Ya’ll, I Lost Weight Walking In Place…Here’s What You’ll Need To Do It Too!
Last Updated on 12/31/2023 by Nicky
I Lost Weight Walking In Place…Here’s What You Need To Get Started!
Honestly, it happened almost as if by magic.
I lost weight by walking in place…meaning at my home!
I lost 50 pounds to be exact and it’s partially due to my walking regimen and it was almost painless.
So if you’re wondering can you lose weight by walking in the comfort of your own home, the answer is a resounding yes.
Those of you with a love-hate relationship with hardcore cardio sessions can rejoice!
But of course, we are going to go more in-depth than this.
We’re going to talk about:
-if you can lose belly fat from walking
-what specific walking plan I used
-tools you need to get started (including a free walking journal printable!)
-how much you might want to walk to lose weight
and more.
And go ahead and click here to download a free walking tracker available in my shop so you can start your walking weight loss journey right away!
Free Printable Walking Tracker. Click Here To Download!
Oh yeah, and this post contains affiliate links to great products that will help you in your health journey. I will get a commission if you decide to buy from these links but I’m only recommending products that I feel confident about and from companies that I trust like Amazon and others. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Want to read Lose Weight Walking At Home later? Click here to save it to one of your Pinterest boards!
– Preview Of What You Need To Begin Your Walk At Home Journey
I want to start by giving you just a quick preview of some of my most essential walk-at-home tools so you know right off the bat what I recommend you start with. Later on in the post, I will go into detail about each tool! Start in order of importance:
1) Walk At Home DVD: Besides prayer and changing my diet, the Leslie Sansone 5 Mile Fat Burning Walk At Home DVD is what helped me lose 50 pounds! I love this DVD so much and I suggest it to people all the time!
And honestly, I didn’t even change my eating habits all that much. I ate less but I didn’t eliminate any foods from my diet and I still lost weight!
Click here to see the other weight loss results from the 5 Mile Walk At Home DVD on Amazon!
2) Fitbit: I use my Fitbit to track not just my workouts but also my activity level throughout the day. And boy can I tell a difference in my weight when I don’t get at least 7,000 steps a day. The weight creeps on very fast when you stop moving.
But with a Fitbit, you can quickly measure how much you move and get back on the right path. The Fitbit Alta is the one I use and recommend.
3) Fitness Journal: I also suggest tracking your weight, steps, measurements, and other health metrics using a fitness or walking journal.
I have a digital fitness journal in my shop that you can click here to check out!
– The Very Of Basics Of Weight Loss (AKA The Boring Stuff)
So before we talk about walking for weight loss let’s talk about weight loss in general.
I could get super nerdy and talk about how we actually don’t burn fat.
Instead, we actually exhale fat and lose weight that way.
But I won’t be that geeky.
I’ll just talk about losing weight the normal way we think about it.
One pound of fat is roughly equal to 3,500 calories.
– In order to lose weight, you need to do one (or more) of the following
- Eat fewer calories
- Get more physical activity
And it’s not just that we need to eat less and/or move more.
We have to “burn” more calories than we take in (i.e) eat (Source).
This concept will come into play for the rest of this post so just file this away to the back of your mind.
– I Lost Weight Walking At Home…But Can You?
Given what we just discussed then the answer to this question is a resounding yes!
You can lose weight just by walking even at home AND even just marching in place!
However, there are some caveats and some quid pro quos (I think I’m using that phrase right lol).
If you’re asking “can you lose weight just by walking without any changes to your diet” then the answer is still yes…
But you’d have to walk a ton.
I mean like a lot. Miles and miles and miles.
I talk about being able to lose weight by walking without changing your diet in this blog post: Can You Lose Weight By Walking An Hour A Day? These 35+ Jaw-Dropping Before & Afters Say Yes
However, if the question is can I lose weight by walking in place and changing my diet then yes fo’ sure.
As I mentioned earlier, I lost 50 pounds by changing my eating and walking with this DVD so I know for sure it’s possible. I’ll give you more details on this Walk At Home DVD soon!
I’ll also talk about what walking plan I was on and some tools you can use to help in your weight loss journey like the Fitbit Alta that I use and walking journals.
– Can I Lose Belly Fat By Walking In Place?
So when you lose weight, you can’t just spot reduce certain areas.
Or at least that’s what I’ve heard.
But seriously y’all.
