If you’re wondering how many steps you should take per day in order to lose weight, your first step should be to figure out how many steps you currently take in one day. Then compare it to the recommended amount of daily steps, based on your gender and age, that will help you reach your weight loss goals. If you’re nowhere near the ideal amount of steps per day, here are some simple ways to add more steps into your daily routine.
Cardio
Try to get 10,000 steps in every day. Walking is a great way to lose weight because it keeps your metabolism churning at an optimal rate and increases feelings of satiety, or fullness. Although you won’t burn off as many calories as with vigorous exercise (which burns around 300 calories per hour), researchers at Appalachian State University found that people who walked at a brisk pace for 6 days a week lost more belly fat than those who participated in slower-paced aerobic exercise.
Nutrition
Your diet is a major player in weight loss. If you want to lose weight, it’s helpful to know how many calories your body needs. One pound of fat has around 3,500 calories. So if you burn 500 more calories than your body uses every day for a week, you will lose one pound per week. You can figure out how many calories your body needs by calculating your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the number of calories your body burns at rest.
Sleep
If you’re not sleeping enough, you might be unintentionally undermining your weight-loss efforts. Sleep deprivation can boost levels of ghrelin (the hunger hormone) and decrease levels of leptin (the satiety hormone). This is what makes it much harder to pass up that midnight snack or early morning donut.
Mindset
It’s not necessarily how many calories you burn during your workout, but what you do outside of it that can help aid weight loss. According to a new study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, taking more steps throughout your day may be more valuable than just hitting the gym once or twice a week. Researchers found that people who walked an average of 17,411 steps per day were able to lose more weight compared to those who averaged only 9,615 daily steps.
Workout Routines
The amount of steps you take per day may not seem like a lot, but your fitness level is actually a big contributor to how much weight you can lose. If you’re carrying around excess body fat and don’t do enough cardio or strength training, your daily steps aren’t going to impact your weight loss as much as they could.
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