Welcome to the Wits& Weights podcast, where we discuss getting strong and healthy with strength training and sustainable nutrition. I'm your host, Philip pape, and in each episode, we examine strategies to help you achieve physical self mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent nutrition and training for sustainable results. Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. This is one of our live streams in the Wits & Weights Facebook community, which you can join absolutely free and get early access to these episodes, free nutrition and training guides, we might start doing some free challenges, and lots of info that members share on strength, fat loss, nutrition, and other topics. So just click the link in the show notes to join our free Facebook group. My name is Philip pape, certified nutrition coach and founder of Wits & Weights. And I do have one small favor to ask that would absolutely make my day and help others find and enjoy this show. And that is simply to go to Apple podcasts and submit a five star rating and review for the podcast. That would be an amazing Christmas gift or holiday gift or just because you love the show gift. And I would forever be grateful. So let's dive into today's episode, which as the title suggests, is all about a very underrated way to reach your goals faster, burn 500 more calories a day or more, which is at least one extra pound a week. Increase your potential lifespan reduce your chance of disease all without excessive cardio or dieting. This is not the next big fitness industry secret. But instead one of the easiest natural, most effective forms of movement for human beings. And that is walking, walking, getting your steps. And whether you already get your steps. Or you sit around most of the day behind the desk, which I'm doing right now to record this podcast. But it's a little better experience than if I weren't. We're gonna dissect the many benefits of walking from its ability to burn away more calories than you think. increase your metabolism, improve your overall function in life, preferentially burn fat to improve body composition, reduce mortality, and improve associated markers like blood pressure, resting heart rate, cholesterol, depression, and VO two max. So walking is perhaps the most underrated but effective forms of exercise we can incorporate. And all my clients can tell you that. And maybe I talk people's ears off about this all the time, but I think it is so important that it's worth it. Finally, as always on the show, we will discuss easy actionable strategies for walking effectively, that you can start using right away. So I'm going to start with a little bit of a personal story. Some of you may have heard this in one of my earlier episodes. But last year in 2021, I was undergoing some severe pain in my left leg. And it was it felt like sciatica, where you have that nerve pinch and the numbness that goes down through your leg all the way to your feet, it was on my left side. And I had in the past a few times experienced kind of a pop in my back, doing just some just bending over and picking something off the floor, or maybe warming up for a squat or something like that. And every time that happened, I'd been in a little bit of back pain, people experience lots of people experience back pain, and it would recover after a few days. So finally, last year, it happened again. And it was just so painful. And it slowly started to get a little bit less painful. But then the pain migrated into my left leg. And eventually I realized that my herniated disk had gotten so bad that it was just severely impinging on my nerve. At the L five s one vertebra. I went and had back surgery that was the the only means left for me at the time. And it basically fixed me the same day where I was able to walk again now part of surgical recovery with something like that where you have back surgery, or hip surgery or anything in that area is to walk right load, load your body, load the tissue, get it moving, prevent scar tissue. I think this is a great approach for most types of recovery. And you have to start to walk to build up that strength again and and get it to heal. Now, I wasn't a big fan of walking for most of my life. My wife could tell you that she loves to walk and she kind of had to drag me out of the house to go on walks. Because I just didn't think walks were like real exercise. You know, I said well, my time is better spent in the gym, or doing something more intense. And you guys probably know I did CrossFit for years. I did it for eight years. I did love it, but there were a lot of aspects to it that kind of held me back from reaching my goals later on in terms of strength and body composition, because of the, the the mode of activity, and we don't have to go into those details. But I never thought of walking is a true form of exercise. And when I had to recover from surgery, all I could do is walk. In fact, I was ecstatic that I could walk because while I was in pain for six weeks before the surgery, I had to lay on my back most of the time, if I tried to stand or walk, it would start to hurt severely within minutes. So now all of a sudden, I like to walk. And I decided to go