When I purposely set out to work a certain part of my body, like my stomach, I feel as if I can reduce that particular “spot” through strength training.
In regards to reducing your stomach or belly fat rather through walking, this is how it has worked in my personal experience…
All of my “spots” were reduced including my belly fat. It was an all-over kind of weight loss.
Plus think about the movement when you walk.
Your ab muscles are engaged when you walk especially when you walk as a form of exercise.
Want to know what motion really helps target belly fat?
Knee raises.
Knee raises work especially well when you are walking in place, which you can of course do anywhere…well maybe not on a plane but you know what I mean.
The higher you lift your knee when you walk the more your belly is engaged.
And when you tighten those ab muscles as you lift your knee…boom extra calories torched!
Peep the video below to see what knee lifts are!
– How Much Do I Need To Walk Everyday To Lose Weight?
How much you need to walk every day will vary.
Ugh, I hate that answer.
Why can’t there just be a standard answer right?
However, you might be glad about that when I explain some more.
Ok so if you’re like a 200-pound woman, the number of calories you burn will be different from that of a 120-pound woman even if you walk the length and amount of time or even the same pace.
So if you are like me and have more weight to lose, you’ll be glad to know that you’ll burn more calories than those who don’t need to lose weight.
So back to the question, how much do you need to walk to lose weight?
Take these factors into consideration:
- Your current activity level (exercise and non-exercise activity)
- How much you eat
- How much you currently weigh
We already discussed the factor about how much you currently weigh as how many calories you will burn.
You also need to be honest about your current activity level.
This includes exercise activity and NEAT, which stands for nonexercise activity thermogenesis.
NEAT refers to all of the activity you get throughout the day that does not include dedicated and deliberate exercise.
So washing dishes, gardening, taking the dog out, and other little things like that are considered NEAT and they add up to big calorie burns.
The best way to calculate or measure NEAT is by using a Fitbit.
I have a Fitbit and it’s a lifesaver literally because sitting is the new smoking.
And what a Fitbit does is show you how much activity you are getting throughout the day.
You see most people think, hey I worked out for an hour. I’m an active person.
And don’t get me wrong.
That’s great.
But if you sit for most of the day besides that one hour, you are still in danger of all the health issues that come with sitting too much or being sedentary.
So it’s important to take an overall approach to activity and not just a one-hour-a-day approach.
A Fitbit helps you track all of your activity not just that one hour a day of walking (which is still amazing… definitely not discounting that).
With a Fitbit, it will give you a total picture of your activity.
We’ll talk more about Fitbit later.
So again back to the question.
How much do you need to walk to lose weight?
For weight loss purposes, it is recommended to walk for at least 45 minutes.
During my 50-pound weight loss, I would walk 5 miles at home a few times a week which was about an hour.
Did I mention I didn’t even have to leave my house?
More on that later too!
30 minutes is good for heart health but for weight loss we have to kick it up a notch unless we are really cutting back on our eating.
– Can I Lose Weight Just By Walking Or Marching In Place For 1 Hour A Day?
Want to read Lose Weight Walking At Home later? Click here to save it to one of your Pinterest boards!
I kind of already answered this.
But let’s go over it again.
Yes, you can lose weight by walking for one hour (in conjunction with healthier eating).
And if you don’t like the idea of walking in place (it may sound boring even though it’s not) you can of course walk outside as well!
In fact, you don’t have to work out at all to lose weight because weight loss is more about what you eat than what you do.
But that requires some serious calorie-cutting and I don’t personally recommend it.
So yes, you can lose weight by just walking an hour and eating better.
And you can even be “lazy” the rest of the day… but I don’t recommend that either.
– How Walking & Marching In Place Helped Me Lose 50 Pounds
Walking in my house in front of the TV helped me lose weight and is one of my most recommended workouts for beginners.
It was the workout I turned to when I was over 300 pounds.
It helped me get moving again because you can go at your own pace.
Plus it’s a natural movement so there’s nothing to learn (well not too much).
You see I used a DVD which I credit for helping me get off my booty in a way that was manageable for my weight.
– What You Need To Get Started To Lose Weight By Walking
I highly suggest you get 2 things when you are looking to start a walking regimen to lose weight (with one to grow on).
- Waking DVD
- Fitbit
- A Walking Journal
Why?
I recommend a walking DVD because that’s what I used.
The DVD I used to lose 50 pounds is by Leslie Sansone!
