2812: The Most Overlooked Way to Burn Fat

please only one place to go. Mind, mind, up, up with your hosts.

“Salto Stefano, Adam Shafer, and Justin Andrews.”

You just found the most downloaded podcast in fitness entertainment history, also with the most five star ratings. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about five reasons.

We give you five reasons. Why walking? Good old fashioned, easy walking. Is the most underrated fat loss tool. By the way, if you're interested in fat loss,

we have a free guide. It's how to lose body fat in three steps. Just three steps. You can get at mpfat loss.com. This episode is also brought to you by our sponsor, Hule.

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Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Joy the rest of the show. Walking.

It's one of the most, if not the most underrated fat loss tool.

“We're going to give you five reasons why you should walk and”

use this in your regiment. Let's go. Every time we bring this up and talk about this in the podcast,

it always reminds me of what a terrible trainer I was.

It does. I have, I have to talk to people. I have really, I have, you know, we all have our own little stories that we share about like when we we admittedly weren't the best trainers,

but I could like literally remember like scoffing at people. Totally. When I used to, we had this intake form that you would give somebody when the first time you met with them. And it's like a full questionnaire on their, you know,

their exercise. Yeah, their history, their medical history, their past history and working out what they currently do for exercise. And you know, a lot of times people, I walk. That's what I do for exercise.

And you don't do anything. Yeah, basically that's what's basically checking off nothing. You know what I'm saying? And the laughing tongue and cheek now, but always makes me feel terrible because it's crazy how it's been a 180 for me.

Later in my career realizing that this is the first place I start with damn you're everybody, almost almost almost every no matter what your goal is is actually managing their daily activity. And it's, it makes me feel terrible because I was something that I scoffed out and made people feel like they

weren't doing a good job or that doesn't count.

And yet here I am today, it's almost always the first thing

I peer into and the first thing that I start to move people in the direction of. And so ironically, so it can even experience lift. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it wasn't just beginners. Like, and that was the thing.

I always thought just like for the people that like had no idea how to train and like this is just the first, you know, introduction, but there's so much value in walking for so many different aspects. Oh, we just had a conversation on the podcast earlier the

day when we recorded an episode about us not walking. I know. And like we're setting walking goals for ourselves. Really. Yeah, it's a very, very advanced lifters, I'd say,

yet, you know, need more of that in our life. So it's interesting how how valuable and how high I rank it today versus what I would have ranked. Yeah, I thought you're someone listening might be thinking a few things, right?

They might be like walking. It's not stringuous. It doesn't burn a lot of calories.

“Why is this like a great form of exercise or activity?”

To again, to be clear, all forms of exercise if done appropriately, right? So apply to appropriately for the right person. They all have lots of value. OK, so almost any form of exercise as long as it's done

appropriately is going to bring some value. We'll improve your health depending on which one you do. You're going to get more stamina, more strength, more mobility, or flexibility. And if we were to rank forms of exercise for like athletic performance

and strength and stamina, walking wouldn't make it to high on that list. And yet, here we are saying that walking is this great form of activity. It's just wonderful, wonderful form of activity. So I think we should explain why we're saying that when walking isn't

the best athletic performance. It's not the best for endurance. It's not the best for building muscle. It doesn't burn the most calories. Yeah, I placed it at the top of lists when it comes to just general activity.

Yes, yes.

“And so here's the thing that-- so let me just paint the context.”

We trained people for many, many years for decades. And we have trainings at work for us now here at my pump that work with people. And there's a lot of things you have to consider when you're recommending a form of exercise. And if you're not a trainer or you're not a coach, you might not even think of these things. But a trainer or coach has to consider these things because you have to recommend something

that's appropriate for somebody that has a high adherence rate that allows someone to be consistent and so forth, otherwise, who cares. If I recommend a form of exercise that someone's not going to be able to do is inconvenient, high-risk of injury, or is going to take away from, let's say, our primary form of exercise, which is typically strength-trained, what recommend, it's that a great form of exercise.