the other direction and say, What if I just get 12,000 steps a day. And I did that for probably, I think I want to say 70 or 80 days straight. I mean, weekends, you know, even days that I wasn't working out and so on. And it just became a habit. Now I did it just for the purpose of trying to do it. And because I enjoyed it. And I wasn't really realizing what all the other benefits were. And I noticed, for example, it became a lot easier to lose weight, it actually became a little bit harder to gain weight, right, which is kind of the opposite side of the same coin, which is fine. But it became a lot easier to lose weight. And without going into more of a deficit with my food. It also lowered my resting heart rate significantly. I mean, I track my heart rate, I have a ring, I have an Apple Watch. And I could see it dropping, dropping, dropping over about a two month period, because of all the steps I was getting in without anything else changing. Okay, so and those are just a couple of benefits that I personally experienced in the short term. So then I started to research it and learn all about walking. And I became enamored with this idea that something so basic and natural to being human can be so powerful. So let me take this back to the fundamentals of metabolism just briefly. And then we're going to go into some illustrations, we'll talk about the benefits, and then we'll talk about strategies. So I've talked before about metabolism quite a few times. And just for a primer on this, there are four components of metabolism. So metabolism, meaning our metabolic rate, or the number of calories we burn in a given day, the biggest component of our metabolism is going to be our basal metabolic rate. This is, for lack of a better definition, all the calories we burn just for being alive. Okay, and that's like two thirds of your calories. And then there's another 10% or so 10 15% for digesting your food. So the thermic effect of feeding, then there's maybe 5% of our calories are burned through deliberate exercise. Yes, it's that small. It's why we don't rely on exercise for burning calories. That's not the point of of the exercise. And then the rest of it about 15% but potentially a lot more of that pie is meat, non exercise activity, thermogenesis neat non exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which is everything you do to move that you're not doing intentionally, like exercise. You know, that's not exercise. But there's a caveat to that. There's an estrus of footnote, where something like walking, moving around doing yard work, things like that. You're deliberately doing those things. But they're not intense, deliberate exercise. So we still put them in the category of neat. Now there was a study. Now I don't, I'm sorry, I don't have the stuff to top my head, I actually looked all over for it. I've heard, I think it was Brandon Cruz mentioned it many times on his podcast. And it compared three groups, desk workers, shop clerks, and manual laborers. Okay? Or something very similar to that. So I'm kind of paraphrasing, but the result is what's important. And it found that if all other factors were maintained equally, they're difference in daily calorie burn from meat alone, to kg just from meat was 800 more calories a day for shop clerks versus desk workers. And then another 1200 calories beyond that for manual laborers. So the the total gap between the most active and least active produced a 2000 calorie a day difference between the two extremes, okay. And they accounted for everything. They accounted for their size, their fat, free mass, all the other things that we say well, no, but maybe their younger, older, male, female, they accounted for all those things. Okay. And so the point here is that your mode of work of movement of overall activity throughout the day, aside from deliberate exercise, can significantly affect increase your metabolic rate. So let's compare two people just for illustration. And think about which of these two people your life your lifestyle most closely aligns with? And of course, it's gonna be obvious which one I'm prep, which one I am biasing toward here, but I'm going to do it anyway. So you've got Nicole, and you've got Jason. Okay. You I'm sorry if your names are those and this is doesn't sound like you, Nicole parks farther away when she goes to work. She takes the stairs to the third floor of her office building. She goes up and down a few times through the day for lunch and for meetings. Whereas Jason he parks as close to the building as we can. We know the type right when you go, especially when you go to try Christmas shopping and you're trying to find the closest parking spot you can and he takes the elevator all day. So this might result in a difference of 100 calories for Nicole. Nicole uses a stand up desk. She paces on calls when she can. She walks down the hall maybe to the bathroom that's a little bit further down when she takes a break. She's and Jason sits at his desk all day. So that might add up to another couple 100 calories for Nicole. When she gets home. Nicole walks the dog so they have a dog. She might do some housework cooks her own food. Jason on the other hand, orders takeout sits