Do This One Exercise to Burn Fat, Improve Hormones, & Live Longer

0:00You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson Stevenson. For more, visit themodelhealthshow.com.

0:11You're about to hear from multiple experts on how this one form of exercise can help you to burn more fat, improve your hormone function, and help you to live longer. And I'm going to kick things off for you by sharing the remarkable impact that this form of exercise can have on fat loss. A recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan uncovered some profound results. The study, titled Effects of Walking Speed on Total and Regional Body Fat in Healthy Postmenopausal Women, placed women into different walking speed groups to see how it affected fat loss. Essentially, they either placed them into a slow to moderate paced walking group or a fast paced walking group.

0:59after compiling the data from this 30-week study, here's what they found. The researcher stated, quote, total body fat is lost through walking at all speeds, but the change is more rapid, clear, and essentially greater with slow walking in overweight subjects, unquote. We're not talking about mere calorie expenditure. We're talking about where your body is choosing to pull that energy from. And a greater percentage of actual body fat is used for fuel when you're walking at casual to moderate speeds. Now, the crazy thing is that this has been known for decades. As a matter of fact, a study published in 2001 titled The Effects of Increasing Exercise Intensity on Muscle Fuel Utilization in Humans was cited in the Journal of Physiology.

1:56The study found that whole body fat oxidation increases with progressive low intensity exercise, but diminishes as the intensity reaches a threshold where the body uses more stored fuel from the muscles. So again, as exercise gets more and more intense, our bodies shift gears. It shifts its fuel source from fat oxidation, from using stored body fat to using stored glycogen from the muscles and also the liver. Our body is a hybrid. It's got all these incredible channels to utilize energy from to fuel certain processes. Now, this does not mean that you burn more calories just by walking, nor does it mean that you don't burn any body fat as a result of doing intense exercise.

2:48This just means that low intensity exercise, specifically walking, uses more body fat right there on the spot. Our body chooses to use stored body fat for fuel when we're walking at slow to moderate intensity. It's during low intensity exercise, like walking, that our bodies primarily utilize aerobic metabolism. All right. Now this means that our body is able to use oxygen to convert fat into energy. However, as the intensity of exercise rises, the environment to utilize oxygen becomes more and more suppressed. And so we shift over to anaerobic metabolism. And so as there are higher amounts of stress, other energy sources are forced to be utilized.

3:43And again, anaerobic metabolism doesn't require oxygen in order to fuel these processes. And so our bodies can start grabbing stored glycogen from our muscles and liver to fuel the exercise that we're doing. Now, this is not about good, bad, better, best, whatever the case might be. All forms of exercise have some value. But if we're talking about expressly, on the spot, starting the process of our bodies using fat for fuel, there is nothing better than going for a nice walk. Now we're about to dive deeper into this super human form of exercise. And I'm saying that intentionally. It is super human.

4:25This is the form of exercise that is expressly, uniquely for us as human beings. It is our superpower. We're pretty much the only creatures, especially in the mammal kingdom that are out here walking around on two legs. Now, of course, bipedal, some bears can get up on there, you know, some orangutans that can hop up on the two feet from time to time, but we live like this. All right. Of course, you might be like, well, what are they? We have birds. We got birds out here hopping and skipping around on on the two feet but they got wings all right we got some marsupials out here we got we got the kangaroos okay they're hopping around different all right humans are unique in how we walk around we're bipedal so this exercise is a superhuman form of exercise and that's why we're going to dive deeper into this powerful form of exercise to understand why it's so effective for human health, ranging from fat loss efficiency to longevity.

5:30And you're also going to learn the best practices to employ. And first up, you're going to hear from New York Times bestselling authors, Dr. Kelly Starrett, who's a doctor of physical therapy, one of the greatest teachers in the world in physical therapy, and his incredible partner and wife and co-author in multiple New York Times bestselling books, Juliette Starrett, who's a superstar, former professional athlete and coach. So prepare to have your mind blown and to have more powerful and empowering reasons to make sure that you're getting your walk on each and every day. In this segment with Juliet and Kelly Starrett, you're going to discover where the concept of walking 10 ,000 steps a day actually comes from.

6:22And this was not based on science at first. You're also going to learn why these two experts in physical therapy prescribe walking to accelerate recovery from pain and injuries. You'll learn how walking actually helps us to build up something called sleep pressure to help you to sleep better at night. You'll learn how walking a specific way can quickly create positive neuroplastic changes in the brain and more. Enjoy this first segment from the amazing Juliet and Dr. Kelly Starrett. We've now become obsessed with walking for a variety of reasons. I mean, you hit on it a little bit there are a you know I will go back and say that the 10 ,000 steps concept was invented by a Japanese pedometer company in the 60s and 10 dollars is an auspicious number in Japan maybe last 10 ,000 years when you shout bonsai that's 10 ,000 years when you let so you can see why that marketing worked really well because we were capturing this magical number but what's happened since then though is there has been a ton of research that has filled that in and shown that basically the more steps you take a day, the longer you will live and the fewer chronic illnesses you will suffer.

