Walking is something that the vast majority of us do every day. What most people don’t know about walking is that it is an excellent exercise for burning excess fat. Walking for about 45 minutes triggers the body to use its fat reserves.
Brisk walking, for example, is an excellent exercise to burn the unhealthy internal belly fat that accumulates around your waistline.
If you intend to walk to blast away that fat, there are two key factors that you should bear in mind. The first is that you need to walk fast enough to raise your heart rate into the best zone for burning energy. The second factor to consider is time. You should walk for long enough to help burn the stored fat rather than simply the stored sugar.
Fat-Burning Zone
This zone is reached when your heart rate reaches 60-70% of your maximum heart rate. In the fat-burning zone, 85% of your calories burned are fat, 10% are carbohydrates, and 5% are protein. In this zone, the heart rate varies depending on factors such as age. To determine what your heart rate should be, you should check it on the chart of heart rate zones by age and ensure that, while exercising, you take your pulse to check your heart rate.
The question that now lingers is how can you reach the fat-burning zone? The fat-burning zone can be achieved with a brisk walking pace. One of the observations that you will make is that your breathing rate will increase, you will be sweating, and your feeling of exertion will improve.
If your heart rate is still below 60%, increase your pace by using good posture, ensure that your arms are in motion and make powerful strides. Additionally, you could use fitness walking poles or climb a hill or stairs. You can also use performance enhancement products available from steroids-evolution.com to help boost your workout rate.
If you intend to shed that belly weight, two vital steps will help you achieve your goal.
Alternate Your Workouts
Always start walking at a low pace then to moderate and finally at high speed. With this practice, you will avoid injury. However, doing the same type of exercise over and over again could be tedious. Apart from being boring, it could cause burnout and a plateau in your overall fitness.
It is therefore advisable to complete a long-distance walk for 3-4 times a week. Experts advise that you should alternate your fat-burning workouts with high-intensity efforts that take a shorter time.
Increase the Amount of Time That You Work Out
Work-outs that take a short period will use mostly sugar and carbohydrates for energy. This energy takes about 30 minutes to deplete, and, after that, stored fat is used for energy. The best duration for an ideal workout is 45 minutes. Since starting is always difficult, it is advisable that every week you should try and add 5-10 minutes to your walking workouts until a point where you use fat as your primary source of energy.