How 10K Steps Can Transform Your Health- Ep. 247

Speaker 1: 1:25

This is probably the most underrated aspect of weight loss, despite the fact that many people have been talking more and more about walking, but it is the most underrated aspect of weight loss, I think still, and we're gonna cover why, and we're gonna cover some of the information that you really need to know. But the big story here, just right off the bat, is that if you're gonna do one thing in addition to diet that has to do with moving your body, it is walking, and not power walking, which I would throw into the category of exercise, but rather leisurely or leisurely relaxing walking. It is critical, and we're gonna go through the understanding as to why. For those who have not yet began to own this walking aspect of your journey, you're in for a really big treat once you start adding this in to the picture and I do know that we're coming up on cold weather season here, at least in the United States. I know some of you in Australia. That's not the case for you, but it is gonna be a little bit more challenging for some people to get their steps in due to the weather, but I'll have some things to say about that as well. So, first thing to understand is, when you look over here on the right, you see running, and when you look over here on the left, you see walking.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Now, part of the reason why this is such a big deal in people's mind is because they typically look at this equation whether I should walk or whether I should do something like running as a calorie equation. And so bottom line is if you go for a 30 minute jog or run, you're gonna burn probably around 300Kcals on average calories. Now if you go for a walk, you're gonna burn maybe half that, perhaps less, and so that puts some confusing ideas in people's minds, because then they go. Well, why in the world, if I have 30 minutes to do something, would I choose walking over running? And so we have to begin to break this down, because the metabolism and the way it functions is not just a calorie phenomenon. Now, this is not new for most of you, but even though you may have heard this idea before, many people who've heard this idea in fact, I would say most, I think still in their behaviors are doing the opposite. So the reason why walking is so powerful has nothing to do with how many calories are burned. So I want you to put that out of your mind for a minute and I want to introduce you to this very complex slide, so don't get too caught up on this, but it is an important one to understand at least some of the understanding science has around the way to move your metabolism and adjust your metabolism.

Speaker 1: 4:33

So in this slide the thing to pay attention to is these numbers here, number one and number two. So this number one here represents the part of your metabolism that you can change through conscious activity, and it's made up of these different parts the amount of exercise you do and the calories you burn from it, the calories you use up when you eat food and the calories you use just through daily living. So don't worry about these confusing terms eat, teff and need. They're just different scientific abbreviations. But really this here is calories burned through exercise. This here is calories burned through the food that we eat and this here is calories we burn through everything else that we do. And this is where we want to sort of pay attention, because if you take this area here, you can see this is about 15 to 20% of changeable metabolism.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Now this stuff is things like doing the laundry, taking out the trash, walking up and down steps, standing instead of sitting right, just moving from point A to point B. All of this is really about getting up and sitting down. Walking, fidgeting, all of that kind of stuff is what goes on here. Now that stuff in and of itself, throughout the day is not huge, until you begin to add it up for the entire day. Now, what we now know is that, right here, movement, which is this part, versus exercise, which is this part. Up here, movement and exercise must be considered two different things, and this confuses people. Movement and exercise need to be considered separately, and movement is a much larger component and contributor to calorie burn than is exercise.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So, despite the fact that in that last slide, I showed you that jogging can burn 300 calories and walking only burns 150 calories, you can't jog all day. Okay, but you can walk all day, not to mention there's other things about this that begin to fit in. But that's why? Because you can do very low intensity activity all day. It by itself, one specific instance of walking may not be huge, but when you add up the amount that you walk throughout the day, it becomes huge, and this is the difference.

