If Not Now, When?

THIS ISSUE: Walking for Weight Loss

Table of Contents:

1) Editor's Note
2) Food for Thought
3) Feature Article: Walking for Weight Loss
4) Teleclasses
5) Question & Answer
6) Our Services

Editor's Note

Hi,

August was a quiet month. We had some pretty good monsoon rains and a lot of triple digit temperatures. We drove up to Prescott twice to get away from the heat. That's always a pleasant way to spend a day.

I signed up to be a substitute teacher for the local middle and high schools. I guess after being in training and teaching for over 25 years it's hard to just stop. I've never taught kids before, so it should be interesting. It sems like a good way to spend part of my semi-retirement time.

This month I am writing about how to use walking as a way to lose weight. It really is an easy and convenient form of exercise, and it works well to help get rid of excess weight. I hope you find the information useful.

Reminder - I still have a few spots open in my on line fitness coaching group.  Just go to  my coaching site to check things out.

Good luck, keep exercising, and remember – "If not now, when?".

Best Wishes,

Tom Manfredi


Send any comments you may have to tom@fitness-after-50.com

My site fitness-after-50.com

Food for Thought

Feature Article - Walking for Weight Loss

It seems like everyone wants to lose weight these days, but no one wants to put in the effort to actually get lasting results. It is pretty scary to see how many quick loss diet and exercise programs there are today. I think if you checked back after a year with everyone who went on one of these diets and lost weight, you would find that almost everyone of them had put the weight back on. Why is this? Leaving aside the crazy food combinations that some diets suggest, the main reason that people regain all their weight after a diet is that they haven't developed something that they can sustain.

To lose weight and keep it off you have to do two things, and keep doing them indefinitely (like, for the rest of your life). You have to develop good, healthy eating habits; and, you have to exercise regularly. Today I'm going to talk about one of the easiest, least expensive, and most convenient types of exercise you can do to lose fat and get healthy. I guess I gave it away in the title when I called this article "Walking for Weight Loss". Oh well, so much for the suspense.

Walking is a fantastic form of aerobic exercise for almost everyone. All you need is a good pair of walking shoes and somewhere to walk. For most of us, those two items are relatively easy to come by.

Believe it or not, the hardest part is knowing how to walk properly to get the most fat loss benefits. The trick is to keep your ultimate goal in mind. That is, to lose weight. Walking for weight loss requires that you put in enough time, and that you do it at the proper heart rate. The latest research indicates that to really lose weight through walking you should work up to walking almost every day for 45-50 minutes. That might sound like a lot, but you can kind of sneak up on it. As an example, in the past two years I've had both knee and foot surgery. As you can imagine, after the surgeries I couldn't get out for an exercise walk for a couple of months. When I did start back, I started with a short walk of 20 minutes per day and added 5 minutes per day to my walks each week. So, in just over 2 months I was up to walking 60 minutes per day. You might not have the time to walk that long all at once. That's all right, walking for as little as 10 minutes at a time several times during the day can have the same cumulative benefit as a single longer walk. The ideal goal is to walk 275 minutes per week. That breaks down to about 45 minutes per day, six days a week.

The other thing I mentioned was "proper heart rate". For weight loss, this means getting your heart rate up to between 100-110 beats per minute(for the average, healthy 50-60 year old). For most of us that's not really very high. In fact most people try to push themselves harder because they don't think that this pace is fast enough to do any good. Actually, because of the physiology of the body, maximum weight loss occurs at a slower heart rate rather than at a higher one. (A caution here is for people that are on any kind of medication that might affect your heart rate. If you are on medications, check with your doctor to see if they have any affect on your heart rate. If they do, then you should check with a health professional that can help you determine a safe target heart rate for maximum weight loss. Ask your doctor who you should see. A good choice might be an exercise physiologist in charge of a local cardiac rehab program at a nearby hospital.)

Keep in mind that heart rate is determined by how hard you exercise. And it differs from person to person. As you become more accustom to walking, you may have to walk a little faster to get your heart rate up to the right level. Don't try to make this a competition. It is important that you keep your heart rate in the proper range to get the most benefit. The distance you walk is not important.

So, if you want to use walking to help you lose weight, just remember that you need to put in enough time at the correct heart rate to get the most benefit.

(c)2005 - 2008 Thomas D. Manfredi, MS

Teleclasses

I will be announcing upcoming teleclasses in this section in the future.

If you have a topic that you would be interested in hearing about in a teleclass, send an e-mail to teleclasses@fitness-after-50.com

Questions and Answers

Answer - Heart rate and pulse mean the same thing when you are talking about about exercise. There are two places to take your pulse that I think are both easy and relatively accurate. For both places you should use your index and middle fingers. The best place to find a strong pulse for most people is either between the side of neck and the Adam's apple; or, on the inside of the wrist with the palm facing up about one to two fingers width above the bend in the wrist.

Once you know where to put your fingers, just take a 10 second count of how many beats and multiply that by 6 to find your one minute heart rate. Try to stay within your target heart rate for the type of exercise you are doing.


To get more information on various fitness and health issues, please go to my site – www.fitness-after-50.com


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If you have a fitness or nutrition question you would like me to consider answering here in the newsletter, just send your question, along with your first name and city, in an e-mail to quesandansw@fitness-after-50.com

Obviously, I can't answer every question submitted. I will choose one question each month to answer here.

About Our Services

On line fitness coach Tom Manfredi is the creator of the site "fitness-after-50". This site is designed with the mature adult in mind. There is a lot of information available on the site for anyone looking to start or restart a sensible exercise program. Learn more by going to www.fitness-after-50.com


Tom also offers on line fitness coaching for people interested in getting expert guidance with their fitness plans. Check out Tom's coaching services and get a F.R.E.E. fitness analysis too.

Benefits of Fitness Coaching On Line:

I am now offering on line fitness coaching to my readers. Below are some of the reasons you may want to check in with me about having me be your coach. I will only be accepting a limited number of people to coach so that I can give each of them the attention they deserve.