So I'll start with the first thing.

And this is a big one. This is a big one. Everybody-- a lot of people don't even think about this. This is a big deal.

“Walking is a low-skill type of movement.”

Meaning, if I took 100 regular people outside, just 100 normal people, without major injury, all of them can walk and they won't get hurt. I can't say that for pretty much any other form of exercise. It took 100 normal people out there and it said, "Go run." In fact, I want you to run every single day or I want you to cycle every day or I want you

to go to CrossFit every day. The risk of injury becomes really high.

Walking, everybody can still walk.

It's appropriate. I gotta play to anybody. It's low-skill. I could tell my aunt to walk. I could tell a bodybuilder walk, I could tell.

Absolutely to walk. Anybody to walk to increase activity and the injury risk is extremely low, which makes it very appropriate. By the way, there's more that goes to this. But that alone makes it very appropriate for the activity that can recommend to anybody.

Well, in the context of what you're talking about with starting the client and training them, it's one of the easiest things that you can build, like what you can get to them and consider them continuing that forever. Yes. Even the best, most intense program that burns the most body that builds the most muscle,

the likelihood that that person can continue doing that forever or a long time is much lower than can I create habits to stick you around walking more frequently throughout someone's day and what percent or how likely can I keep them doing that forever, much higher than any other model. And I also add this, like trying to burn calories manually is kind of a losing strategy anyway.

So yes, there are forms of exercise that burn more calories while you do them. But if you've listened to podcasts, past episodes, your better bet is to try to speed up some metabolism through building muscle. Okay.

“So if you want to try to burn more calories, better off teaching your body to burn more”

calories on its own and trying to burn it manually. But does that mean there isn't any value to increase activity? No, there's tons of value to increase activity. You have improved insulin sensitivity, which means you're not going to get these big spikes and drop some blood sugar that affects lots of different behaviors, affects cravings,

energy and mood changes your eating behaviors. It's also great for metabolic health, especially if you stretch that out over years. And so walking is just a great form of activity that's low skill, low injury risk. It's also this, it's very hard to pick a form of exercise that is appropriate for the person that is overstressed and overworked, or the person who's well-rested, it's well-fed,

who can get after it. Well, form of exercise is going to benefit both of them. Walking. Yeah. Well, in settings, if you're work-setting where you're sedentary a lot, there's not a lot of exercise

you can just say, "Hey, do this." Within your work environment, whereas walking, you could plan that out where you could actually take these breaks and actually be somewhat productive with that with your body to also spike your moods, spike your energy, get things moving like, and that has a cascading effect back into the training and nutrition.

Well, back to your low skill point is that when you first meet a client, you're learning

a lot about that client to what you're talking about with their other stress that they have in their life, and right away after the first day meets you, I can feel confident that telling you to walk X amount of steps or minutes in a day every day. Fine. It's fine for everybody without knowing very little information.

I don't know if three days of full body routines is going to be too much for you right now. I don't know if you can handle running for a half hour or something. I don't know if you could handle some hit, sprints, posts, or pre-workout, or once. I'm figuring that out, so as a trainer when you first get somebody, sorry, it's why

right away because I know that it's got so many other benefits besides just creating more

activity and good habits and good behaviors around this person, which you'll get to the other four, and so right out the gates, I know we can start doing this thing. But I really like it because it's recuperative and meaning it won't take away from your

“body's recovery ability that you're going to need for the other more important or intense”

form. It won't just take away, it will facilitate and speed up. That's right. More blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients flowing through the body is going to facilitate and speed up recovery.

I remember again, another mistake, but I know you could definitely relate to this because we've talked about this before, where, you know, I thought go hammer the gym as far as possible. Lay down, don't move. Don't burn another cow. Don't burn one cow.

Let that would build the most muscle, it's not true at all. No.

