Are you trying to lose weight or maintain your current weight? Experts say that something as simple as adding extra steps to your daily routine could help without disrupting your life.
“We’ve been asking people to make big changes,” says James O. Hill, Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. “People can’t do that. Big changes don’t fit their lifestyle.”
One possible solution is a step-counting program. Using a pedometer, log your steps all day for three days, calculate your average, and then work to increase the number of steps. It doesn’t take much-many people walk 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day without even trying. If you can increase the number of steps you take every day in small increments, before too long you’ll be walking 10,000 steps a day, which is considered the optimum figure for managing your weight, according to Shape Up America, an organization founded by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
According to Shellie Pfohl, executive director of Be Active North Carolina, “Where we are as America right now is on the couch.” Taking these few extra steps can help people lose weight, even if they don’t break a sweat, because “in comparison to what they’ve been doing in the past, it quite possibly can create a caloric deficit-as long as they don’t increase their eating,” said Richard Cotton, spokesman for the American Council on Exercise.