36. Things you should NOT do when walking for belly fat loss

Can a simple walk really transform your health? Discover why stepping out for a stroll might be the most underrated yet powerful activity for shedding belly fat and improving overall well-being.

This episode uncovers the myriad benefits of walking, from boosting cardiovascular health to enhancing mental clarity and aiding digestion.

I share my personal journey of walking four miles an hour, indoors and out, and offer practical tips for seamlessly integrating this activity into your daily life. But it’s not just about the walk – we also focus on critical health considerations, such as recognizing symptoms like chest pain or shortness of breath and the importance of regular medical check-ups.

Unlock the secrets to healthy aging by learning how to maintain a caloric deficit through mindful eating and portion control. Discover the hidden sugars in so-called "healthy" foods and the importance of a balanced routine of cardio and resistance training, especially for women over 35 experiencing muscle mass decline.

We emphasize the need for gradual increases in physical activity to ensure sustainability and stress the importance of not ignoring major medical symptoms during exercise.

Plus, find out why proper warm-ups are crucial.

Tune in for a comprehensive guide to walking your way to better health and staying fit as you age gracefully!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my friends, Welcome, welcome, Welcome to my channel. Today we will be talking about walking. I'm continuing the conversation about how walking can help you with the belly fat loss, with overall body fat loss, so we want to incorporate walking. Walking is so beneficial. It actually helps that pump which is your heart, helps you, helps you with weight loss, helps your mental health. Today in my bootcamp my online weight loss program I did four miles of walking in an hour, walking here at home. So you don't need any equipment, you don't need to go anywhere, you can do this at home. And then I went outside and walked again. So it is almost 7 am in my time and I am already at 7,900 steps and that is 4.7 miles right here.

Speaker 1: 0:53

So walking is so helpful for us. It's also going to help with your mental health. Helps you with stress, anxiety, depression. Why? Because it causes those good hormones to be released. That just makes you feel better. And if you go out and walk outside early in the morning, get that fresh air, get some vitamin D in, it's just only helpful. It'll also it would help you with your bones and your muscles, helps you with digestion. This is why, for those of us women, when you have a baby, your nurse wants you to get up and walk. If you had surgery, they want you to get up and walk because that's what gets your bowels moving. Also, if you're struggling with fatty liver disease, prediabetes, insulin resistance, PCOS we want to drop our weight. Walking is one of those things. It's the easiest thing to start and it would help you.

Speaker 1: 1:51

However there's a few things that we want to pay attention to when we are walking, and that's what we're going to talk about today what we should not do when walking.

Speaker 2: 2:02

Welcome to the Thriving Through Menopause podcast. Dr Inaka Yembe, your host, is dedicated to helping you navigate the transformative journey of menopause and perimenopause, particularly focused on achieving menopausal weight loss and reducing belly fat. As a post-menopausal physician herself who has helped thousands of women experiencing the significant life stage, she understands the unique challenges you face. Listen in as we explore a wide range of topics aimed at supporting you in your health and wellness journey. Hopefully, the practical tips and strategies offered potentially help you adopt an empowering approach towards menopausal weight loss and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yenbe.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Okay and belly fat reduction. And now here's your host, dr Inaka Yembe. The first thing to do, or not to do, is to ignore symptoms. Now, my full-time job as a physician is actually working in the emergency room, and Monday morning is one of those days. That's so typical for that heart attack to come in in the morning.

Speaker 1: 3:05

And what happens is that most of these people are ignoring symptoms. Some of them are even healthy people. So some of the things you should not ignore when you're walking out, there is symptoms. If you're walking, you start to feel chest tightness, you start to feel pain in your arm, you get shortness of breath, you feel weak, you feel like you just can't go as far as you used to. Those are not things that you need to ignore, please. You get chest pain while you're walking. Go to the emergency room, call 911. Get somebody to get you from where you are and take you to the hospital quickly.

Speaker 1: 3:46

When it comes to the heart, time is money, time is tissue. So the longer you wait, trying to second guess yourself, thinking I'm healthy, so I'm going to wait we women were so used to this you get a symptom, you say, hmm well, let me wait and see. It's going to pass away. And if it goes away then it's not my heart. No, a heart attack is like a cut. If you get a cut on your skin, it will bleed and it will stop bleeding. If you're having a blockage to a certain part of your heart, yes, you feel the pain and then the pain goes away. The fact that the pain went away doesn't mean you did not have a heart attack. You have too many of these mini heart attacks, or you get one big one. It could completely change your life, change everything now. Do not ignore major symptoms when you're walking. Very, very important. That's the biggest message I wanted to give you out there. The second thing also is also just not paying attention to our health.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Some of us wake up and say, hey, I want to be healthy, I want to start eating well, I want to drop a few pounds, those are all good. My question is did you go to the doctor? Some of us don't go to the doctor for years and years and years, and because we didn't go to the doctor and nothing happened, we automatically assume that life is fine. There's a few silent killers that do not give you any symptom until you have a catastrophic event. Example if your blood pressure is high, you may not feel any symptoms. If your blood sugar is high, you're not going to feel any symptoms. If your cholesterol is high, you're not going to feel any symptoms. If you start to have kidney damage from high blood pressure, you don't have any symptoms. You start having symptoms when things have gone too, too far.