down to watch TV. Another couple 100 Calorie difference. After dinner, Nicole goes for a 30 minute walk with her family or maybe by herself. And Jason continues to watch TV. Another couple 100 calories. When she goes shopping, Nicole parks as far away as she can. She walks between stores. Jason on the other end drives around until he finds the closest spot and then drives between stores, maybe another 1500 calories. So all told, every day, Nicole is burning an extra four to 800 calories, just through non exercise activity. Just from her lifestyle, no excessive cardio. She's not on a diet. Okay, but what is the difference in four to 800 calories? Well, 500 calories is going to burn potentially a pound a week. So if you're trying to lose weight, think about what kind of impact that can make on your ability to eat more calories, or lose weight faster, either one. So let's go through all the benefits of walking, because I think we kind of know it intuitively. And the exponent, the illustration I just gave you is is something we've heard before, but I really want to drill it in and have you understand all the science behind this or all the information. Alright, so the only thing that matters for losing weight. Notice I said losing weight not losing fat. The only thing that matters is energy balance, do you burn more calories than you consume? Okay, so strength training, and protein will definitely ensure you have improved body composition. So you're going to retain muscle in a diet. But what we're talking about here is the fat loss side of the equation. Alright, so we know that losing weight requires an energy deficit, okay. But we also want to make sure that most of that is fat. And where does walking come into all this? Well, first of all, walking can burn almost as many calories for the same distance as running about 80% of those calories. Especially when you're walking briskly, if you walk around four miles an hour for most people, you're going to burn just as almost as many calories as you would running for the same distance. Yes, it takes a little longer, but it's not going to impact your joints, it's not going to impact your recovery, it's not going to wipe you out like running does something you can basically do all day. Walking also can be more enjoyable. And it's accessible to anyone who can walk. Now of course, that's subjective when I say enjoyable, but I would if I took 100 people, I would bet that like 80 of them would say they prefer walking to running. If not more than that. That's just a guess. But I'm guessing that's the case. The other thing, you can get sunlight while you're walking with some vitamin D, you could talk on the phone, you can listen to a podcast, you can do a lot of things while you're walking at the same time because it's a low, low, low velocity activity. Now, as far as the calorie burning, let's dig into that a little bit. Walking can burn two to 400 calories per hour. Okay, so a 20 minute walk, which is like a mile, it's gonna take you 20 minutes after a meal, let's say that's about 2000 steps. So if you can incorporate two or three walks before or after your meals, and do nothing else all day, you're going to get four to 6000 steps. And then you can get the rest of your steps through non planned walking, or other activities we're going to talk about later. And then you can aim for a total of around eight to 10,000 steps. So the whole 10,000 steps. sweetspot is a pretty good marker. We'll see a little bit later that somewhere around 7500 steps is kind of the threshold for reducing your risk of all cause mortality. Alright, so I'm getting off on a tangent here. But if you can get around these extra steps four to 6008 to 10,000. In that range, you're gonna burn about 500 more calories per day, contributing to an extra pound of weight loss as we mentioned before. Now what this does does is it shifts up your calories that you burn every day. So that if you're dieting, you can stay at the same amount of calories and lose weight faster, or you can keep the same deficit, but you're actually eating more to stay in that deficit, right. Because if you're burning 500 more calories a day, technically, you could eat 500 calories more per day, and continue to lose at the same rate. Now, we're not doing this just to eat back our activity. I think of it more the other way around that if we incorporate the habit of walking, then it just overall shifts our metabolism up so that when we're ready to go into fat loss phase, we never really get down to some very restrictive level of calories. And what what does that do? Well, that means you can eat more variety of food, you can enjoy some more treats, you can go out with, you know, friends and family on the weekend and not feel like you're restricting, and on and on and on. Okay, and when we talk about sustainability and lifestyle integration, and all the things that that I do with my clients, that's that's the principle we're talking about. So what else, a study by Ross at all, which I actually covered in Episode 29, one of the science says episodes that I've done, it showed that more of the weight lost through cardio, like brisk walking is fat than that loss through a calorie deficit. Meaning