Walking your Way to Weight Loss

If you want to lose weight and improve your fitness but don't know where to start, walking can be your best option.

Benefits of Walking:

• Helps lose Weight
• Reduces blood cholesterol
• Lowers blood pressure
• Increases fitness
• Boosts bone strength
• One of the easiest exercises to do
• Can be done almost anywhere at any time
• No special equipment or expertise required to get started
• Progress is easy to plan and can be measured over time
• Even a little bit can produce beneficial results

Every walking workout should begin with a brief warm-up and a few simple stretches.

Walking tips:

• When walking try to focus on good posture, keep head lifted and shoulders relaxed.
• Always try to swing arms naturally and breathe deeply.
• Don't forget to reward yourself after each workout with a few minutes of relaxing stretches to help prevent sore muscles.
• Listening to music while walking is a great way to energize the workout.
• If you'd eventually like to add jogging to your exercise program, incorporate some very short jogs into your walks and over the time increase the number of those jogs and their duration (for example, walk 5 minutes, jog 1 minute, walk 5 minutes, jog 1 minute, etc).
• For maximum enjoyment, motivation and safety, find a walking partner to share your walks with.