13: "Is WALKING Enough To Lose Weight?" [ASK DR. ANNA]

Can walking alone help you lose weight? In this episode of ASK DR. ANNA, Dr. Anna breaks down the real numbers, the research, and what a consistent walking routine can actually do for fat loss over time — and where it starts to fall short.

Walking is one of the best places to start. It is accessible, sustainable, and for many people it delivers real early results. But if you want better heart health, a stronger metabolism, and results that keep coming as you age, Dr. Anna breaks down exactly why walking cannot be the whole plan — and what to add when you are ready for more.

Listen in to learn:

• Real calorie burn estimates for 30-minute and 60-minute walks
• How a 3,500-calorie weekly deficit connects to actual fat loss
• What the research says about weight loss at 150 minutes versus 300 minutes of walking per week
• A real patient example where daily walking delivered meaningful early scale wins
• Why walking often does not raise your heart rate enough for true cardiovascular benefits
• Why resistance training is essential for protecting muscle, metabolism, and healthy aging
• How plateaus happen when your body adapts to the same step count — and what to do about it
• A simple progression from walking to adding cardio and strength training when you are ready

Send us your weight loss questions — about exercise, food struggles, or anything else you want Dr. Anna to tackle. The more specific the better.

👉 Join my next FREE WEBINAR: https://www.annapleetmd.com/live-webinar1

🎙️ Follow the Podcast from wherever you listen:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ2sK9BzXjBajuP3hLURBrGqroEMj9ECy
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7zfUrIJaq9xNEv0Ym1cKK5
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-dr-anna-weight-loss-after-50-made-simple/id1878834328
• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/fb6cde97-8c99-4278-a94f-df544a38905d/ask-dr-anna-%E2%80%94-weight-loss-after-50-made-simple

💫 Free Downloads:
• Get your FREE copy of The Perfect Meal Formula E-Book here [PDF Download]: https://annapleetmd.kit.com/pmf
• Get your FREE copy of The Grocery Shopping Guide here [PDF Download]: https://annapleetmd.kit.com/grocery
• Get your FREE copy of 100+ PMF Meal & Snack Ideas Guide here [PDF Download]: https://annapleetmd.kit.com/100ideas

💫 Free Masterclass:
• Watch the FREE Masterclass: RECIPE ANALYSIS - Learn if ANY Recipe Is Good for You : https://annapleetmd.kit.com/getrecipemasterclass

💫 Connect With Me:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCapta3PYCN2V4NQetFDnm-A
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annapleetmd
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@annapleetmd
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annapleetmd/

Tags:
#annapleetmd #mediterraneandiet #weightloss #weightlosstips #weightlossdiet #weig...

Transcript

Is Walking Enough To Lose Weight

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Okay, guys, this is one of the most common questions I hear. A viewer just asked me, Dr. Anna, is walking enough to lose weight? And I cannot tell you the number of times I've gotten this question. If you're wondering whether you can just walk to lose weight without doing anything else, you've come to the right place. Because you've probably heard that walking is great. You see people talking about getting those 10,000 steps a day. And you want to know, is this actually going to work for me to lose how much weight do I have to lose? 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 150 pounds? Can I just please skip the gym and just walk? Now the answer has layers to it, and I'm not going to give you any BS here in this episode. I'm going to be very honest. Walking absolutely helps with weight loss. And I'm going to show you exactly how many calories it typically burns and what that means for you to lose actual pounds of fat. But there are other things that walking cannot do for our body. And it is critical that you understand this if you actually want long-term weight loss success. If you think walking alone is the complete answer, I'm worried that you're going to be disappointed with your weight loss results. So I do not want to give you any false information here. I'm Dr. Ada. Welcome to my series where I answer real questions I get from viewers just like yourself. These are, of course, very honest conversations, as you can probably tell. We talk about weight loss, real life, and definitely cutting out all the BS. I am a medical doctor. We are having conversations that I'm telling you kind of my personal take of things as a doctor, but this is not formal medical advice. Remember that if you are dealing with a personal health struggle, definitely talk to your own provider. Everybody's situation is unique, but I do hope these conversations help you think through some of these things more deeply and ultimately helps you lose more weight and keep it off. That's the point. So let's dive