if you lose the same amount of weight walking, as you do dieting, you're the there's going to be more percentage of that weight lost from fat from the walking than from the dieting. And there's some logic to this, in that if you walk, but you still eat more food, you've got all that energy coming in to fuel yourself. And it would make sense that now you can hold on to more muscle and not and lose more fat. Whereas if you only use dieting as your mechanism of fat loss, you are still depriving your muscles a bit of all the energy that they need, and you're going to lose some muscle. Now, if I recall from that study, it was untrained individuals. So if you're training, the percentages get more favorable toward losing fat, because you're giving yourself the training signal to hold on to muscle. But either way, the idea here is we can use walking to speed up fat loss without having to increase our deficit. And tada, that's the beginning of the title of this episode is speeding up fat loss. So adding in steps every day increases your metabolism. And on a diet, it speeds up fat loss. Okay, continuing on walking is also very low stress. And it has been even shown to speed up recovery. Whereas other modes of cardio can impede recovery and cause muscle damage and things like that. Walking is so low stress, it's like your body doesn't even know just kind of slowly burns those calories as you do it. And it doesn't have a negative impact on recovery. So it doesn't contribute to overtraining. It doesn't contribute to interference with your strength training. So the reason it doesn't interfere with that I think I just mentioned it doesn't fatigue, the same muscles that you're using during your workouts, because it's so low impact. Okay, and the only other forms of cardio I can think that are like that would be East centric, or I'm sorry, concentric only movements. For example, like pushing a prowler sled or biking. For example, biking is mainly concentric, so it's not going to damage or fatigue the muscles in the same way. But if you do it too intensely, you can still do that. Walking, it's very hard to do too intensely, until you do it intense enough where then it becomes a jog or run. Walking also. So this is interesting walking does not deplete your glycogen stores. Whereas other higher intensity forms of cardio do. In fact, we talk about glycolytic modes of training like high intensity training, interval training, CrossFit, gymnastics, or you know, intense cardio, which deplete your glycogen stores, which is why we like to eat more carbs for those things. But if you're walking, it doesn't deplete those. So this leaves more in the tank for performance during strength training. So in that sense, replacing some of your cardio with walking could also help with your strength training. Okay, continuing on, I've got a lot of information here. So I hope you're absorbing all this and you know, if you have to watch if you have to listen or watch again, please do this is good information. Walking seems to be associated with improved cognitive ability. So just think about when you sit around all day, think about your mental energy, your memory, your motivation, how they kind of get sucked dry, you know, like an energy vampire. And if you know the reference, when you're sitting around all day, and walking has the opposite effect kind of boosts you up gives you a better mood. It just overall changes the trajectory of your day. You're just a more active person. Well Walking may improve your posture, or at least it prevents you from slouching, because you're not sitting. And slouching, as we know can affect your breathing and place load on your neck and fatigue because of the giant head that we have up here kind of, you know, tilting forward. Now, perhaps most importantly, according to a meta analysis and 2021, by genetic J Yeti at all. And there's a great article on stronger by science that breaks this down, the rate of all cause mortality decreases by 12% for every 1000 steps per day. Now, this is a correlation, not a causation. Okay, this is a meta analysis of a bunch of studies. And it's a correlation. But there have been studies of interventions, where they got people to actually walk more, and they compared the group that walked more to the group that walked less, that lead to quote, this is from the stronger by science article, quote, a significant decreases in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, resting heart rate, body fat percentage, body mass index, total cholesterol, and depression scores, while increasing view to max six minute walk distance, and the score on the SF 36. physical functioning, inventory and quote, conversely, being sedentary may be a larger risk factor for all cause mortality than either obesity, or smoking. And this is where the phrase sitting is the new smoking probably comes from. So I want to be crystal clear that there is just nothing, nothing that is more effective, not even. And you're gonna be shocked to hear me say this strength training or diet for helping you live longer than moving more than walking and getting steps. And it's arguably the easiest, most successful way to do that is is walking. So I assume I