In fact, I would have built more muscle going out for 10,000 step days of walking and moving

that blood, moving that nutrients, moving that oxygen through my body, it would facilitate that recovery faster than just laying there still. In other words, someone who's interested in fat loss, a good routine, typical person may look something like two or three days a week of strength training, appropriate intensity compound lifts, you've heard us talk about this before, get stronger, what are the activity

“going to add to that that's not going to take away from the adaptation that we cover”

that I need for the strength training, walking. Walking. Now, if I took that same person that they were doing three days a week, full body strength training and I'm having them do an additional two or three days of hit cardio. Well, it's going to take away.

I'm going to have to really scale down the intensity of volume of the strength training oftentimes so that they have some of that ability, the recovery that they can use for the hit cardio. For walking, it doesn't take away, it often adds to that.

So it's just a great addition to a strength training routine.

Also, when you start talking about hit and more volume of training, intensity of things like that, you also have to consider calorie deficit for surplus. If they're in a deficit, having them walk more, you'll lean them out, the body will tap into fat, the body will utilize fat to fuel them through the entire muscle down the walking.

No. You have to do a lot of weight. Yeah.

“The amount that someone would have to do, and the deficit will walk like 40,000 steps.”

Right. And so, that's another great positive, again, I don't need to know a lot of information. They could be in a place where they're not even in a calorie surplus or maintenance, it could be in a deficit, and I can add a bunch of walking in there. And most likely, it's going to happen, they're going to just lean out from that.

There's going to lose muscle preserving. Yeah. It's very muscle preserving versus if that person who's in a maybe extreme calorie deficit, I'm and training, and then I also stack high intensity cardio on top of that. I sacrifice their body, potentially pairing down muscle.

That's right. That's way less likely to happen with walking. Here's one of my favorite things with walking. It's a very easily stacked with other habits. So one of the obvious ones is you could put on some headphones, take a scroll, scroll, listen

to a book, really get lost in the book or whatever. But here, that's an obvious one. But my favorite habits with walking look like this, you're at work, you're there until five o'clock or six o'clock. You can go on a walk and have a meeting.

You can go on a walk and have a conversation with your friend. You can build your relationship with your wife when you get home on a walk. You can make the walk so meaningful that if not even about the walk, it's about hanging out with that person, connecting with that person, and making it something entirely different. In fact, this is one of my favorite reasons to walk later when I get home after work.

Is that going on my family? Yeah. It takes the kids with them. Sorry. With the wife, and then it's like, okay, it's because it's bringing the dogs and it was

just like this whole thing. But again, everybody comes back in a better mood and then, you know, a lot of this stuff. I feel like it's like unresolved energy, you know, it's expressed. There's other habits that are great to stack it with, too. Most of us end up going to the grocery store at least once a week.

Park your car. Super far from where. That's right. You got to go. You know, intentionally go.

Go to the grocery store instead of maybe insta-carding it. You go to the gym probably or some other place, park far away, like, there's walking. There's a lot of ways that you can make walking, you know, five, 10 minutes here there in all these things that you do every single day on a regular basis. That increases this activity increases.

I'm so glad you said that oftentimes exercise needs to be scheduled and done kind of all at once. Right? I'm going to go running today. Well, you typically don't do three, you know, 10 minute runs.

It's typically a one 30 minute run or something like that. With walking, you split it up throughout the day. If you work in an office, you do three, 10 minute walks, that's 30 minutes. And each one of those, you can stack with ticker, you co-worker with you.

idea and I'm going to be on my phone, but why don't I go for a walk while I do it? And you can split up the walks throughout the day. By the way, the data shows if you do it that way, especially if you do it post-prandial, meaning after a meal, you actually get better health effects. It's actually better for you.

Just split up a bunch of little walks and just do one long walk, especially if it's after your meals. Justin's notorious for this and this, as I've gotten older of reframe the way I look at this at home, it's just, you know, many times now, choose to like clean up around the house or organize a closet or wash one of my closet.

This becomes like a thing that I do it not only because that thing needs to get done, but now it's like, oh, you know what, there's my activity, here's my activity doing that.

