Daily Walking Slashes Early Death Risk, Challenging fitness Dogma
LONDON – A daily walk, often dismissed as insufficient exercise, can reduce your risk of premature death by as much as half, according to fitness expert Rachael Attwood. This revelation challenges decades of advice emphasizing high-intensity workouts as the gold standard for health and weight loss.
Attwood, creator of the “Lean Legs” programme, highlights walkingS effectiveness for slimming legs and burning calories. “But one of my favourite things about walking is that it is the best exercise for slimming down legs and it burns a surprisingly high number of calories for a workout that’s relatively easy,” she said. The average person burns approximately 300 calories during a one-hour walk,often enough to create a calorie deficit for weight loss.
Walking’s accessibility is a key benefit.”You don’t need to be young or super fit,mums can do it with kids in a pram,there’s a low chance of injury,and you can do it when you’re not feeling motivated and it’s still doing amazing things for your body,” Attwood added.
Attwood encourages clients to begin their day with a walk and aim for 10,000 steps daily. Her “Lean Legs” program incorporates walking alongside low-intensity home workouts,yielding significant results for participants.
The science behind walking’s benefits lies in the “fat burning zone theory.” This principle suggests the body burns the moast fat when exercising at 60 to 70 per cent of maximum effort.Fat burning occurs when carbohydrates and fat are converted into adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for energy. Because low to moderate-intensity exercise allows for easier breathing and increased oxygen intake, the body can more efficiently convert stored fat into energy.
“The most efficient thing your body can do during lower and moderate forms of exercise is to turn to your stored fat into energy,” Attwood explained. “So according to the fat burning theory, you should do long low-intensity exercises to use up fat stores and burn enough calories to see weight loss.”