assume that I've convinced you of the benefits. And I didn't want this to meet just one long drawn info session. So now let's talk action. Hey, this is Philip pape, letting you know that applications are now open for one on one coaching. If you're a busy working professional, who has tried dieting, and exercising for years, with little in the way of results, and you want to lose fat, get lean or feel confident in your body without excessive dieting, cardio or restrictions, just go to wits & weights.com/coaching, to apply. So What strategies can we use to increase our walking in our step count? Alright, so before we talk about the things that you do, let's plan for success. Let's tell ourselves, okay, we are going to be a walking machine. Because this is going to not only save our lives, this is going to make us thrive, and have optimal health. And we're going to live long, and just be the best bad version of ourselves. So we need to set things up for success. So the first thing is to plan it into our day, right? Aim for at least 30 minutes somewhere that you can deliberately walk closer to 60 If you can do it. But overall, if it adds up to about 30 to 60 minutes, you're in good territory, okay, and this will help you speed up your fat loss significantly as well if you're in a diet. The second thing is think about your speed and kind of be mindful of how fast you're going to walk. Because especially if you're listening to a podcast like Wits, & Weights, or music, you might get distracted and slow down and not walk as fast as you want. And walking faster has a couple of benefits. First of all, it saves time, in terms of burning the same amount of calories and a fewer amount of time. But it also burns more calories per mile the faster you go. Unlike running like basically was running, the faster you go the same calories per mile you burn you just do it faster. With walking, it actually is a exponential curve, the faster your speed. So if you go from three to four miles an hour, the more calories you will burn per mile, and you're gonna do it shorter. So it's kind of a double benefit. So keep that in mind. So and plan for brisk walks if that's what you need to do, from an efficiency standpoint, okay, shoes, wear comfortable shoes. I'm not going to tell you brands or types because this is totally different for everybody. Some people might want to go barefoot, you know, there, it's really your preference. Find something that works and think about it consciously. Don't just throw on whatever you have laying around. And then of course, you start complaining because you get blisters or sore feet or whatever, and then you don't like walking. So think about your shoes. Then use a wearable tracking device. Okay, the simplest thing honestly, is just your phone that you already have if you throw it in your pocket, it's it tracks steps reasonably well. Okay, so that's like the zero cost options since everybody has a smartphone. But the wearables like the Apple Watch or the Fitbit Garmin the aura ring There's so many things all the major brands are perfectly fine for tracking steps in heart rate. We don't use them to track calories burned. They're totally useless and completely inaccurate for that no matter what device you're talking about the the science is in on that and very clear. So we're only using them for step count, and heart rate if you need it for that. Okay. The next thing in terms of thinking ahead and planning is a mindset thing. We don't want to let the temperature or weather be an excuse. Okay, now I live in New England. So I understand cold weather. I understand rainy, cold, drizzly miserable winter weather. And yet, I tried to get out there, no matter what if I'm going to get some vitamin D, and I want to enjoy nature and get some fresh air. Who cares? Go out there. And there's a concept in Denmark, it's a Danish concept called, I think this is how you pronounce it. He hy GGE. He again, correct me if I'm wrong, but and what it is, is embracing the cold by preparing for it and embracing coziness when you can. So what this might look like is when you're going to go outside, just dress for a dress and all the layers even wear thermal underwear if you have extra socks, whatever, so that you're super comfortable when you're walking. And it's I'm not gonna say it's like walking in the summer. But hey, you've prepared you're wearing gloves, you're wearing a hat. When stuff on your ears, whatever keeps you nice and warm, you get your walk in and then when you get home, you relax a little bit, have a cozy cup of coffee or tea, get near a fire, wrap yourself in a blanket, some other small indulgence, once you're inside, instead of complaining how cold it is, right? Because we're human beings we we used to live out in these harsh conditions and people some people still do. So just enjoy. Don't use that as an excuse. If it's raining outside, you can wear a raincoat or embrace the fresh raindrops you know in that nice smell of fresh raindrops pelting your skin. Enjoy that natural sensation of being human. I don't know to me, this is thriving this as being human right? Like let's embrace nature and everything around us. The point is you can walk inside or outside