Calories Burned And Fat Loss Math

SPEAKER_00 1:50

right in. Yes, of course, walking is helpful for weight loss. I think anybody who makes the argument that it's not is a liar. Let's start with this good news because we know that walking is something that is supported by research for a weight loss approach. It is a very low-intensity way of burning plenty of calories without making us feel exhausted and making us feel like we're actually stimulating our hunger and starving afterwards. By definition, that is so helpful for fat burning. Let me give you some actual numbers though, so we can understand what walking does for us. But let's say use these as ballparks. A 30-minute walk at basically a moderate pace will burn anywhere from 100 to 150 calories, depending on your weight and your speed. And a 60-minute walk maybe double that, maybe 200 or even 300 calories. Now let's put that into perspective for a second. What does it take to actually lose weight? And when we say weight, we're usually talking about losing fat. So the classic numbers that we always use when it comes to thinking about weight loss are to burn a pound of fat, it is about 3,500 calories in deficit across a week's time. One way you can break this down is that seven days in the week, that would be hitting a calorie deficit of about 500 calories a day times seven days. So 3,500 calories. So walking about 30 minutes a day, if you're burning about 100 to 150 calories, well, you're contributing something to your calorie deficit. Maybe it's about 25 or even 30% of the calorie deficit you want to hit in the day. So if you're walking for an hour, of course, that's double. So that means you're getting to maybe up to 300 calories that you're burning, and that can contribute towards your 500 calories deficit per day. That is significant. There's no other way to say it. For sure, you're going to be making a good dent there. Now, I actually did see a recent research study that summarizes a ton of other research studies combined. It's something called a meta-analysis if we're going to be technical. And I don't want to get into the weeds of the research because I think that loses most of you, but the take-home message here is this about 2.8 kilograms, which in US we use pounds, so about six pounds on average was lost when people who were studied in these research studies were walking roughly 150 minutes a week. And about 4.2 kilograms or about nine pounds was lost on average when people were walking about 300 minutes a week of at least moderate intensity walking. So what this is saying already off the bat is we have research studies showing that from doing this specific amount of walking consistently, on average, was burning a certain amount of weight on their body that was considered statistically significant. So yes, it does make a difference. This correlates with meaningful weight loss. But as you can see, it is not that much weight loss just from walking. And in this meta-analysis, this was a summary of multiple different studies. So it did not have an average amount of weeks that this was studied, because different studies had different amounts of time. This is just on average, if you're doing this consistently, let's call it every week, over several weeks or months, you will lose some weight. But it's not like walking this much lost a hundred pounds in people on average. That's not what happened. Okay. So let's just put it in perspective.

What Research Shows About Walking

SPEAKER_00 5:26

It definitely gave some weight loss. It wasn't really that much. Now, here is where I'll tell you about an example, a patient that I worked with. She was not very physically active when she came to see me. She started walking because that's kind of what she could tolerate in the beginning. So we got her to do 45-minute walks every single day, six or seven days a week. She really wasn't ready to make a lot of changes in her eating. So we didn't touch the diet yet. But already, just two months in, she lost six pounds. She was so happy. And I was so happy for her because you don't always see those kinds of results quickly from just walking. But walking worked for her. And why? Because it was sustainable. She actually could do this every day. And it was one commitment that she made to herself and she stuck with it. So recognize in order for you to start getting weight loss going, you might not need any special equipment or a gym membership. You just need some sneakers and a safe place to walk. You could really do this anywhere. If it's not outside or it's winter, you can go to a shopping mall, you can find a way to get to a treadmill. There's often a lot of ways to make walking happen. And yes, a lot of people are buying these walking treadmills pretty cheaply online these days. I know during the COVID pandemic, that kind of blew up as an industry. So you might be able to even just get one for your house. But research also shows us that when we combine walking with diet changes for weight loss, we get much better results. So, yes, walking, as we know, is great for weight loss. It can get the process going. It is accessible, it is gentle on our joints, it really doesn't stimulate our hunger, which is going to make us hitting the calorie deficit we need for weight loss so much easier because we're not going to get hungrier and end up eating more. If you're someone who's not exercising at all right now, added walking potentially can be the thing you need to get this process going for you. Now, I walk a lot myself. I spent years living in Italy. It's where I went to medical school. And I lived in Germany and France before that. And of course, what we know about Europeans is that they walk everywhere. They walk all the time. It's why people argue, oh, they don't have obesity at the same rates we do because they're always walking. That is not all of the explanation there, but it absolutely contributes to it. Plus, walking is just a little fun. It's a way to see the world and it's a way to get our minds kind of unwinding. And I find that when I walk and talk and take a phone call, I can think much more clearly when I'm walking than if I'm just sitting, right? So walking adds up. People say 10,000 steps a day. What can that roughly be? Well, for some people, that may even be three or four hundred, potentially even 500 calories burned. Depends on a lot of factors, but it can really add up. That is a big contributor to staying lean. So that being said, here's where I'm not going to BS you at all. Let's just get really clear. Walking alone, in my opinion, is not enough if you want to be really losing a lot of weight and getting as healthy and strong as possible. You probably could tell from some of the numbers I threw at you from those research studies that even from the data, we're not losing tons and tons of weight just for walking on average for most people. So the thing we need to keep in mind here is that walking does not replace the crucial other types of exercise we all need to be doing. So what are those things? For example, walking is not replacing true cardiovascular exercise where we are really increasing our heart rate. We are stimulating that heart because our heart's a muscle too, and we need it to go high enough in its heart rate to get maximum benefit. For most people, walking, especially if you've been doing it consistently and your body is kind of used to it, you're not getting your heart rate high enough. And there's something to be said about that. And how do you know? Well, of course, you can wear a heart rate monitor to literally know what your heart is doing, and a lot of smart watches are going to help you get there as well. But ultimately, that's exercise where you're really huffing and puffing, where you can't hold a full conversation. That's what we're talking about when we say getting your heart rate up in cardiovascular exercise. So the level of intensity that you can reach with things like biking, swimming, jogging, playing tennis, that's what protects our heart health. It is so important, especially if you're somebody who's dealing with some heart problems. You have high blood pressure or circulation issues. Now, of course, you want to be cleared by your doctor. If you have an arrhythmia or you have some concerns, or you've suffered a heart attack, you need to make sure it's safe for you to exercise. That's its own conversation. And like I said at the beginning, your personal health situation is unique. So you've got to talk to your own provider, but recognize that walking alone is not going to do the same thing as more of that huffing and puffing type of exercise that really gets our cardiovascular system going. Now, the second type of exercise that unfortunately walking doesn't do for us is something that