Speaker 1: 7:05

So if I had to choose and this is what the research says, if I had to choose a person who sits all day and then goes and does a 30 minute workout or a 30 minute jog, versus someone who walks all day and is up and about and moving all day but does no exercise at all, and I had to guess, based on that person, whether they who would be the healthiest and the thinnest. What we now know is the person who's up all day walking and moving around will be thinner and healthier than the person who sits all day but then goes for a 30 minute jog. This is critical to understand and this slide right here really is important for you to know. Not to mention I'm gonna give you some information here but this part here this basal metabolic rate, which is synonymous with resting energy expenditure. This is the amount of energy you burn at rest. You can't really control this as much. The body adjusts this, and what we now know is that if you choose running or intense exercise as your movement patterns and you don't do any walking, what can happen is the body can rob some of this basal metabolic rate to feed the energy of exercise, which can be an insidious and silent block to weight loss, and so let's talk about that for a minute. By the way, what I'm presenting to you here is really brand new information just from the last three to five years. Most people do not understand this and have never even heard of this, but it is critically important to understand Now.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Again, these are scientific looking slides. I don't want you to get confused here, but I want to show you this one here up in the upper right hand corner. Now, this first chart here shows you what we think happens. Most of you think that this is what happens when you do exercise, you've got the amount of energy you burn at rest and then you've got the physical activity that you do, and so what you typically think is that physical activity adds onto your basal metabolic rate. But when you do certain forms of physical activity, what ends up happening is the more physical activity you do, the more the body begins to constrain energy use in other areas. So it is not additive. So this is what happens. These slides are essentially saying the same thing as this slide. What this is saying here is that we think that if we're doing this amount of activity and this is our basal metabolic rate, then when we add activity on, we should see our whole daily energy expenditure go up. What we see instead is this that when our activity goes up, our basal metabolic rate slows down to compensate. This is the way it really works and this has only really been discovered in the last five years or so, and I'll tell you how they discovered it.

Speaker 1: 10:11

This researcher out of Duke University who I had on my podcast, dr Herman Ponzer, decided that he was going to go out. He's an evolutionary anthropologist and he decided he was going to go out and study hunter-gatherer tribes. We know that if we look at the activity that these hunter-gatherer tribes get, they almost double and sometimes even triple the amount that the average westerner gets. So he wanted to quantify that and show how much more activity they're getting and also show how much faster or how much more energy they burn throughout the day compared to Westerners. What he found was shocking to the entire scientific community and shocking to people like myself who've been studying metabolism. It was completely contrary to what we expected. What he found was that, although they are walking sometimes double and doing almost double sometimes triple the amount of activity we do, they typically don't burn any more energy than we do throughout the day. Let me say that again because it's shocking. Despite the fact that they do so much more activity than us, in the end they actually don't burn more energy on a daily basis than us. That explains what is happening here that even though they're doing all this other activity, their body and their metabolism responds in a budgeting fashion. This makes sense with money If you start spending somewhere, you probably are going to have to save somewhere else, otherwise you're going to go off your budget. Well, the metabolism has the same budgeting effect and we now know it is there and we now know it is profound. Now this study tells us how profound it is and should finally put the nail in the coffin for any of you who still think that you can out-exercise your metabolism. In other words, what we typically think is that if I just exercise more, my metabolism will do what I want it to do.

Speaker 1: 12:23

This study here I'm referring to this slide down here on the lower right side of the screen. These are the results from a study where they took women and they divided these women up into three different groups. They basically told all three groups do not change anything with your diet, keep your diet exactly the same. Now we're going to divide you into three groups. One group is going to do 30 minutes of jogging five days per week. Now these were women who had not done any activity, they were just sedentary women who were weight stable, basically. Then they said all right, we're going to have another group that does 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise five days per week. A third group that did 60 minutes of jogging running five days per week. Now think about that. That is a lot of activity. That's five hours to two and a half hours of jogging during the week that these people were not doing before.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Now the results came in and what they found if you see here this is weight loss. See this blue line here 25 percent of these women actually lost weight, but they lost less than was predicted based on the amount of calories they were burning. Now see this red and green segment here. This is 50 percent of those women saw no change whatsoever in their weight loss. Most shockingly, this purple area that this red line is pointing to showed that 25 percent, or 26.6 percent, of these women actually gained weight as a result of doing this running regime.

Speaker 1: 16:52

This should be shocking to everybody, because what it essentially shows is that not only is this happening, but something else insidious happened these women were shown to, even though they were told not to change their diet, this running activity. Not only did it not really change their metabolic rate that much, if at all, for most of these women, but most of these women also had unrelenting hunger and cravings that caused them to overeat, so much so that 50% of them ate enough to offset the calories burned through exercise, and 25% of them ate more than the exercise burned and actually ended up gaining weight. So what this shows us conclusively is that that 300 calories you burn going for a jog has other insidious effects that may make you burn less later and eat more later too, and this is happening to 75% of the people in this study that we just looked at, and it explains why so many of us feel like we are spinning our wheels with exercise. Now, if that is not shocking to you, it's probably because you're not understanding the ramifications of this. But let me say it one more time Exercise through burning calories does not work like a calculator.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Your metabolism is an adaptive, reactive system, and the more you exercise, the more it will budget its energy use and the more it will produce hunger and cravings that will offset any calorie levels burned for the vast majority of people. Now you might have a friend who goes out and runs constantly and looks wonderful, or you might know someone who lost weight through running. I could tell you, after doing this work for 20 years now and having tens of thousands of patient contacts on and off line, I can count probably on two hands the amount of people I have seen take up cardiovascular exercise as their only modality and lost the weight and kept it off, and so we need something better. Most people are stuck in this trap. Right here there's a before picture. They lose weight, they're happy and then the things that they did to lose the weight end up causing them to regain the weight. So we're used to these before and after pictures on social media and all these places and in ads and stuff For most people. We really need to be thinking about the before after picture, because this is typically what happens when you don't take these mechanisms into account. 95% of people regain the weight they lose. 66% actually end up fatter. When you look at the data, and most people, most everyone. If you do surveys and you ask them hey, what do you do to lose weight, you know what they say I eat less food and I go for jobs.

Speaker 1: 20:09

Basically, and what this is showing conclusively is that that does not work and in fact, it might be doing harm. So walking is different. It's not a calorie counting phenomena. Yes, you do burn some calories. They pale in comparison to the amount that you would burn doing a run. More intense exercise you burn more calories. However, we just saw that that more intense exercise does not change our basal metabolic rate to the degree that we think and also causes other compensatory changes. Well, walking is not really a calorie counting thing. It works well because it lowers the stress hormone, cortisol, and resensitizes the body to insulin. Why is that important? That's important because cortisol can cause cravings and insulin resistance can cause hunger. Yes, it burns some calories and one session of walking might not be a whole lot of calories, but when you add that up throughout the day it becomes pretty substantial. So it reduces hunger, it controls cravings, it is something that you can do all day. That adds up to big benefits and it also has some of the same health benefits and mood benefits as running does. And we now are seeing that this not jogging might be the most potent form of movement that you can do.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Just a couple studies here to drive this home. I don't love going through statistics like this because we're individuals All of you are individuals. However, when we look at averages, we can see some things here. So taking 8,000 steps a day was linked to 51% lower risk of death from any cause, compared with taking only 4,000 steps a day. And, by the way, 4,000 steps a day is probably what most of you get without trying if you're relatively active, right, if you're up and about. Some people get even less than that if they don't move at all. Now, if you bump that up to taking 12,000 steps a day, you get a little bit more benefit in terms of health benefits. However, if you start going up to about 12,000 steps a day, you don't see much more of a risk reduction, and so you kind of want to look at this idea that probably somewhere between above 5,000 steps per day, but less than 15,000 to 20,000 steps per day, is probably a good place to be, and this is why a lot of people focus on that 10,000 steps per day benefit of walking. This also just basically shows you here that things like cleaning, biking, walking the dog, doing the laundry, going shopping, all of these things add up.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Now you might not be considering these things as important, right? Like sometimes when I'm sitting here and working, I have to walk downstairs to get my mail, because I live in a condo building and sometimes I go oh, I don't want to go and get my mail because I'm lazy. Right, we humans like to sit and do what we're doing, but now, when I look at it this way, I go oh, here's an opportunity for me to move, and so every opportunity for you to get up and move has pretty substantial benefits for you. You really want to become, when you're looking at this data, a mover instead of a sitter. You want to start being a mover rather than a sitter, and a mover over being an exerciser. You want to move as much as possible, basically, and exercise only just enough and sit very rarely. This is what we're sort of talking about here Sitting.

Speaker 1: 23:55

By the way, this has nothing to do with walking, just sitting. Sitting was associated with all cause mortality. The longer you sit, the less healthy you will be. Now, this is not to say don't sit down and don't relax. We humans are very funny. You hear stuff like this and then you're just like oh, I need to be standing all the time. No, that's not the case. Sitting is just fine, so long as you're not sitting all of the time, so long as you're also putting in intermittent bouts of moving around.

Speaker 1: 24:26

And, by the way, this is not something you should be. You should have to think consciously about. It's just something that you should just think to yourself. I can cook, I can clean, I can walk the dog, I can take out a trash, I can look for ways to move constantly if I want to. It's very important that you begin to rethink this idea that you just have to go for walks. This stuff can be accumulated and you can walk basically anywhere. Right, and walking can be done in all forms and all ways.

Speaker 1: 25:03

We don't want to do this thing that we humans do, where it's like I can only go walking if I have to trail to go walk on, or I can only go walk if I have a place in the city that I can go walk, or I can only walk if I'm outside. An example for me is that normally, when I'm doing things like this, or I'm on a call with someone, I get up and I pace back and forth, or I stand and lean over rather than sit down. The idea here is just rethinking your frame. Now there are better ways to walk in terms of the research, but it's difficult to get too caught up on that. I don't want you to get too caught up on that. I'll share it here with you. But the idea number one is don't do the silly human thing of thinking, well, if I can't get out in nature, then I won't walk. You just need to get out and walk and move.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Walking in nature does have more benefits. In fact, if you walk out in nature and sit in nature, it has better benefits than sitting in your house. And the reason why is because it's been shown that nature settings also lower stress hormones on their own and some of the research done. In Japan, they have a term they use called shinrin yoku. I don't speak Japanese so I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but shinrin yoku translates as forest bathing, and so they're very familiar with the idea of walking in the woods versus walking in the city. There have been studies that have shown that if you walk in the city, you absolutely will sensitize the body to insulin, burns and calories and lower cortisol. However, if you walk in the woods, you will lower cortisol even further. That's what this research says. So sure, if you have a green space to walk around and do it.

Speaker 1: 26:46

But walking comes first, no matter where it is, even if it's just pacing around the house while you're having a conversation with a family member or a friend. Very, very important. And, by the way, there's lots of different ways to look at this. Right here I have a picture of someone who is listening to something. Either she's listening to a podcast, a book, talking on the phone to a friend. What you wanna be able to do is you want to be able to take walking and add in other activities.

Speaker 1: 27:16

One of the things that's happened to me is you all of you have probably heard of the idea of you know audio university or car university be auto university, rather, not audio university, but auto university, where you're in the car and you're listening to books and you're listening to podcasts and things like that. I do that. It's one of the reasons I love to drive, but I also do it when I walk. I'll either call a friend or I'll listen to very relaxing music, which helps me sort of do some meditative walking, or I will listen to a book on tape. You know an audio book or a podcast or something. Now, the reason I bring that up is because there's lots of ways to do this. It doesn't you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna. Your cortisol is still gonna go down if you're walking around listening to a you know some kind of murder podcast or something like that.

Speaker 1: 28:09

The walking itself is doing this right and you really want to think about. The first target for most of us is really to reach this 10 to 12K steps daily. And, by the way, female hunter-gatherers that they study, this is about the amount of activity that they get in a day. This is about the amount of walking that they do in a day. So it's not like 20, 30,000 steps a day. It's 10 to 12K steps per day. And this is looking at several different hunter-gather tribes, some that live in Africa, some that live in the Amazonian jungles in Peru and other places in South America. Now, for men, the male hunter-gatherers typically get anywhere from 15 to 20K steps daily, so their step counts are a little bit more, and this is because they typically will travel further away from camp and things like that. But the point here is that the sweet spot probably is somewhere between 10 and 20K steps daily for most people.

Speaker 1: 29:14

Now there are some of you who are probably listening to this who are thinking well, I do much more than that, so that must be better. Well, the truth of the matter is, there really does seem to be a Goldilocks effect with most things in life, and this is probably true of walking as well. Once you start getting over 20,000 steps daily, which is now turning into some of what elite hikers do and things like that, this can now become a little stressful for the system. So, just so we know, by the way, for most people, 5,000 steps is gonna be an hour of probably dedicated walking for most people. So 10K steps is gonna be somewhere between an hour and two hours for most people. So as we get up to 20K steps, this means probably two hours to four hours of walking daily. Now, this doesn't have to be dedicated walking. Remember, this can be accumulated steps.

Speaker 1: 30:11

However, for those of you who really are wanting to use walking as a weight loss strategy, you probably do at least wanna have one period of time during the day where you are doing some dedicated walking in order to get to these numbers. But the point here that I'm trying to make to you is that you want to try to get to these numbers as naturally as possible and not turn this into another thing that you have to do, which is another form of stress. What a lot of us don't understand is that as soon as we start putting all this pressure on ourselves to do X and do Y and do A and do B and do C, we are putting some stress onto our system, and the metabolism at its core is a stress barometer. It does not like stress when stress gets too much, and when stress gets too much it compensates by reducing basal metabolic rate and increasing hunger and cravings for most people. So do not turn this into another thing I have to do. Do not turn this into perfectionist walking. Do not turn this into more walking is better. Turn this into smarter is always better.

Speaker 1: 31:16

I'm gonna try to get into this Goldilocks zone and maybe because winter's coming up, I'm gonna do fine at 10 to 12,000 steps and maybe in the summer I can bump that up to 15 to 20 K steps. And again, there's lots of ways to do this. You do not have to be wearing fitness gear to go for a walk walking your dog, walking on your lunch break, right, walking to and from work, walking in the woods and hiking, walking whenever you're having a phone call or something like that. You want to be thinking about this not as something that needs dedicated walking time, but something that easily fits into your lifestyle, and you also want to be thinking about certain things that might not feel like walking, but actually are walking, like doing the dishes and drying the dishes and taking out the garbage and vacuuming and all of these kinds of things can make a pretty profound difference. So let's talk about the how to of this.

Speaker 1: 32:20

The way I look at this is you don't really want to again go from doing nothing to 15 to 20,000 steps per day. The way I like to think about this is to take yourself where you are and simply try to reach one of these three tiers. So One of the best things you can do is get a tracking device. Now, most of us already have this in our phones. There are health apps that will track your steps. So as long as your phone is on you, you're gonna be able to track your steps. If not, you can do what some of us do, like I have a ring that called the R ring that tracks my steps Some people like to wear Fitbits, some people have Apple Watches. There's many, many different ways that tech can help us track our steps.

Speaker 1: 33:06

Now, one of the things to do is just go through a normal day. So today or tomorrow, just go and say, if I did nothing and just lived my normal day, what would my steps be? Most of you are gonna fall into three tiers Less than 5,000 steps per day, between five and 10K steps per day, between 10 and 15 steps per day and over 15,000 steps per day. If you're under 5,000 steps per day, try to get to 5,000 steps. Make that your first tier. Do that for one to two weeks, make it a habit, get it in. Then, once you're there, you can bump yourself up to 10K steps per day. Now, if you're already greater than 10K steps per day, or between five and 10K steps per day, your next target would be 10K steps per day. If you're between 10 and 15,000 steps per day, right, you can bump it up to 15,000 steps per day, and if you're already at 15,000 steps or already at 20,000 steps, you may not need to do any more, and you may want to consider that perhaps I'm doing a little bit too much walking. So I think this really is where the sweet spot might be.

Speaker 1: 34:24

Now, we're all different. Every single one of us are individuals. Okay, the point I hope that you're hearing from me is that do not do not, please do not. I can't say this enough. Do not make this another more is better type of thing. Consistency is better. This should feel like it's doable, it is enjoyable, it is something I can do for the rest of my life and it is absolutely important and, yes, to some degree. This is non-negotiable. This is non-negotiable. I would say that if you're getting less than 5,000 steps per day for your health and for your weight loss efforts, I don't care what else you're doing. It is non-negotiable to get out and move. You are built to move and if you don't want to do that, I totally understand. No judgment at all, but then just understand this is going to be part of the reason you're not seeing results. So this is critical. Now, some of these things are optional.

Speaker 1: 38:52

Walking first thing in the morning on an empty stomach may have some benefits here. Walking after eating may have some benefits here. Walking last thing at night, as long as it doesn't overly stimulate, you may have some benefit Walking around the block office or house for five to 15 minutes every couple of hours is a good rule for some people. Now again, I'm saying for some people, because when I look at this I want you to go. Okay, jade said walk first thing in the morning. I don't like to do anything else first thing in the morning except sit, get some work done and drink my coffee. Then please do not change that.

Speaker 1: 39:30

If you already have something that you do, that you love, don't add walking into that place, because now you're substituting walking in for something you don't like. Fit it into your lifestyle where it can fit in. Just realize that you need to fit it in somewhere. So I'm just giving you some ideas for your individuality here. Walk anywhere. Green settings might be best, but if that is not an option for you, it doesn't matter. You will still get the benefits from walking back and forth in a cardboard box condo like mine, right, I can basically just walk back and forth and get my steps in. Or if you're in a house, you can walk around the house. Or you can just build in a daily regimen of I don't know vacuuming or doing something else, or picking up the phone and calling, and a lot of people ask about this. What about biking and that kind of stuff? Sure, you can do that.

Speaker 1: 40:31

Just realize, do not turn it in to exercise, okay, and what I mean by that is that, in order for this to have the benefits, it should not ever feel like exercise. Exercise gets you breathless. You do not want this to make you breathless. You want this to relax you. This is like a woo-sa effect Woo-sa right, relaxation. That's what you're really getting here.

Speaker 1: 40:57

When you finish a walk, you should not feel exhausted. You should feel relaxed and slightly energized. You should not feel like you just went and got a workout and your legs are aching and you're breathless and your heart is pounding. That is not what we're talking about. Walk normally, walk and talk. Walk the dog, walk and drink coffee. Do it anywhere and everywhere. It is critical. Now this, to me, is absolutely one really benefit of walking that you can use, and I need to set this up for you so you can understand what we're doing here. Why is walking so powerful? Well, it works with the metabolism stress software. It helps the metabolism deal with stress better. It also helps your muscles become sensitive to insulin and feed themselves better. Here's one thing to know, and you might want to write this down. Matter of fact, just write it down if you have something to write down with. And the reason why I'm telling you to write it down is just because you'll remember it more if you write it down. It's critical.

Speaker 1: 42:07

Low intensity activity like walking can be done for a very long period before it becomes stressful. Short, intense bouts of activity have to be done for short periods of time, otherwise they become stressful. So, in a very real way, walking constantly, you can do that and it's not going to overstress your metabolism. For most people, and when you're doing things like metabolic renewal or metabolic aftershock or metabolic prime or any of these short, intense workouts the whole reason they're short is because if they go any longer they can become stressful. So you always want to remember that role. The more intense something is, the shorter it has to be, otherwise it will overstress you. The less intense something is, the longer you can do it without overly stressing you. So with walking, what you want to be thinking about is doing it for longer periods of time 10,000 steps, 20,000 steps per day. With exercise, you want to be thinking about doing it for shorter, more intense periods of time, and both of those things help the body become more resilient.

Speaker 1: 43:27

Now, this study I'm going to show to you is an intense form of walking. It's really hiking, and so it's very different than everything else we talked about. However, when it is done for a very short period of time one day, two days, no longer than a long weekend it can have pretty substantial benefits. This study I'm getting ready to introduce you to is a very small study. It has not been duplicated yet, to my knowledge, but it illustrates this idea of you only want to do intense things for short periods of time.

Speaker 1: 44:03

So what they did is they took a group of men. There were no women in this study. There's no reason to suggest that this would not work the same way for women. However, they had these men do eight hours of walking, eight hours of very slow walking around the countryside. They covered about 22 miles daily. This is well over 20,000 steps. Well over 20,000 steps, perhaps double that. So some pretty intense walking. They also had these people basically eat no more than 300 calories per day. They could have as much water and electrolytes as they desired, and what they did is they measured the effect on the body. Now, this is extremely stressful. I would not suggest any of us do this. Okay, so I'm not saying go out and do this. This is more as an example of this idea of intense stuff done for a short period of time may not have the same negative consequences as intense things done for long periods of time. So this is a very intense regime eight hours of walking daily, basically with minimal calories.

Speaker 1: 45:16

What they showed is that in four days and this was done for four days and four days only, and then these men went back to their normal lifestyle In four days these men lost 11 pounds. They lost five pounds of fat in four days. Now what ended up happening is, after they went back to their regular lifestyle, they were measured again one month later and this very short period of diet and exercise, this very short, intense, extreme period of diet with walking, rather basically created an afterburn effect. So a month later they lost another three pounds of fat, despite going back to their regular life and doing nothing special. And one year later these people were still down by four pounds of fat. Almost all the fat they lost during that long weekend was maintained. The results were apparent one year later. Now this is exactly the opposite of what happens for most people that go running and do that for 12 weeks or so. Not only do they not lose weight at all most of them, as we showed but they all gain the weight back or get fatter.

Speaker 1: 46:34

And so what I am suggesting here is that you add into your regime walking daily at a very low intensity, done somewhere between 10K and 20K steps per day. If you're going to put exercise on top of that which is optional, by the way, because it's the diet that causes the weight loss walking that can amplify that weight loss and exercise that doesn't cause any extra weight loss. Exercise has a benefit of keeping muscle on the body. So you want to be thinking about diet and walking as the reducing agents and exercise as the shaping agent. So you do not want to be like oh, I'm just going to add a bunch of walking on to an already extreme exercise program.

Speaker 1: 47:26

What you want to do is like I'm going to walk first, get my diet correct and by nature of walking, that might actually help my diet get correct, and by reducing the amount of crazy exercise I'm doing, that might also help me get my diet correct, because I might not have these hunger and cravings. But then every once in a while, as an option throughout the year, I can do something very short and intense to strip off a little bit of a little bit extra body fat. And that to me is not exercise, but maybe an extreme walking regime with very low calories, done for a very short period of time. This, the lesson here, is not to tell you what to do, but to illustrate the point to you that walking in and of itself can be done for long periods of time, as long as it's low intensity. If you're going to ramp up the walking intensity with a low, very low calorie diet, or the exercise intensity with a very low calorie diet, you better do it only for short periods of time so it can work a little bit better. And so let's just go through the take-homes real quick.

Speaker 1: 48:37

One exercise does not burn calories the way that we think they do. When we consider the entire day, week, month and years, it might burn more calories during that session. But remember, weight loss is not just a calorie phenomenon, it is also a hormonal phenomenon. And when I say hormonal phenomenon, I don't mean estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, I mean insulin and cortisol and other hormones that control hunger and cravings. So what we want, if we're going to have lasting effects, is we want something that will burn the maximum amount of calories during the day, cause us to consume less calories during the week, and does not have negative metabolic compensations over the next month. That's going to be walking, walking, walking for the vast majority of humans.

Speaker 1: 49:36

This is what we want to begin to focus on. 10,000 to 20,000 steps per day is probably the sweet spot. You don't want to go from no walking to 10,000 steps a day. You want to first get to 5,000 steps per day, then get to 10,000 steps per day and then maybe, if you're not seeing the results you want, bump it up to 15,000 steps per day. This walking can be accumulated. It does not have to be all at the same time. In fact, it might be better accumulated because you're up and moving and you're not sitting all day. So you do want to think about these numbers, but you don't want to stress about the manner in which you reach those numbers. This is what we want to focus on. So I'm sure that there are questions about this, and so I will begin taking questions now, if we have time.