and just about any condition, if you plan for it, and you approach it with the right attitude, right. Okay, that's mindset. Now, if you're still listening to me, you're still watching this video. This is the good part we get to where we talk about the exact things you can incorporate into your day. And you can do any combination of these that fits within your lifestyle, you can get creative, come up with some of your own. But I'm going to give you a pretty good comprehensive list here. Alright, if you're ready, here we go. The first one, simple, planned in walks. And this is just looking at your day, just like you would plan your meals and planning in your walk. So you might put it on your calendar, you might create a reminder in your smartphone, you might do what's called habit stacking, where you take a thing that you already do, and then walk while doing that thing. And that thing might be it might be listening to a podcast, right? It might be talking on a phone call. It might just be when the time at the end of the day when you're kind of wiped out from the day and you want to just relax and scroll social media or read an article or something. Do it while walking around. Just walk very slowly around the house. And it can add up it can add up to 1000 2000 steps before you know it. So plan in your walks. Now, specifically walking after a meal could be helpful. Okay, I think I heard again, I'm mentioning Brandon Cruz. He's got great stuff. On his podcast, I think he said that walking after meals, especially high carb meals is twice effective as Metformin is the name of the drug. It's like the top prescribe medicine for type two diabetics, it controls blood sugar. And walking after a meal is basically more effective than that. It increases insulin sensitivity. It helps with nutrient partitioning. Basically just fancy way of saying it helps you your blood sugar control and could help with fat loss. But the most important thing is walking when you can walk. But if you have a choice, walking after meal might be something to try especially if you're trying to lose fat. All right, going for a walk with your family making it a social affair. Right if you have spouse, kids, siblings, whatever at home, get them in on the get them in on the fun, right? Go for a walk, have a social time, that could be your time to chat and connect. Because it's so hard these days to connect you even when we if we have dinner together. People are in a rush or not everybody gets to talk or you know you might be distracted trying to get a look at your phone. We all know what I'm talking about. So family Walk is a way to go outside, maybe hold hands, look at the sun and just chat and get your steps in. Kind of related to this but more maybe in the working world. If you work in an office you could ask someone to walk with you for a conversation You should. And if you're a boss of someone, you know, they don't have a choice. There you go. You just say, hey, you know, let's go have a talk. But can you save that for the fun conversations, okay. And if you need to brainstorm with somebody, if you're an engineer, if you're whatever the owner small business, if you're an entrepreneur, and you want to brainstorm, say, Hey, let's go for a walk or walk down the hallway and get 500 steps in while you're chatting and get the mental juices flowing. The next one is when you do walk outside, go into a specific go on hikes. So I'm trying to say, go on hikes, go find a trail, or a nice park or a lake or even if you're in the city, there might be really nice walking spots. And just enjoy the beauty of nature, people walking, maybe get an extra challenge, because of the difficulty of the hike. If there's some climbs, you know, some elevation change, and mix it up. All right, so for people working at home, or we'll have this option in the office, a stand up desk, and or an under desk treadmill. So the standup desk is more accessible for people, you could either get the full desk that has a motor in it, or you can get a small desktop accessory or attachment. Usually they're hydraulic, but some of them are manual, or it could be just a box where you put your laptop on it. As long as it's kind of in an ergonomic setup, you know, I would encourage you to make sure everything is set up properly, so you don't introduce some other health issues, and stand up most of the day and alternate between sitting and walking around. Just standing up versus sitting can burn something like I want to say an extra 30 calories an hour, something like that, don't quote me on it, but it's meaningful, you know, for a whole day, it could be a few 100 calories just from having a standup desk. Similarly, an under desk treadmill, that's more of a luxury, and probably only something you have at home, because it's a liability in most offices, unless you're lucky. And this is the kind of treadmill where you can walk at around two to three miles an hour while you're typing and doing your work. A treadmill at home is another idea just having a treadmill in your home as a machine in your home gym. Or when you go to the gym using the treadmill there and just tacking it on your workout or going on your off day. And the nice thing about