A Real Patient Success Story

SPEAKER_00 10:30

stimulates our muscle or strength training or resistance training. Walking will not really build muscle or even preserve it. The way that squeezing our muscles against what we call load or pushing against weight actually does for us. This is really critical as we age, especially. After age 30, we know that we actually start losing muscle mass every single year. That is just part of the aging process, unfortunately. But it is something we can completely control. We can control the rate at which we lose muscle mass. Something to keep in mind, after age roughly 50, or especially for women after going through menopause, the process of losing muscle accelerates. Now, if you're only walking, you're not doing anything to preserve that muscle mass and slow down the rate of muscle loss. Muscle is the most important organ when it comes to burning fat because it's what keeps our metabolism high. It's ultimately the energy engine of our body. It's burning calories even at rest. And it's what keeps us strong, functional, and safe as we get older. So we don't fall, break a bone, and ultimately that can lead to our complete demise. We see this in the hospital all the time. So recognize my patient who started walking. She got amazing success. She started losing weight. It was awesome. But when I was working with her, we did need to help get her to the next level. Once she started establishing a good routine, then she was ready to address some of the other things, like adding in dietary changes, adding in the other types of exercise she needed to do. I see so many people who are clocking in their 10,000 steps every single day or even more. And they've been doing that for 15 years and they're confused why they can't lose any more wheat. And the question I always have is, well, what else are we doing? Your body got used to that amount of walking. Are we getting our heart rate up? Are we stimulating our muscle? Usually, almost 90% of the time, the answer to either of those questions is no, they're not doing one, if not both. So this is often the missing thing for a lot of folks. And I would not be wasting your time if I didn't realize how common this was. So I'll tell you a story. Somebody I worked with online once was doing weight loss with me, and we had gotten to the point where she made amazing diet changes and she was starting to see some results, but her results were kind of stalled. And we dug into it. So, okay, now we got to talk about that whole other thing, which is a big part of the component, which is the exercise. And I could see she flinched as soon as I mentioned it. And I asked her, like, hey, why? Um, and she was like, Well, Dr. Anna, I gotta be honest with you, I don't exercise, never have, not into it. And I think she was almost 70 years old. And I was sort of impressed. I was like, wow, you you've been doing pretty well in life if you've gotten to this point. And um, we never touched exercise. But I realize a lot of people are in this boat. So anyway, what we needed to do at this point is come up with an idea of how she could start doing exercise in a way she liked. She was very intimidated from doing a lot of cardio exercise. She was convinced that she had seen a lot of people in her life have heart problems. She was afraid of getting a heart attack. She would see people overdo it. And so she said, I'm not interested in that. I said, Okay, well, cardio exercise is just one bucket. What about our other bucket? How about like something to stimulate our muscles? And she almost didn't know what I meant. And I think this is lost on so many women. The concept of resistance training or muscle strengthening exercise, doing little five-pound dumbbells in circles is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually pushing our body and squeezing our muscles in ways we probably never have. So I talked to her about this and said, would you be willing to start doing strength training, even from chair exercises, just to get it going? And she said, sure, I guess, because she really wanted to keep losing weight and she was she was at a stuck spot. So we came up with her routine and she ended up going to a gym and working with a trainer and getting a little bit more guidance for this. And the craziest thing was that she ended up really liking it. She actually said she enjoyed exercise for the first time and never knew this about herself. And I often see this, especially with women, and even especially with older women. We never give ourselves a chance to try exercise styles that had been considered masculine for whatever reason. And the truth is, resistance training is a ton of fun. And a lot of people like it because you're not huffing and puffing at the end, but you're doing so much good for your body, and it really helps with weight loss. Like, really helps with weight loss. So, anyway, we found her thing and it was a lot of fun. So, of course, here's the thing. As we mentioned, getting walking in, doing some exercise is obviously better than none. Absolutely. There's no question about it. But if we really get stuck with our weight loss, like my client that I just told you about, to get to the next level, we usually need to think: are we doing all the buckets of exercise? Are we doing all the types? Walking for the most part is only the kind of bare minimum that we should be doing. And it absolutely is important as a general activity and burning calories and getting our body moving, and as my grandfather always used to say, getting the juices flowing. But it's not the same thing as true cardio exercise that increases our heart rate and helps our heart muscle get stronger. And it's definitely not the same thing as doing strength training to preserve our muscle and our metabolism and really stimulate the fat burning. Now, if you're only doing walking, you're missing out on an amazing opportunity for you to get better and faster results. I'm never going to tell you that all you need to do is walking because that's a lie. We know that. The research always tells us that. And even all of our guidelines for exercise are never just saying only

