secret to weight loss

Use a pedometer and try to walk 10,000 steps during the course of your day.

RODALE NEWS, LENOX, MA—One of the most overlooked factors in the weight loss equation is the energy expended in nonexercise physical activity. Household activities such as gardening, pushing a lawn mower, walking your dog, cleaning your house, and climbing the stairs all burn calories. In fact, those people who are most active burn as much as 300 calories a day more than couch potatoes. Over a year, that 300-calorie-a-day difference in activity level can add up to a whopping 15- to 30-pound difference in weight.

In other words, even if an active person and a sedentary person both ate the same number of calories and did the same gym workouts, the active person would weigh 15 to 30 pounds less at the end of a year. So you can see how, over several years, differences in activity level can spell the difference between a life of thinness or obesity. It’s a secret to weight loss that doesn’t require expensive exercise equipment or strange-tasting supplements. A secret to weight loss that wouldn’t be so secret, except that it’s so subtle most of us never think of it.

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More weight-loss advice, from Prevention.com:

9 Easy Ways to Clean Up Your Diet: Cut out the junk and slim down naturally.
400 Calorie Guide to Eating Out: What to order at any restaurant.
Defy Your Age Fitness Plan: Boost vitality, lose weight with amazingly simple workouts.

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THE DETAILS: The impact of nonexercise physical activity was demonstrated dramatically in a recent study of 34 overweight and obese women who enrolled in a weight loss program. Researchers from the University of Glasgow Medical School in Scotland published their findings earlier this month in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. None of the women had been exercising prior to the study. For 8 weeks they worked out on a stationary bicycle for 150 minutes a week at 72 to 77 percent of their age-predicted maximal heart rate (an ideal intensity level for calorie burning). During the study they did not change their diet from their prestudy eating pattern. The researchers also carefully monitored the women’s physical activity when they were not exercising on the stationary bicycle. Their physiology was monitored by sensitive instruments as they engaged in their daily routines (e.g., walking, doing household chores, being involved in recreational activities).

At the end of the 8 weeks, 11 of the women had lost weight (responders) and 23 had not (nonresponders). Although all the women did exactly the same amount of exercise on the bike, the researchers found a substantial difference in their activity levels outside the exercise sessions. All of the nonresponders decreased their level of nonexercise activity compared to their prestudy activity level. They seemed to be compensating for the energy expended in formal exercise by becoming less physically active during the rest of the week.