Large populations of Americans view walking and other forms of low intensity activity as forms of exercise. People will begin to walk more in hopes of losing mass amounts of weight. Unfortunately walking isn’t a realistic long-term activity to help anyone lose large amounts of body fat.

Walking falls into the category of non-exercise physical activity, or NEPA for short. The issue is that activities such as walking have very low energy requirements. An average individual weighing 200 pounds walking at a comfortable pace, roughly 3.0 mph, will burn 183 calories in 30 minutes. In order to burn one pound of body fat it would require approximately 10 hours of continuous walking. That doesn’t seem like a very effective way to lose weight. However NEPA does have its role in your daily life.

In today’s society people are constantly pressed for time. People have a hard enough time getting in 30 minutes to an hours worth of exercise, let alone 10 hours. The issue with activities that fall into the NEPA category is that they aren’t vigorous enough to expend lots of calories during the exercise, nor do they create a long-term stress in your body that it then has to recover from over a long period of time. On top of that your body is very efficient and will adapt to your present level of activity very quickly. That means that you will steadily burn fewer calories as your body becomes more efficient at completing the task. Not what you want to be happening when you are trying to lose weight.

The most efficient forms of exercise to lose body fat are either resistance training or interval training. Both create a stress within your body that it is then required to work to repair in some cases over the next 48 hours. That means that over the next 48 hours you will have a slightly elevated metabolism, which leads to more calories burned. As you know the more calories you burn the more weight you lose.

By dedicating an hour three to four times a week to focus on resistance training and interval training you will definitely be on the road to achieving your goals. Then use activities such as walking, gardening, leisurely bike riding, or other such activities classified as NEPA to help improve the results already achieved through your traditional exercise. Adding an extra 183 calories to a workout that burned 500 calories will only help speed up the results you get.

To increase your non-exercise physical activity level throughout the day to help increase the amount of calories you are already burning through your exercise program you can spend 30 minutes in the evening walking with a significant other. You could get in the habit of parking slightly farther away in the parking lot. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Take frequent breaks from your desk and walk to get water. Anything that consistently forces you to move your body will help burn more calories.

Even though NEPA doesn’t provide the necessary stimulus to create dramatic long-term weight loss it will improve your general physical conditioning and augment the exercise you are already doing. The key is to push yourself to get a little more activity in the day than you did yesterday. Set daily goals for yourself, anything that will challenge you to reach beyond your typical comfort zone. By consistently doing that you will be amazed at the dramatic changes that take place in your life.

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