you get the number 1750. What you need to then do is to burn 1750 calories a month by walking and cut down on 1750 calories a month by eating proper food. This equates to burning 150 calories per session of brisk walking if you are planning to walk 3 times a week and reducing daily calorie intake by just 60 calorie per day.

If you can burn more calories per session or cut down on more calories per day, you can lose more that 1 pound per month. Thus, you can walk off belly fat much faster. A word of caution though; all this may sound easy but it takes a lot of time, determination and perseverance to walk off your belly fat, especially as compared to the other aerobic activities.

Use of Technology for Walking:

A lot of fitness gadgets like heart rate monitors, pedometers, etc are available on the market. However, I would suggest not going in for costly ones. After all, in all probability, most of use mere mortals will not be competing at the next Olympics. I would suggest you make use of free applications for your cell phone.

A wonderful range of free software for GPS enabled devices like Apple iphone, Blackberry or Windows mobile like pedometers, metronomes, etc are readily available online. One such software that gives you information on the distance covered by you, the speed and even a map of the route taken is SportyPal. What’s more, it can used to measure performance in a variety of physical activities.

Planning Your 'Walk off Belly Fat' Program:

First of all, depending on your fitness level, you will need to decide upon the walking speed that is comfortable for you. Also, decide upon the duration, distance and the number of times per week you can afford to walk. You will use these as your baseline readings. Once you are done with this, you should keep a record of your baseline weight and anthropometric measurements. This will help you to keep track of the progress that you are making and also to subsequently fine tune the intensity of your walking program.

Ideally to start off with a 30 min. walk at moderate pace (60 – 75 % of your maximal heart rate), 3 - 4 times a week should suffice. Gradually increase this to about an hour of brisk walking 4 – 5 times a week.

Calcualting the speed of your walks:
How do you decide upon the speed of you walks? Easy, you check on the time taken by you to cover a specific distance. Well, it’s not, to say the least. First off all, by doing that you will get to know the speed at the end of the walk.

One way to solve this problem is to use a metronome. Again, don’t go and spend money on some fancy gadget; hunt for a free metronome software on the internet. Once you get that installed on your cell phone, you are ready to go. Set the initial speed to 60 beats per min or whatever feels comfortable.

Every time the metronome sounds a beat, your left foot must touch the ground. Increase gradually every other week by 4 to 8 beats. Once you realise that you cannot increase the beats without having to break into a run, you have reached your limit for walking. From here on in, gradually increase the distance that you cover in each session.

Increasing the intensity of your 'walk off belly fat' program:
Once you reach a certain advanced level, turn to walking on uneven terrain such as hilly areas, beaches, etc. This will change the stress that your body will feel and also will involve different muscles fibres. In addition, your cardiovascular system will be affected in a different way. The change of scenery will also have a pleasant effect.

Making you 'walk off belly fat' program more interesting:
So what happens when you get used to even the very intense levels of brisk walking? You do not seem to lose any more fat. Now is the time for you to throw in some variety. You can decide to break the monotonous pattern of walking by including some other activity every 5 to 10 minutes. Effective way to do this is to include little jogs or dashes for maybe a 100 paces, jumps, lunges, side lunges, etc. You can include whatever activity you are comfortable doing. Again, this will change the stress put on your body form the normal walking routine.

Conclusion:
Walking is the easiest and safest way (least risk of injuries) to lose fat. However, since walking will burn the lesser amount of calories as compared to other aerobic activity, you will have to carry on walking persistently for a long time to see the effects.

If you can supplement walking with healthy food intake and indulge in other aerobic training, resistance training or outdoor sports, you are more likely to see results. However, to walk off you belly fat still remains one of the safest ways of doing it especially in beginners, those with cardiopulmonary deficiency or in those who are injury prone.