a treadmill is, of course you're not in the that terrible weather we just talked about outside, it's reliable. But also you can use an incline, okay, and an incline can give you a little calf work, increase the calorie burn, make it a little bit more difficult, but still not really give you many recovery issues or in the intensity or muscle damage you're gonna get from other forms of cardio. Okay, the next one is pacing. Pacing is really big. So if you work from home or in an office, no doubt you have a chance to be on phone calls, or to be checking your emails from your phone, or listening to some training or a podcast or something in the context of work or your personal life. Go ahead and pace. And I want you to think about that think about all the times throughout the day, where if you don't have have to be attached to a keyboard and a screen. But can can be floating around even if you're on a device. Think about all the opportunities you have to pace, okay, there might be more than you think. And the pacing really does add up, it adds up a lot. Another time. Another thing that where I like to pace is if I'm going to be giving a seminar, big presentation or speech or if I'm going to have like a really important phone call. And I'm kind of nervous about what I'm going to say. I paced around the house as I practice. So if you are you in those environment, if you're in that context, or you're an entrepreneur or something or manager, leader, etc pace around the house, when you practice your speaking, okay. Another thing is when you're shopping Park farther from the store, I know you've heard this a million times. But do you do it? Or do you just think like are you just trained to get as close as you can because it's convenient. Well, today or tomorrow, because it's late at night, tomorrow. When you go to the store the next day, literally parked in the farthest parking spot you can like just the way far end of the grocery store. Now this is like a Walmart or a grocery store with a huge parking lot. Same Same thing applies it gives you even more chance for steps. Park as far away as you can give it a shot and do that every time until it becomes a habit. You're like this is just what I do when I go to a store I park in the last spot and then I get to walk get to enjoy the weather. Maybe it's raining maybe it's cold and snowy doesn't matter. The other thing is anytime you have the chance to walk instead of drive where it's a reasonable distance, do it right. One context for that would be if you go to like a strip mall, and you have to shop and then there's another store like 10 stores down. That's like a quarter mile away because it's such a big strip mall. Just walk and then you get to walk back and you have to walk to your car so you can add a ton of steps. Taking the stairs. Oh, okay, this is one we've heard for a long time but it is also a huge difference now stairs. The cool thing about stair or like a Stairmaster machine, or biking or pushing a sled. They're all concentric motions only with your muscles, meaning you're using your quads and hams and everything. But only in the concentric pushing motion, you're pushing up the stairs, except on the way down, but honestly, carrying your body weight is negligible on your, on your muscles. So you're taking the stairs. So you can you can even run up if you want to, you know, rocky style. And it's not going to really make you sore. But it'll give you a little bit of extra leg workout. And it'll give you steps. Okay, what about play engaging in play? And what do I mean by this? Well, it definitely could mean as an adult, it could be in sports, but sports gets into the realm of a more intense interference level of cardio and activity, I'm referring to playing with your kids or horseplay, or just kind of being outside, you know, when you're gonna cook out and being playful. I mean, I guess is the lack of a better term, like acting young, and kind of hopping around, skipping around, you know, doing things with movement and intention, rather than just sitting in one spot, are standing in one spot. So again, if you have kids, or grandkids or nieces or nephews or something where you have that opportunity, then I literally do mean play, because you'll be in motion. But there's other opportunities as adults to engage in play as well. And hey, just just a number, right, we're all trying to be young at heart. The next one is doing housework and doing yard work. So housework could be vacuuming and cleaning and things like that. All the things we love to do, right, all your chores, but, but then you can throw in some extra difficulty by for example, intentionally going up and down between floors, instead of taking the efficient route to your housework. Now it'll take longer, but hey, throw on a podcast, right? Do the habit stacking we talked about, make it enjoyable. Same thing with yard work, do yard work by hand. I mean, if you've got a huge lawn, you have to mow it with a tractor. That's one thing. But if there's gardening or some trimming, or weed whacking stuff like that, do it by hand. Again, you can have it, stack it with listening to music, and get some get some activity in that way. Now, if it's very rigorous