healthy you
WEIGHT LOSS
Fitness walking is
by far the most
popular form of
exercise. About
7 7
million Americans
say it’s their main
form of activity.
Over the course of a year, the
women lost
5
pounds and the men
over 8 pounds. Importantly, they also
decreased their belly fat—the riskiest
kind—by 10 to 20 percent.
“We picked walking because it’s
easy, convenient, and most people can
do it without injury,” McTiernan says.
While almost any kind of walking
is beneficial for weight loss, a few
minor tweaks can have you burning
a significant number of extra
calories, making your goals even
more attainable. Here are two such
programs to try.
HiGH iN TEN SiTY
INTERVAL TRAiNiNG
How would you like to burn more
calories and increase your fitness
level without spending any more
time exercising? HIIT, or high
intensity interval training, does
exactly that. It involves short bursts
of strenuous exercise alternated with
lower intensity recovery periods.
In the same way that flooring your
car at every green light burns extra
gas, the high intensity periods of HIIT
burn extra calories, to the tune of
about
25
to
50
percent more than a
regular walk. As a bonus, HIIT
changes the structure of your muscle
cells so that, over time, they get better
at burning fat instead of their normal
fuel—carbohydrates.
Almost anyone can do HIIT. “But
if you’ve been sedentary, it’s best to
first focus for 8 to 10 weeks on
establishing consistency and duration,
before you turn to intensity,” says
Carla Sottovia, Ph.D., assistant
fitness director and lead personal
trainer at the Cooper Fitness Center
in Dallas. Once you’ve done that,
you’re ready to go.
One of the best things about
HIIT is that it doesn’t require a
highly structured program, so it’s
easy to remember on the fly. Here’s
the technique in a nutshell:
■ Warm up for
10-15
minutes by
gradually bringing yourself up to your
normal fitness walking pace. Don’t
skip this step, because warming up is
an important way to prevent injuries.
■ Interval train for the next
20-25
minutes. Start with a ratio of
1
:
1
—that
is, one minute of fast walking followed
by one minute of lower-intensity
recovery walking. Push yourself hard
for that first minute or so, then slow
down for about a minute. Repeat this
pattern for
20
minutes. During the
intense segments, you should be
breathing hard enough to find it
difficult to talk. On a scale of
1
to
10
,
in which 1 is lying on the couch and
10 is panting and gasping for air, you
should be at 8 or
9
. On the recovery,
you should be at
5
or 6.
■ Cool down for
10-15
minutes by
walking at a normal pace. A cool-
down period speeds recovery and
eases stiffness the next day, so always
build in time for one.
■ Once you are comfortable with the
technique of intervals, play around
with the ratio. Well-conditioned
walkers often use a ratio of 2:1—
two
minutes of fast walking for every
minute of recovery. The super-fit aim
for a ratio of
3
:
1
. Or, if you want to
increase effort while staying with the
1:1
ratio, add a set of
2
- or
3
-pound
hand weights to make your walks
more challenging.
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APRiL 2009 BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
PHOTO: VEER
