Physical activity is essential for maintaining overall health and well-being, and incorporating both aerobic exercise, such as walking, and strength training into your routine can yield significant benefits. While strength training is crucial for building and retaining muscle mass, improving strength, and enhancing metabolic health, engaging in regular walking, even for 30 minutes a day, can also profoundly affect health and fitness. Let’s explore the benefits of both forms of exercise:
Strength Training:
- Building Muscle Mass: Strength training, also known as resistance training or weightlifting, involves working against resistance to build muscle strength and endurance. Regular strength training sessions can increase muscle mass, improve muscle tone, and enhance overall strength.
- Metabolic Health: Strength training has been shown to increase resting metabolic rate, meaning you burn more calories even at rest. Building lean muscle mass can also improve insulin sensitivity, glucose metabolism, and lipid profile, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease.
- Bone Health: Strength training exercises, particularly those that involve bearing weight or resistance, such as squats, lunges, and deadlifts, can help maintain bone density and reduce the risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures, especially in older adults.
Walking:
- Cardiovascular Health: Walking is a form of aerobic exercise that gets your heart pumping and increases cardiovascular fitness. Regular walking can improve heart health by lowering blood pressure, reducing LDL cholesterol levels, improving circulation, and enhancing cardiovascular function.
- Weight Management: Walking can effectively manage and maintain weight. When combined with a balanced diet, regular walking can increase energy expenditure and promote fat loss, helping prevent weight gain and supporting weight loss efforts.
- Mental Well-being: Walking has numerous mental health benefits, including reducing stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms, improving mood, and enhancing cognitive function. Spending time outdoors in nature while walking can further boost mental well-being and provide relaxation and stress relief.
Incorporating Walking into Your Routine:
- Start Slowly: If you’re new to exercise or have been inactive, start with short, easy walks and gradually increase duration and intensity as your fitness improves.
- Make It a Habit: Aim to walk for at least 30 minutes most days of the week or break it up into minor bouts of activity throughout the day if that works better for your schedule.
- Find Enjoyment: Choose scenic routes, listen to music or podcasts, or walk with friends or family to make your walking sessions enjoyable and sustainable.
In conclusion, while strength training is essential for building muscle and enhancing metabolic health, incorporating walking into your routine, even for just 30 minutes a day, can provide significant health benefits. Both forms of exercise contribute to overall physical fitness, cardiovascular health, weight management, and mental well-being. Whether lifting weights or taking a brisk walk, finding ways to stay active and moving can profoundly affect your health and quality of life.
Action Item
Start moving if you are sedentary. This can be as simple as going for a walk. A tremendous fat loss tip is to go for walks in a fasted state. Upon waking, do not eat or drink anything that could cause a blood sugar or insulin spike. Limit intake to water or black coffee.
The methodology behind this is that we generally don’t eat for 6-9 hours after waking from sleep. This is when your blood sugar and insulin should be lower and stable. By doing low-intensity exercises like walking (think keeping your heart rate under 105-108 beats per minute), your body will burn body fat as a substrate for fuel for that activity. Fat is burned at low intensities, so keep exercising at a low-intensity steady state (LISS). If your heart rate climbs over 110, your body will switch energy systems and begin using glucose for that activity, so LOW INTENSITY is the key for this action item.