She has a line of Walk At-Home DVDs and let me tell you…
Those DVDs are gifts from God for real.
I was so out of shape when I first started.
In fact, I had a condition that even made walking very painful and uncomfortable.
But I was determined to change my life.
Other workouts (this is sounding like a commercial I know), were too complicated for me at that time.
I couldn’t keep up with even the modifications.
Plus the dance moves were just more than I wanted to do.
They were all doing too much and it made me feel tired afterward instead of energetic like workouts are supposed to do (so I hear).
I wanted something simple.
I didn’t want beast mode workouts.
I wanted “ok I feel like I can do this”.
And I could do it…over and over and over.
I worked my way up to 5 miles and down 50 pounds.
And I’m not the only one.
Tons of people have lost weight with Leslie’s walk at home dvds.
Check out the reviews for the walk-at-home dvds here!
They are so worth it.
And yes I lost belly fat… there are tons of leg raises in her workouts.
– I also recommend you get a Fitbit if you want to start a weight loss regimen
Why?
Because of the combination of NEAT and exercise activity, you need to get to lose weight (or rather I should say I suggest you get it because it makes weight loss faster and easier).
It’s easy to track an hour-long walking workout.
You might get 4,000 to 5,000 steps from that workout and that’s awesome.
But if you combine that with lots of movement throughout the day when you’re at home, work, the store etc. then the calorie “burn” and weight loss is even faster.
And that activity is best tracked with some sort of wearable fitness tracker.
It’s hard to know otherwise.
I don’t know how many times I thought I had been pretty active only to look at my Fitbit and see that I’d only gotten 4,000 steps that day.
And in case you’re wondering, 4,000 is not good.
It’s recommended to get 10,000 steps a day if you want to be considered active and if you’re trying to lose weight, being considered active is a major goal to set.
The Fitbit I have that helps me track my daily activity is the Alta HR.
It’s one that I’ve been using for over a year now and I love it.
It measures my heart rate, which is great because I love knowing what my heart rate is when I’m exercising.
I want to know if I need to work a little harder or if maybe I need to tone it down.
It also measures how many miles I’ve walked and how many calories I’ve burned.
So using a Fitbit not only measures how many steps I’ve walked but it gives me other important metrics all of which can be used in healthy goal setting.
Like if you want to walk an extra mile a day, this Fitbit will tell you that.
If you want to lower your resting heart rate (which is a sign of physical fitness and better heart function) you can measure that as well with a Fitbit.
They just give you info that you can’t just by guessing.
I wouldn’t be without mine and I believe it would help you in your health journey as well.
Click here to read the reviews of the Fitbit Alta HR
– The last thing I recommend you get is a walking journal of some sort
Do you have to get a walking journal?
No of course not but they are a really cool way to track just how much progress you’ve made!
With a walking journal, you can track how many miles you’ve walked in a day, week, month or year.
Or you can track how many hours you’ve walked. You can track how many days in a row you’ve walked.
It all depends on the kind of walking journal you get.
I have a walking journal that you can download for free.
It’s super simple (and super cute).
You just track the number of MILES OR HOURS you’ve walked so you can see how much progress you’ve made over time!
If you are ready to start your walking and weight loss journey then be sure to check out the resources I mentioned:
Click here to download a free walking tracker available in my shop so you can start your walking weight loss journey right away!
Free Printable Walking Tracker. Click Here To Download!
If I Lost Weight By Walking At Home has helped you, please share it!
Want to read this post later? Click here to save it to one of your Pinterest boards!
Medical Disclaimer: While Healthy As You Can strives to provide the most accurate information, anything you read on this site is purely for informational or entertainment purposes and should NOT be considered medical advice or as a replacement for a doctor’s care, diagnosis, appointment, advice, etc. I am not a medical professional at all. Any information, tips, or ideas that you try as a result of reading this blog is tried at your, the reader’s, own risk.
Health Disclaimer: The owner of Healthy As You Can is not a physician, nutritionist, or medical professional. Any tips or ideas that you implement as a result of reading the information on this blog are done at your own risk. The results that may be discussed are not typical or guaranteed. Please talk to your doctor before starting any workout, exercises, diet or nutrition plan. Please stop any workout if you start to feel any pain. Healthy As You Can is not entering into a Doctor-Patient relationship with any reader and is not responsible for any errors or omissions of information.