And I remember when we talk about this, when the first tools came out, now you have the

Fitbit, the org ring, all these things, there's so many competitors at one point, it used to be just the body, but way back in the days. And, you know, they partnered with 24 minutes, so we were some of the first people to get to test those things out. And by the way, this is back when I wasn't a good trainer, this is back when I was still

trying to like kill my clients and their workouts and burn as many calories as we could in the workout because I thought I had to do that with everybody. And I remember all my clients, I got on those body bugs and, you know, we would sit down when we, we'd meet once a week and look at their report from the week. And I remember many, most, not a couple or anomalies, most of my clients burned a majority

of their high calorie days, not with me. Yeah. How is this possible? We'll open the shit out of them. It's got to be, like, help, but it was on their Saturday when they did yard work or they

went to the mall or they, like, they were just active and the calorie expenditure, even though

you're, you're making the case that, you know, it doesn't burn a lot of calories. It really adds up when you make it a part of your life. It does. When you, when you compare a sedentary day and everybody has normally at least one of these a week when you just sleep in for two hours, you don't have to go anywhere.

Maybe you'll watch a little TV or you, you come in early that night with that day of steps compared to another day when you would consider your high activity day. Maybe you move a lot, whatever, go grocery, all the things. The calorie burn is actually pretty significant. No, that's a good, I've seen thousand calorie burn difference.

That's a good point because walking so accessible, because you can track your steps and just try to move more cumulatively and as more calories. Right. 20 minute hard core intense cardio sessions, going to burn more than, you know, 20 minutes of walking.

But typically what happens is if you're tracking this and you're trying to hit 10,000 steps today, you do more of it and overall it does that.

“And that's what blew my mind was because we, again, this is back in my, size of the same”

thing, not good, trainer days when I was trying to burn a lot of calories with my clients. And I'm going to like, well, this is crazy. Well, the reason why that happened, I saw the same thing out, I'm saying, I actually thought that the program was wrong. I had to go through a couple of times when it was, is that people would train when we typically

on the work days. Yes. So they come to tell you job. That's right. So they'd come see me, they'd work out the same the morning.

We'd have an hour hard work out. If you would see on their chart, spiking calorie burn, the rest of the day there was nothing. Yeah. They had this crazy five, 600 calorie burn with you. Yep.

Okay. And that's, that's an intense workout. Right. You really, let's start getting on moving on, hitting them with some hit cardio every. So you get like 600 calories burned over their maintenance that day that they train with

you. The day when they burned a thousand calories more, and it's just, they were just, they were just busy all day.

“And it's like, and I remember, what did you do with the lock effect?”

I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I just, I just, I just had this, I did that, and I was like, oh my God, what did you have a client went, went to the mall, and she was at the mall all day with her teenage kids. And I'm like, what did you do?

Yeah. Same nothing. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. But it makes walking so great, and one of the reasons why walking, when people try to increase

their steps, one of the reasons why they're more consistent with it is it requires no set-up and no equipment. Yeah. I don't got to go change into my workout clothes. I can go for a walk on my work clothes, I don't need to go to the gym, I don't need

a special equipment, I just go for a walk. And so because there's no set-up, because it's so convenient, I end up doing more of it than if it were like, I have to go on this run, I got to get my shoes on, better change my clothes, I'm going to go on sweaty, I'm going to go shower, whatever, it requires no setup.

You just go for a walk, makes it super easy. You know, that's part of why I think it's so underrated also is there's this myth

“around, like sweat is correlated to fat burn, and that you need to be sweating and exhausted”

in order for the body to burn fat and it's so not true. Your fat being utilized as energy is being in a core deficit.

So if you can create a core deficit through walking and never sweating all day long, you

And I would argue more because of the point you're making right now.

It's really easy to make it, you know, when you're dressed in work clothes to just, oh, you know, I have a lunch break every day, instead of just eating lunch and sitting with my coarser at the lunch.

“How about I think I had 15, 20 minutes of that time with a walk.”

That's right. And then I park further, and you'll be creating these habits and all of a sudden you become a person, by the way, average American steps less than 4,500 steps a day, you also become the average American who steps 4,000 or less to the average American or who's now stepping 8,000 steps every day.

