Walking the hills for weight loss

I’m visiting out-of-town relatives over the weekend, in some hilly, sidewalk-deprived suburb of Connecticut.  This means having to find some other way to maintain my exercise program, and having to adapt to different food choices and routines.   Getting away and seeing folks I like is nice, but if I don’t want to have a traumatic “weigh-in day” experience on Wednesday, it’s important to not undo in a long weekend visit all the things I’ve been working for all week.

Since I generally take one rest day a week, I took yesterday off from any kind of workout.  But that meant that today was exercise day.  Being a few hundreds of miles from my gym, I had to improvise.  I decided to go out and walk the hills.

I’ve always loved walking — being outside in the fresh air, seeing the rolling hills or the woods or the ocean or the sights of a different city have always given me a lot of joy.  And walking generally feels good to do — I find running hard on my knees.

My concern has been that walking is sometimes a rather “lite” exercise in terms of the calories one burns.  While a runner can burn as many as thirty or more calories a minute, the burn rate for walking may be much slower — as little as five calories a minute, according to my reference information.  Meaning that I may get much less bang for my buck, calorie wise, strolling around than I do back home on the elliptical.

The key seems to be pace.  Faster means more calories expended.

I put on the monitor and a pair of too-worn running shoes (they work fine in the gym, where my feet are fairly still in the treads of my elliptical machine), and hit the hills.  After a couple of minutes of slower, warm-up walking, I did jog for about a minute, until my heart rate was in the top of my so-called training zone (somewhere from the mid-120s to the low 140s.)  Then I just adapted my walking pace as best I could to keep it mostly there.  It went sometimes much higher on hills (into the 150s or a bit more), but that’s still a reasonably comfortable pace for me for brief periods and from my own calculations is a good zone for me to go into for briefer periods of higher-intensity work.

It was a great walk.  I got blistered a bit on one heel, but otherwise no harm done.  Got a great cardiac workout and my legs appreciated a nice rest with a novel after 55 minutes up and down the hills.  Perfect day for it.

Being outdoors puts you in a less predictable exercise situation than working out in a gym.  It’s kind of like switching from weight training machines to free weights — it may be better for you, but you also have much more variability in terrain, conditions, and even safety issues to cope with.  While many days, and in cold or snowy weather, I prefer the comfort of an indoor workout, there is still a part of me that seems to call me out of doors, even if it’s wet or cold or nobody in Connecticut seems to have considered the possibility that someday, someone might appreciate the chance to get out of their car and take a walk on a sidewalk.

No Pain = Weight Gain??

In thinking about exercise programs for weight loss, I’ve realized that there is a possible clash between two important ideas.  On the one hand, as I wrote yesterday, the best exercise program is likely to be one that you love to do.  On the other hand, there’s the whole “no pain, no gain” mentality — and there is some truth to it.

Weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint.  If there’s one thing that most researchers and virtually all medical authorities agree on, it’s that you get the best, and safest, results by losing weight gradually.  While there is a vast, billion dollar industry promising overnight weight loss miracles, it’s safe to say that every last one of them are fraudulent.  Instant weight loss just doesn’t happen, except during shark attacks.

What this means is that in order to lose, and assuming that “losing” means you have to both stick to a nutrition plan and to an exercise regimen long-term, it’s important to try to enjoy the process.  Both short-term, unappealing “diets” and painful exercise programs are less likely to succeed, because we are naturally inclined to avoid things that feel bad.  Sooner or later, you’ll drift away from the plan.  (Sound familiar?)  So an exercise plan that is easy to follow and that you enjoy is much more likely to pay off for you in the long run.

What about the pain?

On the other hand, there is also some agreement that the most effective exercise is generally exercise that makes you sweat.  And successful big-time weight losers are generally big believers in the value of “exertion.”

Again, studies are sort of varied here — people are now finding that we can lose substantial weight over time if we spend our days walking 1 mph at a “treadmill desk,” and we often see studies that show people benefitting from lite exercise programs (the “just walk 20 minutes a day” kind).  One recent study even found that hotel maids that were simply told that doing their jobs involved “exercise” – but who didn’t work any harder as a result! — lost more weight than maids who worked the same amount, but who weren’t tipped off that they were getting a workout on the mattresses every day.

Weight Loss Psych: Tending Your Motivational Garden

I’ve mentioned before that there are a bunch of psychological attitudes and techniques that one might use to keep at a weight loss project.  I was thinking about that list yesterday, when I’d finished my morning’s work and was heading out to the gym.  (More accurately, as I sat on the couch, computer still purring warmly in my lap, and knew it was time to somehow, by whatever means necessary, pry myself out of the recliner and haul myself off to work out, instead of taking an early lunch and a nap.)

I thought it might be worthwhile to try to notice some of the mental tricks I use to motivate myself as I went through my daily “couch potato cure.”  Most of them are habits, some more effective than others, I’m sure; I’ve just accumulated them over time to get me out to the gym, or to a class or whatever I happen to do to work out.  I thought that some of you might find at least one or two of them to be helpful, or similar to ideas you’ve had yourself.  (I’ve been enjoying readers’ comments on their experiences with these things, by the way.  Keep sending ‘em! — they’re often helpful, and it helps me to make contact with some really nice readers who’ve either already succeeded or who are toiling in this same garden.)

Here’s a list of things I did, most of which I probably do every day, in order to get my workout in: