2812: The Most Overlooked Way to Burn Fat

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1:08Adam Schafer:With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, 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 it at mpfatloss.com. This episode is also brought to you by our sponsor, Huel. Huel is plant-based nutrition.

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2:35Adam Schafer: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.

2:45Sal Di Stefano:Every time we bring this up or talk about this on the podcast, it always reminds me of what a terrible trainer I was. It does. I have just had people. I have really, I have, you know, we all have our own little stories that we share about like when we admittedly weren't the best trainers. But I could like literally remember like scoffing at people. Totally. 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. What their exercise is. Yeah, their history, their medical history, their past history and working out what they currently do for exercise.

3:20Sal Di Stefano:And, you know, a lot of times people, I walk. That's what I do for exercise. You don't do anything.

3:26Adam Schafer:Basically, you do nothing.

3:27Sal Di Stefano:Basically, you check you off nothing. And I'm laughing tongue in cheek now. but it 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 near everybody. Almost everybody, no matter what your goal is, is actually managing their daily activity. And it makes me feel terrible because it was something that I scoffed at 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 I think even experienced lifters

4:13Justin Andrews:yes yeah 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 we just had a conversation

4:28Sal Di Stefano:on the podcast earlier the other day when we recorded an episode about us not walking and like we're setting walking goals for ourselves for real yeah and it's uh very very advanced lifters i'd say and yet uh you know need more of that in our lives so it's it's interesting how how valuable and how high i rank it today versus what i would have ranked it 25 years ago

4:52Adam Schafer:someone listening might be thinking a few things right they might be like walking it's not strenu continuous, it doesn't burn a lot of calories. Why is this like a great form of exercise or activity? Again, to be clear, all forms of exercise, if done appropriately, right? So apply it appropriately for the right person. They all have lots of value. Okay. So, so almost any form of exercise, as long as it's done appropriately, is going to bring some value, will improve your health. Depending on which one you do, you're going to get more stamina, out 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 too high on that list.

5:36And yet here we are saying that walking is this great form of activity.

5:42Adam Schafer:It's this wonderful, wonderful form of activity. So I think we should explain why we're saying that when walking isn't the best for athletic performance. It's not the best for endurance. It's not the best for building muscle. It doesn't burn the most calories. Yet I place it at the top of, uh, of lists when it comes to just general activity.

6:00Sal Di Stefano:And, uh, I put it at the top as one of the things for fat loss tool.

6:04Adam Schafer:Yes. Yes. And so here's the thing that, so let me just paint the context. We trained people for, for many, many years, for decades. Uh, we have trainers that work for us now here at mind 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, uh, 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.

6:38Adam Schafer:Um, otherwise who cares, right? If I, if I recommend a form of exercise that someone's not gonna be able to do is inconvenient, has a high risk of injury or is going to take away from, let's say, our primary form of exercise, which is typically strength training, what we recommend. It's not 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 a hundred regular people outside, just a hundred normal people without major injury, all of them can walk and they won't get hurt.

7:17Adam Schafer:I can't say that for pretty much any other form of exercise. I took a hundred normal people out there and I 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 do CrossFit every day. The risk of injury becomes really high. Walking, everybody can still walk. It's appropriate. I could apply it to anybody. It's low skill. I could tell my aunt to walk. I could tell a bodybuilder to walk. I could tell an athlete 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 form of activity that I could recommend to anybody.

7:56Sal Di Stefano:Well, and in the context of what you're talking about with starting a client and training them, it's one of the easiest things that you can build, like what you can give to them and consider them continuing that forever. Yes. Right? Like even the best, most intense program that burns the most body fat, 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 around walking more frequently throughout someone's day? And at what percent or how likely can I keep them doing that forever? Much higher than any other modality.

8:36Adam Schafer:It is, and I'll 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 past podcasts, past episodes, your better bet is to try to speed up the 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 than trying to burn it manually. But does that mean there isn't any value to increased activity? No, there's tons of value to increased activity. You have improved insulin sensitivity, which means you're not going to get these big spikes and drops in blood sugar.

9:10Adam Schafer:That affects lots of different behaviors. It affects cravings and 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 this 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, slept, is well-fed, who can get after it. What form of exercise is going to benefit both of them? Walking.

9:43Justin Andrews:Yeah. Well, and two, like in settings, if you're in a work setting where you're sedentary a lot, there's not a lot of exercise. You could 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 like spike your mood, spike your energy, get things moving. and that has a cascading effect back into the training and the nutrition.

10:12Sal Di Stefano: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 I meet you, I can feel confident that telling you to walk X amount of steps or minutes in a day every day is fine for everybody without with knowing very little information yes i don't know if uh you know three days of full body routines is going to be too much for you right now i don't know if you can handle uh running for a half hour or like i don't know any i don't know if you could handle uh some hit sprints uh post or pre-workout or once a week like we're i'm figuring that out so as a trainer when you when you first get somebody started this is why the the irony of how we started this conversation is that this is the first place I start everybody 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.

11:18Sal Di Stefano:And so right out the gates, I know we can start doing this thing.

11:21Adam Schafer:But I really like it because it's recuperative. 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.

11:34Sal Di Stefano: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 when 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 hard as possible. Lay down. Don't move. Don't burn another calorie. Don't burn more calories. Let all, let all that would build the most muscle. That'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.

12:11Sal Di Stefano:It would facilitate that recovery faster than just laying there still.

12:16Adam Schafer: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 other activity can I add to that? That's not going to take away from the adaptation, the recovery that I need for the strength training. Walking. Walking. Now, if I took that same person, let's say we're doing three days a week full body strength training, and I'm having them do an additional two or three days of HIIT cardio. Well, it's going to take away.

12:47Adam Schafer:I'm going to have to really scale down the intensity and volume of the strength training oftentimes so that they have some of that ability, the recovery that they can use for the HIIT 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.

13:04Sal Di Stefano:Also, when you start talking about HIIT and more volume of training, intensity, other things like that, you also have to consider calorie deficit for surplus. If they're in a deficit, having them walk more is going to lean them out. Their body will tap into fat. Their body will utilize fat to fuel them through that process.

13:22Adam Schafer:You don't really pare muscle down with walking. No. You'd have to do a lot of walking.

13:24Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, the amount that someone would have to do and the deficit.

13:27Adam Schafer:You'd have to walk like 40 ,000 steps. Right.

13:29Sal Di Stefano: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 what's going to happen, they're going to just lean out from that. They're just going to lose. Muscle preserving. Yeah, it's very muscle preserving. Versus if that person who's in maybe extreme calorie deficit and training, and then I also stack high intensity cardio on top of that, I sacrifice their body potentially paring down muscle. That's right.

14:01Sal Di Stefano:Or that's way less likely to happen with walking.

14:04Adam Schafer:Here's one of my favorite things with walking. It's very easily stacked with other habits. So one of the obvious ones is you could put on some headphones, take a stroll, 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 till 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 it's not even about the walk.

14:39Adam Schafer: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 I go hang out with my wife. Take the kids with us.

14:52Justin Andrews:Yeah, start out with the wife, and then it's like, okay, let's bring the kids. Okay, let's bring the dogs. and it was just like this whole thing. But again, everybody comes back in a better mood and then a lot of this stuff, I feel like it's like unresolved energy. It gets expressed.

15:08Sal Di Stefano: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 you gotta go. Intentionally go to the grocery store instead of maybe Instacarting 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 uh you know five ten minutes here there in all these things that you do every single day on a regular basis that increases this