7:41That means I just always need to max out my steps or is there a minimum? You know, the minimum we say is 8 ,000. The reason we say that is that the average American gets about 3 ,000 steps. And we've also read that it's actually possible for people to get up to 8 ,000 steps. Anything above 8 ,000 is like gold. That's great. Like if you have a life that allows you to be able to walk 16 ,000 steps a day, like more power to you that's that's definitely going to help your longevity um but you know there's so many other things about walking that are so awesome um you know we talked a little bit about the lymphatic system and about how walking is the perfect way to recover from workouts and you know it's the first thing that we suggest people do who come to us who come to us with low back pain or post-surgical because you know the the best thing you can do post-surgery is just to walk and just keep everything you know get the garbage out of your body but there's all these other sort of like fluffier things about walking that we like so much I mean we talked about this earlier everybody's talking about it online but you need to get a little bit sunlight on your body sometimes you need to get a little direct sun um one of the best ways to do that is model health show says the model the model health show says you need to get some sun on your body so you you know it has a side benefit if you get some sun on your body it can also be really social because because what we learned in the pandemic is how lonely people are and how depressed and kids aren't doing well from a mental health standpoint.

9:03People are feeling, even though we're more and more connected online, people are feeling more and more disconnected. And so walking is the perfect way to just have simple connection with people. And so it's just this like moment. You can be like this, what's up? I hate that guy. He's my neighbor, what's up? I now live in a community. And we're fine, you know, we're fine if you treadmill walk. Like if it's, you know, if you live in Buffalo, New York you need to walk on a treadmill in the winter that's totally fine walk in the mall walk in the mall exactly i mean you know there's a lot of empty malls out there you can walk in it doesn't matter even if it's just walking around the block i mean one of the things i've done is i've figured out like five places in my neighborhood that are little routes that are just leaving from my front door walking around the neighborhood and it's like i know from my house to the end of the block it's 1750 steps if i go from my house down this little mini loop it's 3 000 steps and so you know if if If I just need to fit in some walking, I've sort of set it up for myself.

9:53And you know, you get your hip into extension. Speaking of Kelly's obsession with hip extension, it's good for the soul. It's good for the community. Check this out. We were working with an elite military force, an army called Delta. And when they have a lot of disordered sleep, and they do, one of the things that they started prescribing for all of their soldiers, warfighters, was walking. Walking. So you have all the technology in the world available to you and the thing that's handed out is walking 12 to 15 ,000 steps a day. So if you're listening to this, hear this. If you have a hard time falling asleep or sleeping, one of the ways that we would help you with that is say, hey, let's see if we get you to move more in the day to accumulate enough non-exercise activity that you actually have sleep stress.

10:41So that it's actually called sleep pressure. So that you actually want to go to sleep. you actually have to move more in order to be fatigued enough. And if you're been on deadlines and you're sitting and you're in board meetings, you can't move and you're on Zoom and you have a hard time falling asleep, one of the reasons is you didn't move. So as Juliet says, it's one of these things that makes a huge, huge difference on so many levels. And for us, again, we're like sort of obsessed with performance. And one of the things we notice when we give this book to our athlete friends, like world champion friends are like, wow, I don't walk enough.

11:18And when I started walking, my knees felt better. I recovered from my workouts more effectively. Zone two, we also found that the walking is a perfect time to do all these crazy breath drills. You can do all the eye movement tracking stuff you want. You could just call checking out your neighbors, right? Where you just, your eyes track, you can look far, you can look close. You can start doing breath holds. There are so many ways where you can turn that thing up and make it interesting. Plus, we have so many friends who are like, I'm not running. Over my dead body, I'm not ever running. We're like, great.

11:49Have you met the backpack that weighs 10 pounds? And suddenly you have a really meaningful way to load your spine and load your tissues. It's called rucking. Welcome to walking. It is the future. Well, I think one of the things we have done a good job of in the health and fitness business is tell people they should exercise. And they are. they're spending trillions of dollars on gym memberships and apps and you know you name it and and but that's not working like the data has out like we you know people really didn't go to the gym that much until starting in the early 90s like it just gym culture wasn't a thing and we've all been now going to the gym and following the rule that we should exercise for x amount of time a day and x amount of time per week and what we see is that obesity rates are rising and diabetes rates are rising and you know it's not that alone isn't working so we of course are gigantic fans of exercise like we're exercisers we love exercise but what we see is that people aren't getting enough total movement in their day and it has all these unintended downstream consequences your body doesn't feel as good you can't move as freely you potentially don't sleep as well and and you know there are lots of other ways to get non-exercise activity like that could be gardening there's lots of ways to keep moving more besides just walking.

