When it comes to walking and its relationship to fat loss, we’re all looking for a quick and easy answer to one particular million dollar question:
Exactly how much should I be walking to lose fat and get lean?
To be honest with you, I’ve found that one of the biggest problems with trying to put out information regarding body recomposition in general is that individuality almost always gets lost in favor of one conservative (yet heavily nuanced) take-home point for the masses.
Walking is no different, but let me do my best.
What’s the magic amount of walking we need to get summer shredded?
As much as I hate to tell you this, there is no specific amount of walking we could prescribe to any given person if the goal is to leverage walking as a tool for fat loss.
Sorry, folks. I know that would be much easier than wading through another duly nuanced write-up about the inner-workings of body recomposition, but that's just not how it works for one simple reason: Every single person embodies a uniquely different combination of lifestyle factors that affects their body’s immediate “walking requirement” for fat loss.
In my experience, those lifestyle factors include your caloric intake, your daily activity levels, whether or not you resistance train (and how much if you do), and the current state of your metabolism, but what all of this really comes down to is getting yourself into a caloric deficit.
And because of that, there is no “one size fits all” recommendation unless you want to be a moron and recommend we all do two hours on the treadmill everyday (and even that might not “work” if you’re not monitoring your caloric consumption).
Let’s take a few examples.
I’m personally losing fat on 13K steps a day at the moment, but I have a client losing on 10K and another on 8K. So, what gives?
Again, when it comes to walking, the amount you need for fat loss is simply “whatever it takes” given the remaining context of your life.
Therefore, what it takes for me might not be what it takes for you or anyone else for that matter.
So, if you’re not losing body fat living the lifestyle you’re currently living, the answer to how much you need to be walking is just “more.”
But, how much more?
Practically speaking, I would recommend walking sustainably more.
In other words, don’t get overeager and say, “Alright, I’m going to walk 20K steps a day until the fat is gone.” It’s unlikely you’d be able to stick to that for more than a day or two. In fact, you’d probably get to 16K the first day and then fall off the wagon all to have gained nothing but discouragement and frustration when you could have made a more conservation and long-term move in the first place.
Instead, it’s probably a better idea to increase your daily step count average by 1,000 steps per day as a starting point.
How i coach my clients toward walking more
This is how I usually guide my clients in their first weeks with me.
For the first two weeks, I will tell them to live life normally and track steps accordingly.
This is helpful because it gives us a baseline. Just as an example, let’s say they track their steps without altering their behavior for 14 days to reveal that they average around 5,389 steps per day.
As simple as this sounds, I’ll most often just prescribe a new weekly average of 6,000+ with the caveat that I don’t want them exceeding that on purpose.
You might be wondering why, and I would be happy to explain.
One huge problem that I see time and time again in the body recomposition space is that people will fail to get more out of less. If I had to give it a name, I might call it the “Go Hard or Go Home Fallacy.”
It’s the idea that you must be doing as much as humanly possible in order to get the desired results. And, as the name suggests, it’s a fallacy.
In other words, I would rather see my clients sustainably walk more and more in a progressive fashion until it’s no longer suitable for their lifestyle rather than jump straight to something unnecessarily aggressive.
This way we’re able to accumulate weeks and weeks of increased walking habits, which inevitably leads to fat loss when paired strategically with the right amount of calorie consumption and other lifestyle factors.
An ideal progression might look like this:
Week 1: 6,000 steps on average
Week 2: 7,000 steps on average
Week 3: 8,000 steps on average
Week 4, 9,000 steps on average
Week 5: 10,000 steps on average
Week 6: Just live life normally as a deload.
How to Walk Sustainably More
If you’re up for tracking your steps with a Fitbit or even your iPhone like I do, this is super easy.
Using that ideal progression I mentioned above, consider the following:
Assuming you keep all other lifestyle factors steady from the prior week (most importantly your caloric intake), you’ll know if that each daily step average is sufficient for fat loss if you see a slight dip in your morning weigh-ins.
But the trick here is consistency and control of data collection.
So, let me be clear when I say this: You cannot look to a step goal to be your fat loss saving grace if you are being willy nilly with your caloric intake.
This is why I cannot recommend tracking both your caloric intake and your daily step count consistently if you are serious about achieving predictable fat loss results.
But, if you’re not up for tracking your steps, you’ll probably have to create structure in a different way. For example, you could say, “I’ll walk for 20 extra minutes each day over my lunch break.”
Now, that sounds like a lovely behavior for the broader category of overall physical well-being, but the problem with this way of going about things is that you’re still a bit subject to “seeing what happens” because you still don’t really have any hard data on your current energy balance (calories in versus calories out).
Plus, we’re talking about getting leaner here - not just being a bit more active because your doctor said so.
Those are two very different things.
If you walk for 20 extra minutes a day over lunch but you’re otherwise lazier throughout the day, then you haven’t netted any extra calories out to ignite the fat loss you’re after.
Or, on an ever more realistic level, if you walk for 20 extra minutes but you went to a social gathering and had some pizza, two glasses of wine, and split an ice cream brownie with your friend, you’ve probably way overcompensated for the few extra calories you burned over lunch with the calories you consumed while socializing.
Does that make sense?
At the end of the day, leveraging walking for fat loss outcomes is all about math.
In Summary
So, let me wrap this all up as concisely as I can.
Before you even think about implementing walking as a fat loss strategy, make sure to get your calories and protein in check first. You can absolutely start walking more for general health, but there’s no guarantee of fat loss until all of the variables are accounted for.
We didn’t touch on this much in the article, but resistance training is what gives most people that hard, lean look a lot of us are longing for deep down. But you don’t have to train with weights to lose body fat, it just tends to improve your body composition outcomes when matched with a proper diet plan.
Once your calories, protein, and training are in order, pick a daily step goal and stick to it using a Fitbit or even just an iPhone you can carry in your pocket all day. Remember, consistency is key.
Monitor your bodyweight a few times a week if possible and take note of any downward trends. If you’re losing scale weight, chances are you’re losing body fat due to your self-imposed caloric deficit. If not, you’ll either need to lower your calories or increase your steps.
If you choose to increase your steps, do so in a sustainable manner. Think 1,000 step increases in daily averages across a week of time.
And that’s the gist of it.
Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.
If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!
And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.
Cheers, everyone!
-Andrew