Why Walking Alone Falls Short

SPEAKER_00 16:40

do the walking. It's all about finding the balance. But that being said, if you're not doing anything right now, where should you start? Well, let me be really clear about this. If you're currently doing no exercise at all, I'm absolutely convinced that walking is a great place to start. I've seen it work so well for so many people. Like the patient I told you in the beginning, she needed to make a lot of changes, but the walking was the least intimidating thing for her. And she did a great job sticking to it. So as long as you're medically cleared, it is a great place to start. But don't just stop there. Consider trying something you've never tried because, again, like my client that I worked with, you may end up really liking other kinds of activity. You just didn't even know it. And there's so many benefits to types of exercise. It's good for our physical bodies, it's good for our brains, it's good for our mind, it's good for our mood. And the cool thing is that you can do it socially. You can do it while listening to podcasts like this one, or you can do it while calling someone. You can listen to audiobooks, you can listen to the news. Our technology is such now that it can go with us wherever and however we want it. You also can just use walking as a way to tune out the world. Listen to the birds and the bees, if you will. But all of it is beneficial. But consider what walking can and can't do for us and where we need to fill in the gaps with those other things. Get yourself walking consistently for a few weeks or months and see how much your life can change. It is incredible. And then from there, you're gonna start building confidence and momentum. And so that's when you might be ready to take it to the next level. Add in one day of each of those things a week and just start experimenting and building up. And before you know it, you're gonna have a stronger body and a much stronger mind. Then if you feel like you're starting to get exercise down, but you know you need to make all those eating changes, well, that's where we can add in the next layer. Now, inside the Healthy After 50 Academy, I actually have a whole protocol and an approach where I teach you how to build your complete movement routine. So if even what I said sounds very feasible, but you're still not sure how you would execute on it, I have my six-week Mediterranean weight loss challenge. And inside, it comes with the six-week exercise challenge. I call it a challenge, but I don't actually think it's that challenging because you start from wherever you're at and it includes the full exercise plan that can span six weeks. And of course, you can do it forever, and it has a tracker with you, and it works whether you're an absolute beginner or even if you're more advanced and you want something that's next level. So recognize that throughout this conversation, we have addressed so many key things. Walking is absolutely helpful for weight loss. I hope I have driven that point home. It burns calories

Cardio Intensity And Heart Health

SPEAKER_00 19:31

and specifically helps us burn fat. It's sustainable. We can kind of do it for the rest of our lives, and it's a lot of fun. It's a great place to start, but it does not replace the other buckets of exercise that are crucial for being as strong and healthy and maximizing our weight loss as much as possible. Getting our heart rate up, cardiovascular exercise, stimulating our muscles, preserving them, doing the strength and resistance training. Your body craves those things. Now, if you're doing nothing, I can't encourage enough to just consider starting with walking. But please don't do yourself a disservice. Don't stop there. Always talk to your doctor. Make sure you're cleared for exercise. You don't want to get injured. That's kind of the worst thing. But just recognize that exercise is a whole new world for you and it's a lot of fun. And that could be the thing that's helping you break through your weight loss plateau or start getting those results you really want to get. Now, I want you to drop in the comments below other questions you have, maybe other questions about exercise, something that we talked about today, other struggles you're dealing with when it comes to trying to lose weight, so that I can have these episodes answer your specific questions so that it's way more applicable to your life. I don't want to just be sitting here saying things that you don't care about. Make sure you tell me what you're thinking about. And then when you're ready, jump into my other episodes up here of the podcast. You're gonna love those, and I'll see you there.