13:02But what we found is that's the simple and most accessible way for people to just add in more movement in their day. Yeah. One of the things I say is that, you know, can we squat with 500 pounds on our back? Yeah, it's, it's a thing we can do. Are we designed to do it per se? And you know, to do in this kind of repetitive fashion, there's so many cool things that we can do and we get great benefit from them. The thing that we're designed to do our genes expect us to walk like it's a it's an essential movement input that i believe and you guys know this it activates so many beneficial things in our bodies and i want to share a direct quote from the book which i love this book by the way the quote is walking puts your hips into extension lengthens the tissues that are shortened by sitting by the way and puts the body back into biomechanical balance.

13:54It's medicine. Walking is medicine. And you're just really like bringing it right in our faces. Like if you want to feel good, if you want to get your body in sync, get these steps and walk. It's something so nourishing about it. We're hearing a lot these days about this phenomenon called neuroplasticity. People are starting to get into the neurobiology. We used to think that the brain couldn't rewire itself. And now we're like, oh my gosh, the brain rewires itself and continues to grow and learn and rewire itself through your whole lifespan. That's pretty amazing. That's changed in the last 20 years.

14:28One of the easiest ways to rewire your brain and create the opportunities to rewire your brain is through walking fast. So as soon as you just walk a little bit faster than a normal kind of gait, your brain starts to be like, why is this person walking fast? I should pay attention. What's going on here? So if you're trying to change some aspect, it creates this window of opportunity where you You might be able to rewire pain pathways or you might be able to remember neurons that fire together wire together or neurons that fire apart wire apart. So if I'm trying to change a behavior, if I create an opportunity where my brain is more likely to do that, I'm down with that.

15:04What does that look like? Walking fast. That's pretty radical. That's a radical idea. I love this book called Spark by a guy named John Rady and he says exercise and walking is like miracle grow for the brain. and you know if we all look forward into sort of how we want our old age to be we want two things we want to be able to move our body and we want to be able to use our minds we want to stay mentally acute you know and so walking and exercise is just you know insurance it's just an insurance policy for being able to you know hopefully be able to move our bodies and use our minds all right i hope that you enjoyed that first segment next up is somebody who's had a profound impact on my life and on my thinking.

15:45He is ranked number one in the world, Masters 400 meter sprinter. He's ranked number two in Masters level high jump. All right, so we're talking 60 and above. He's really in a league of his own. This is coming from somebody who was a former world-class top-ranked triathlete and he had this incredible evolution in his thinking, in his performance, and in his body by changing the way that he was training. And now he is so full-on focused on the power of walking, the power of occasional explosive movements, sprinting, and of course, utilizing some heavy weights as well. But in this segment specifically, he's gonna be sharing why walking literally creates the foundation for aerobic fitness and performance.

16:36You're gonna learn how walking builds the resilience to do complex, high-effort exercise and activities, and reduces the risk of injuries. You're going to discover why we need to put some respect on Walken's name today. I'm talking about the one and only New York Times bestselling author, Brad Kearns. Enjoy this next segment. It's the baseline aerobic conditioning for life and for all athletic and fitness and active lifestyle pursuits is we need to have that foundation. and the aerobic foundation is built at low heart rates, period. Ain't none of you can argue that. I don't care if you like to go faster and like to get a better workout and get more endorphin rush.

17:22The aerobic system is built at the fat burning heart rates where you have enough oxygen to stimulate mitochondrial production and improve your fat burning capabilities. So without that foundation, you really can't do anything of note without getting winded and exhausted. So that's the weekend warrior going and playing on the basketball team and they're good for like two minutes and 12 seconds. And then they raise their hand to get subbed out. Good for them. They're trying. But if they walked more and built up that just easy foundation where the effort feels easy, not strenuous, that's when you kind of elevate the platform from which you launch all other fitness endeavors, including my sprinting and jumping and things that would be very difficult to just come out of the office at five o 'clock and head over and start slamming.

