So I have been watching random videos on the internet and I stumbled on THIS video on you tube and had an aha moment! I have been seeing recently that I am Exercising a lot recently but still gaining weight and I put this down to building muscle mass which in part I think it is as my arms and legs are getting much more defined and ripped. BUT, this video described my exact routine at the moment where you work out a lot 4-5 days a week and then have 2-3 days a week where you are basically sedentary and only do 2-3000 steps in a day but still eat like you do the rest of the week so essentially on those days you are basically in a calorie surplus so the excess is stored as fat and therefore you are gaining weight.
Basically this means that on the off days you are undoing all the good you are doing on the workout days! The host of the video was basically training for a marathon at the time but still gaining weight so made the simple change of walking 10000 steps a day EVERY day and has been doing it now for 5 years and has never looked back. His weight started consistently dropping until it plateaued at a healthy weight and more importantly by changing his lifestyle to make it easier to get the 10000 steps in a day he has also cured his backpain that he has had since starting working in an office and increased his flexibility considerably! All things that I want to do. Walking is also a good way to reduce weight healthily as it doesn’t raise the appetite like other forms of exercise like riding bikes or the gym does!
After watching this I have decided to get back to walking 10000 steps a day to try and get back to feeling as healthy as I was when I was walking a lot every day!
I am going to try and start getting the 10000 steps a day starting today although I am away racing this weekend so I am not sure how that will work but I am hoping that it will make it easier as I will be out of my normal routine so can just walk whenever. Lets see.
I took a quick look at my step count this week and I did’t get near to 10000 steps a day even though I was pretty active most days:
| Monday | 4705 |
| Tuesday | 2102 |
| Wednesday | 6768 |
| Thursday | 7296 |
| Friday | 6279 |
This shows that setting a goal of 10000 is need to make sure that I am hitting a basic activity level EVERY day to get my calorie deficit back to a point where I am continually burning more calories than I am consuming to get the weigh loss moving again!
I have decided that I will make a few changes to my daily routine from Monday too. I will get up 15 minutes earlier (5am not 5:15) so that I can fit a longer walk in in the mornings and I will also change the way that I walk a bit so that I will start walking up hill almost as soon as I leave my house instead of the basically flat walk that I have been doing to add more stress to the walks. I will also start leaving the car in the car park at the track at lunch time and walk to the track which will add at leas an extra 10000 steps a day to my total and I will also consciously go out and walk after work so that I have my 10000 steps completed before I veg out on the sofa at night! This will essentially mean that I will be rewarding myself for being active by allowing myself to be lazy which I kind of like the irony of 🙂
Walking is also something that I can do easily while I am on holiday so I am hopeful that I can keep the 10000 streak going while I am away as well as I love walking around the town that I used to live in and walking in the sun is so nice 🙂 Lets see how it goes.
I am amazed at how much better I am feeling again after getting more active at the latter part of the week after my hip stopped hurting so much and I am hopeful that the walking a lot more each day will mean that I get less and less of these niggly injuries in the future.
The main reason for the 10000 step goal is to start getting a bit of consistency to my exercise regime as I am really good at starting programs but. Itend to change them up a lot so I never consistently keep to the training for an extended length of time so I am setting this relatively easy goal that will force me to be consistent from now until the end of the year:
Goal for the rest of the year:
Walk 10000 steps a day from to today 22/07/2023 until 31/12/2023!
This means that I will have consistently walked 10000 steps or more for 163 days in a row including today.
I have decided that I will count down from today (day 163) until new years eve to make it more motivating than counting up from day 1 to day 162 as I usually do.
I am also going to have 1 blog post just for the 10000 Step challenge to make it easier to keep a track of my progress etc. it will also make it easier for me to separate my walking goal from my BMX blogs as well.
My 36mm Spanner has just arrived from Amazon so the rear hub is all tightened up and ready to go once it is laced onto the rim 🙂 The spanned fitted perfectly and made it way easier to tighten that an adjustable spanner and caused no damage to the lock ring at all so it was well worth the £8.62 the spanner cost. I will also make removing the lock ring was less traumatic than it has been in the past 🙂
