30 minutes of brisk walking per day. This is what the INPES (National Institute for Prevention and Health Education) recommends to French people, regardless of their age. And even, to fight against the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle on health, 5 minutes walk per hourwould be the ideal frequency, as recently shown by researchers.
But if such physical activity is necessarily good for your health, does it also allow you to lose a few pounds? “It burns calories” replies Professor Carré. But there are still other factors to take into account…
Beware of the scourge of snacking
Walking 30 minutes daily leads to weight loss, but on one condition: “Don’t change anything about your diet. Or better yet: eat less. If you allow yourself to eat two squares of chocolate on your way home because you’ve been doing well, there’s no point!”
And again, we are here in a scenario where the walker consciously rewards himself: “In fact, people tend to forget about snacking. That is, anything they eat outside of mealtimes. Most patients say they don’t eat a lot, but when given a questionnaire that list everything they ate during the day, there are 5 candies here and 2 pieces of bread there. They eat more than they think.
The problem ? Every treat swallowed throughout the day “sets in motion a whole system of adaptation of the body which makes that when one does not move, these calories are transformed immediately into fat.” And not just any: “The one we have inside the abdomen and which is very bad for your health. It leads to the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease or even diabetes. That’s why the weight of patients does not m I’m not interested in. What I’m looking at, it’s their waistline. Take judoka Teddy Riner: he’s 124 kilos when he’s in shape, but I’m not going to tell him he’s overweight, because he doesn’t have a belly.”
More walking = less belly
Good news : “Physical activity is more effective at losing that intra-abdominal fat than diets. The idea is therefore good to move more. Especially since the less we do physical activity, the more we eat, since we develop a hormone called ghrelin and promotes appetite.
But even if it means sweating, so do it effectively. For example by practicing the split: “It is better to walk 3 times 5 minutes very quickly than 20 minutes at a moderate pace, For example. Simply because in the two hours following an intense effort, you will burn fat.” Indeed, each consequent exercise disturbs the balance of the body. “And to find it, we consume oxygen… which itself serves to consume these fats.”
In short, your body is (very) well done, so don’t hesitate to give it a little boost by walking a little more… and forgetting the peanuts at 6 p.m.