18:08And it doesn't work unless you have that foundation of active lifestyle. That's why people are getting injured so frequently when they're playing pickleball, which is not terribly strenuous, but it's the hot sport of the age right now. But they're walking right out of the office onto the court, taking one false step, and there goes the meniscus or what have you. So I think that's the first fitness objective for everybody is to raise that platform of general daily activity. and by the way when you do that you negate all the health consequences that are related to sitting sitting is the new smoking that whole body of research and it doesn't take this huge commitment or this huge lifestyle change because a two-minute walk if we want to take a break now with our crew too we could take a two-minute walk come back everyone would be fine hey we're back at the model house show we just walked up a few flights of stairs in fact i sprinted from four seven to 11.

19:01It was pretty fun. You know, that stuff is within reach of everyone. But we, for some reason, don't do it because we're too slammed. We're too busy. We can't get away from our screen. We have brain research from Stanford University showing that after 20 minutes, we can't maintain peak cognitive focus anyway. So our brains will take a break for us unless we take one. And a physical break would be the best, right? If I don't take my physical breaks, I tend over to YouTube watching high jump videos instead of working on my important presentation. So there's no excuse not to get up and walk for a minute or two here, two to five minutes here, maybe a nice centerpiece, like you get home from work and you walk for 20, 30 minutes with the dog around the block.

19:44And these things have a major contribution to fitness. It's just, we're not respecting it or appreciate it enough. And then as you talked about in the middle ground, that running down the street, man, where you're huffing and puffing has a lot of adverse consequences, including the metabolic and the appetite hormones and things like that. So just moving more without the strain and then putting in the icing on the cake is that high intensity stuff. And even that is not going to exhaust and deplete you and wear you out because I only want you going for brief bursts. That's when you really are powerful and explosive.

20:19It's not about going, you know, some of the spinning classes are organized in a manner that's a little disturbing for me because it's like, all right class we're going to pretend we're in the tour de france and we're going to sprint for a minute 10 times and a minute break and that's an interval session it has wonderful fitness stimulation benefits but not if you're not super fit to begin with and you're just getting on that bike after eight hours of sitting on your butt sitting on your butt in another chair now you're on the bike seat and you're asked to slam it really hard that can easily lead to overdoing it.

20:51So we want to have this notion of moving more in a comfortable pace and then hitting it hard once in a while. All right. I hope that you enjoyed that segment with the incredible New York Times bestselling author, Brad Kearns. Now, Brad truly is an icon in health and fitness, and he's got decades of experience. And he's one of those people that truly provides a model for what's possible. And so I love learning from individuals like him and also spending time. Brad is from the Valley here where I moved to a few years ago. And so he's been able to put me on game in the area and direct me to some different places related to health and fitness.

21:34And so I've been able to hang out with Brad and he's really about that life. He's showing up in his track suit. We're just walking down the street and he's doing high knees and whatnot, just out the blue and he's this man's over 60 and his level of fitness and his energy is just unbelievable it is so remarkable and it's a testament to his practices and to what he's implementing and again one of those primary things is the power of walking and walking he's the one who put me on to paluvas like in a major way of course it was introduced initially by mark sisson who is the creator of this incredible brand, but Brad is the one who really got me with the science and got me to really consider putting on these strange looking shoes with the five digits, right?

22:24And there were some iterations that were earlier on prior to Paluva coming online, but Paluva really has dominated in the space of athletics because it has that cushioning for really doing a lot of different stuff. Whereas a lot of people kind of got to spend time and get acclimated to utilizing more minimal issues, zero drop, the five digits, all that kind of stuff. And so it gives us a faster on-ramp to rehabilitating our feet. Our feet have 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles, 107 ligaments per foot. And each foot has over 200 ,000 nerve endings. And all of that is there for collecting data to determine our movement.

23:14And our modern shoes essentially mute or disrupt thousands of data signals that would normally be transmitted from our feet and feed it throughout the rest of our body to modulate appropriate movement. And the results of this, well, we have epidemics of foot dysfunction, foot and ankle injuries, knee injuries, hip injuries, and more that can be rooted back to modern footwear. Now, let me be clear. This does not mean that we don't utilize and enjoy putting on our various foot fashion that we enjoy. But today, more than ever, we need to have that prehab and rehab for our feet because it is literally the foundation of our movement.

23:58And this is why I love my Paluvos. And right now you can get 15 % off of your Paluvas when you go to Paluva.com forward slash model. All right, that's P-E-L-U-V-A.com forward slash model. But make sure to use the code model at checkout for 15 % off. I'm happy to say that we are a Paluva family. My wife loves her Paluvas. I'm rocking the Paluvas all the time. is probably what you're going to see me. If you catch me out walking, I'm going to have my Paloovas on. And it is definitely translated to more efficient and effective movement. Just feeling better overall. It really is remarkable how nourishing and again, rehab and prehab that we do with our feet can translate to so much better health and functionality.