yard work, again, that goes more into a recovery interfering mode of activity, but I think you get the idea by now. All right, and then I have two more bonuses to throw in before I conclude. Because this this episode is actually more detailed than I expected it to be. Hopefully, you're enjoying it. And the first one is, if you want your walking to be more difficult, you can add load by using a rucksack or a vest. Okay, so a vest with weights, or rucksack, like a backpack, where you can throw in some weighted plates, or even just some disk weights and add in, you know, for women, maybe it's 1520 pounds. For men, it's like 2530 pounds. And this gives you a little extra muscle burn in the traps, maybe in the legs, a little extra impact on your joints, but not nearly as much as running. And it will burn more calories in the same amount of time, give you a little extra challenge. And it's actually a nice skill to have if you're going to go camping, or have to lug things around camping or hiking or so on. So that's one adding load. The second thing that I wanted to throw in here, actually just off the top of my head is progressing your walks. So if you want to look at walks as an exercise that you track, there are different things you can progress, you can progress your speed. So start off at two and a half miles an hour for the first week. Then the next week, try you know 2.75 The next week, try three then 3.25 You know what I mean up the speed. And if you're using a wearable device, you can see your average speed. And that's a way to progress your walks kind of like we progress our weights in the gym. Another way is to progress the length. So start at 10 minutes, then go up to 15 minutes and 20 minutes, or you know a mile mile and a half to two miles you get the idea makes it more interesting. You can track this if this is your thing to make it fun. And then the last little bonus is try combining caffeine. So like a couple black coffee in the morning with fasted walking before you've eaten. And see if you respond any better in terms of fat loss, like keep all the other variables controlled, and add in caffeine with fasted walking. There are other supplements you could use instead of caffeine, but I don't want to go there. I want to keep it simple here. Just more or less natural stuff. Caffeine and fasted walking, there's a little bit of evidence that indicates could help with fat loss. Just because it increases your metabolic rate a little more than just the walking alone. Okay, that's everything I can think of for walking. This was the walking episode, which I want to thank Michelle Clark fellow coach for giving me the idea to run with this topic. Because I talk about it all it's time, but I hadn't really dived into it on my podcast in detail. So thank you, Michelle, I'm sure you as the listener viewer can get creative and come up with other ways to incorporate more movement into your life than what I've said here. Just take it one day, one week at a time, build up your capacity, develop those habits, and you will find fat loss much easier. And because you're going to live longer, you'll thank yourself decades from now. So one last thing, if you've been struggling to lose fat, or improve your body composition, and you love the idea of walking, but you feel that there's more to the puzzle, especially for your specific case. And you need some guidance and accountability. Just reach out to me to chat about one on one nutrition coaching. Okay, you're going to become the center of my attention during the six month program, because I'm going to work with you on eliminating stressors from your life, increasing your metabolism, like with walking, but many other things, training, moving the right way getting the results that you may have struggled to achieve for a long time. So I covered a lot of material today. And if you are interested in coaching, or learning more DM me on Instagram, at Wits & Weights or Facebook, or go to wits & weights.com/coaching, to learn more about that side of what I do, and I will get back to you to see if we're a good fit or to answer your question or whatever reason you reach out to me. I also want to remind you, I do have a guarantee in my coaching. If you don't achieve your goal by the end of six months, I'm going to work with you for free until you do. And that's me demonstrating to you how confident I am in this science backed approach that we take when working together. Again, just DM me on Instagram at Wits& Weights or Facebook or go to wits & weights.com/coaching. If this episode on walking was helpful or you have questions, comments on the video, click the link in the show notes or go to wits & weights.com and look for the Ask Philip section on the homepage. And I will get back to you with an answer very quickly. Thank you again for being a loyal listener, and I'll talk to you next time. Stay strong. Thanks for listening to the show. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask. If you enjoy the podcast. Let me know by leaving a five star review in Apple podcasts and telling others about the show. Thanks again for joining me Philip Pape in this episode of Wits & Weights. I'll see you next time and stay strong