And I'll tell you right now, if you take a person from 4 to 8,000 to double their activity, you've doubled their activity and move man, and they don't even feel like they've worked out real fast. And that does add up. It does.

And lastly, you know, walking does, and it does this quite consistently and quite well,

as it typically gets us outside. And other forms of exercise do as well, but because walking requires so little set up or no set up, I can do it whenever I want or need to change my clothes, I ended going outside a lot. I ended going outside a lot more than I normally would, and that has its own health benefits,

like getting sunlight is good for you, it's very good for you, especially when you compare to not getting any sunlight. Most people, especially people who work off the jobs, get so little sunlight, then when they go for walks, part of the health benefits and the mood lift that they feel, is just getting out the sun.

It also gets you outside around people. And this may not have been a big deal 30 years ago, but these days it makes a big deal to be around people. And that is rejuvenating and can encourage relationships and conversation. It gets you out from the cave where so locked in to be, I don't think that this is

talked about enough. I think that it's one of those kind of afterthoughts, that yeah, yeah, we know getting outside is important, like everybody knows, but you, and you think because you walked your car, you do this, like, yeah, I get outside, it's like, but to your point about today versus 30 years ago, the average person spent several hours outside, compared today,

where we've now completely flipped that. So this has changed a lot, and we don't have a lot of history to show all the detrimental stuff to not getting any sunlight consistently for a, we haven't had enough generations age and get older to see that. And so I think we'll look back 40, 50 years from now and talk about this period of time when

we've got under a bunch of fluorescent lights, locked ourselves indoors for eight, 10 hour days, all the time for decades on how detrimental that was to our health.

“And so I think this isn't talked about enough, how important it is for us to be definitely”

some kind of physiological benefit to being in nature, not artificial, you know, environments. And I remember listening to the guy in a podcast, he was trying to like define it, and he was like, you know, certain doses of it, whether it was like in a park or whether, you know, you're immersed, you know, in a field, or you're actually in a force, but there's no other signs of civilization, and he's like, that's like the mega dose.

And there was some kind of like calming effect of that and like your brain received, you know, a lot of benefit. And anybody who's ever wore a feel it, an office job consistently for weeks or months, and then taking a vacation to the coast or the forest for three days, can't tell me you don't feel that.

I definitely, I got the thing to seeing very far versus like, that's right, always seeing

things right in front of you. That's right. I've got from that perspective, you don't really get that unless you're really observing, like a big experience. Well, I'll tell you, you don't funny that how well before the science has got up to even

prove any of what you're saying, humans have naturally gravitate. That's it. We've been brought live by the coast and in the trees and see, see long, the horizon, I mean, we've just naturally have done, there's a reason why we've naturally gravitated with it. And by the way, this is for, for centuries,

and when we did everything outside already, when we still gravitated that today, we're locking ourselves in these boxes with blue light on us all day long, you cannot tell me. Some of the best health you'll see in populations are in cities that are coastal. So the weather's decent, so there go outside a lot, and then these are older cities that where driving is inconvenient, you know, think of like San Francisco, filter and walk.

“You have to walk everywhere you go, and people have longer life stands.”

I can speak personally this, like we produced this podcast in the show. We're locked in this kind of sound, proof room all day long. And if I don't go outside a few times a day, man, by the time we're done here, I feel totally fried. I looked up the data, by the way, the majority of Americans spend roughly 30 minutes,

total of day outside, total, that's outside, wow. And what was that just 30 years ago?

Yeah. So, you know, going for walks, tends to put you outside.

“It's low skill, and anybody can do it, it's recuperative.”

Won't take away from your other more intense exercise.

You stack it with other habits, it's pro-relational.

That's my favorite part requires no equipment, no setup, and you go outside, walking phenomenal form of activity.

“By the way, we have a guide on losing fat.”

Loose fat in three steps, it's free. You can get an MP fat loss, dark off.

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