24:52Again, go to paloova.com forward slash model. Use the code model at checkout for 15 % off. And next up in this very powerful compilation, on the power of walking and overall human health. In this segment, you're going to discover how a tiny bit of walking each day can add years to your life. You're gonna be shocked at how small that amount is. You're also gonna discover how walking can dramatically improve your insulin sensitivity. And of course, that helps with fat loss. You're gonna learn the shocking impact that walking has on protecting your brain and dementia prevention and more. Enjoy this next segment from the author of multiple USA Today national bestsellers and the international bestselling book Sleep Smarter.

25:39He's the host of the Model Health Show. You know him. You love him. The next segment is from me to you. Enjoy. Longevity. Daily walking substantially decreases all cause mortality. It reduces the risk of death from everything. All right. According to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, it's public library of science medicine, walking for just 11 minutes a day is enough to extend your lifespan by two years. You get two more years of life if you proactively walk for 11 minutes a day. That's a pretty sweet deal. Meanwhile, research from scientists at Sarland University determined that just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years.

26:29Seven more years of life. The researchers found that by measuring the increases of telomerase activity. So telomerase is an enzyme that the discovery of this enzyme was awarded the Nobel Prize. by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and her co-author in The Telomere Effect, the best-selling book on the subject, Dr. Alyssa Eppel is a good friend and friend of the show who's been on several times. And this enzyme has been found to essentially add length back onto our telomeres. And our telomeres are one of the best biological markers that we have distinguishing or determining how long we're going to live and or live healthfully.

27:12So this enzyme, again, has been found to essentially add length back onto our telomeres, dramatically slowing down the aging process and dare I say reversing it. All right. So in this study, the researchers found that by measuring the increases of telomerase activity and the decrease in senesis marker P16, both of these are markers for cellular aging in the blood, over a six month period, doctors were able to show that regular walking triggers the anti-aging process. Now, we've got this on the surface. Cool. We're increasing our longevity, triggering this anti-aging process. But what are some of the mechanisms behind this increase in longevity from walking?

27:58Well, a meta-analysis of two studies conducted by Harvard School of Public Health that included over 73 ,000 people found that briskly walking for half an hour a day reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 30 percent. All right so we're seeing this shift over in our metabolic health improving insulin sensitivity and again reducing the risk for type 2 diabetes which is one of the fastest growing epidemics in our society today. Over Over 130 million Americans are now type 2 diabetic or pre-diabetic. And this is known as an accelerated aging disease. That's one of the hallmarks of diabetes that isn't talked about.

28:45It's accelerating the aging process in a myriad of ways. From the breakdown of our blood vessels, our cardiovascular system, the breakdown of our skin, the breakdown of blood flow to our limbs, our vision. The list goes on and on on the ramifications, the breakdown of our other organs, liver failure, kidney failure. And so to put an overarching kind of umbrella over what is diabetes at its core, it's an accelerated aging condition. Now numerous studies have also found that walking is remarkably effective at burning away visceral fat aka belly fat while also helping to retain our valuable muscle tissue.

29:30That's a killer combo right there. That's the combination that we want. Now this sounds a lot like something that testosterone would do. So the question is does walking notably increase our testosterone? Well, first and foremost, we have to finally drop this dichotomous belief that testosterone is a male hormone. This is part of the problem because testosterone is actually, and this is a scientifically validated fact, testosterone is the most abundant hormone in both sexes. Testosterone is actually the most abundant biologically active female hormone as well. And this information is detailed in a 2013 study titled Testosterone Therapy in Women, Myths and Misconceptions.

30:21Yes, men have higher ratios of testosterone, but testosterone is critically important to women's health as well. So this dichotomous thinking about testosterone diminishes our value and appreciation of this hormone for all of us. so i want to share just a few of the important things that testosterone is responsible for it's responsible for production of our blood cells all right the river of life it's kind of important testosterone is critical in that for everybody it's also critical for body fat distribution and utilization it's critical for bone density muscle growth and strength we know that one.

31:09That's the kind of Captain Obvious one. But what about bone density? Again, we don't really think about that. It's critical for sex drive for both sexes. It's critical for human fertility, for breast health in women, for sperm production in men, for mental health. It's generally protective against depression, anxiety, and lack of motivation in both sexes. So now that we've gotten the dichotomous view of testosterone out of the way, please address that in your own psychology to stop putting this kind of black or white view of testosterone is important for everyone. Now let's look at where does walking tie in with this and this longevity benefit and why it needs to be part of our daily habits.