Wear a Pedometer to Boost Your Walking for Weight Loss Program

Walk your weight off

Walking for weight loss doesn’t probably sound a very thrilling form of exercise, but it’s one of the best ways to lose weight and improve your physical fitness. Waling is super-simple, inexpensive and almost anyone can do it.

However, there are two conditions for a successful walking for weight loss program: goal setting and keeping track of your daily steps. Otherwise your brand new walking program is easily derailed when you get busy or stressed out.

This is where pedometers enter into picture.

Why use a pedometer?

Pedometers have many advantages as a part of walking for weight loss plan. Several studies have shown that wearing a pedometer helps people change their daily habits more effectively than many other methods.

That’s probably because you’ll be able to see exactly how many steps you’ve been during the day. You also get immediate positive feedback every time you take some "extra" steps.

Nowadays there’s a large variety of accurate pedometers on the market. There are simple mechanical pedometers that only count steps and more advanced models you can wear in your pocket or around your neck. In addition to daily steps, the new models may also display the distance walked and calories burned as well as come with a 7-day memory.

Two of the most reliable and accurate pedometers are Accusplit Digiwalker or Omron Hj-113 pocket pedometer (it’s the one I use).

Devise your own walking plan

Just being able to track your daily steps is not enough to succeed in your walking for weight loss program. You should also set some concrete goals you can work toward.

First step in devising your walking program is to measure your baseline steps: i.e. how may steps, on average, you take before you start making any changes to your daily routine.

So after you have gotten your pedometer, your first task is wear it for three to seven days and record your daily steps.

You get your baseline steps simply by adding the steps together and then dividing the sum by the number of days. Here is an example. Jane wears her pedometer for four consecutive days to establish her baseline and calculates her baseline using the following formula (3574 + 4984 + 5248 + 2789)/4 days = 4149 steps.

There are many ways to build a walking program, but one way is to simply increase the number of your current steps by 20%.

In Jane’s case that would mean her first goal would be (1.2 x 4149 = 4979 steps. When she has reached her first goal of 4979 steps (weekly average),her second goal would be 1.2 x 4979 = 5975 steps and so on.

Take it easy!

When you first start your walking program, it’s a good idea to take it easy.

It’s ok if it takes several weeks to reach your first goal. To go on increasing your daily steps, you must learn to be on the lookout for opportunities to increase your daily steps wherever possible

What about weight loss?

Weight loss happen gradually using this method and really depends on how much you’ll eventually increase your daily steps compared to your current situation.

Even before your scales budge, you should be able to notice your waist getting thinner. All in all, It’s should be quite possible to lose as much as 30 pounds in one year - without dieting.