Speaker 1: 5:39

So the message here is even though you're walking and trying to get healthy, please get checked. If you just don't know, it doesn't mean life is fine. Life may not be fine. And when you go to the doctor and they tell you a few things like your liver enzymes are a little abnormal, your blood sugar is a little high, you're pre-diabetic you've the doctor told me this and I'm going to make a few changes. However, one month down the line, we forgot about our blood pressure, we forgot about the test results and we're going about our life and we completely forgot. No, some of those things can come back and bite you in the butt. You don't want that. But anyway, back to walking.

Speaker 1: 6:31

When you go out walking, the very first thing to do before you start walking is do a little warmup, warmup, stretch, get your body nice and loose. So do some stretches first and a little warmup for three minutes, five minutes, just to get started. If you're like me, I'm 56 now. When I wake up in the morning, listen, my body talks to me. All the joints are stiff, some of them are painful. If I didn't take some time to loosen up now, it's just so painful. In addition to that, if you just go walking fast. Without stretching or without warming up, you could actually get some injury. So very important for you to warm up first.

Speaker 1: 7:14

The second thing is, if you live where I live right now, outside is about 80 degrees already. This is the summertime. Most places are hot, so stay hydrated. When you wake up in the morning, you're already behind on hydration. Drink water before you start walking. It will help you. Remember, you're walking for your cardiovascular health. You're walking to decrease belly fat. You're walking for your health. You need the blood circulating, so you need to drink some water before you start. And if you're walking outside and it's hot, I recommend that you drink half a liter of water per hour if you're outside walking. So very, very important. Dehydration will actually slow down your weight loss. So don't go walking outside or indoors without staying hydrated.

Speaker 1: 8:07

The very next thing to do or not to do is to be distracted. Some of us are walking, but we're not paying attention to our bodies. We're saying, well, I'm going to go outside, I'm going to get some steps in, I'm going to take my phone, I'm going to look at the phone. I'm just not intentional with walking. If you want to get the most benefit from your walking, you want to be intentional about it, take short, quick steps. So I'm going to be going. I want to go fast. That's what gets my blood circulating. That's what helps me lose the weight. I'm going to engage my core, keep my core tight, swing my arms and breathe while I'm walking. So you're thinking about actually walking intentionally Now. I went to the track the other day and I was walking by a couple of women.

Speaker 2: 8:56

And.

Speaker 1: 8:56

I'm not saying don't meet your friends on the track when you're walking, that's okay. Everybody does what they want. But if you go out to walk, walk. Now, if you go out to meet friends, you say, yes, I'm going out to meet friends, but if you go to the track? I walked around these ladies. We said hello, hi. I walked around four or five times and they were still standing on the same spot, visiting each other and talking which is okay.

Speaker 1: 9:23

If that was your intention, that's fine. However, you want to be intentional. So if you think about it, if you went out walking and you just stood there and you just had a conversation with someone, or you just walked around casually and made a couple of turns around, you're not really getting any kind of cardiovascular exercise. Then you want to rethink that strategy. When you're walking, be intentional, move your muscles, move your arms, keep your core tight. Be intentional, move your muscles, move your arms, keep your core tight, engage your body, breathe through it, and that's where you get the most bang for your buck.

Speaker 1: 10:04

All right, this one here is a big one. I hear this all the time. Either I've been walking 10,000 steps every day, or even 20,000, or I've been going to the gym every single day. I'm doing all the things and my weight and my belly fat is not going anywhere. And my question is going to be what is your nutrition like?

Speaker 1: 10:22

We cannot ignore our nutrition, even though we are active people. Why? Because, really, your exercise, your activity, is going to count for 15 to 20, for some people, up to 25% of their weight. So you do want to marry proper nutrition with exercise. That's the only way that you're really seriously going to lose the belly fat, reverse your fatty liver and lose weight. What are the things that we need to do? Number one you have to be in a caloric deficit. You have to eat less than your body needs. All the things that we see around us, all the things like the medicines, like the injections, like the surgeries, they all boil down to one thing is to make you consume less energy than you actually need. So you can do that by yourself by eating less, controlling your portions, eating from smaller plates consistently. That's going to automatically give you less food For me personally, I like to weigh my portions.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Why? Because I just don't know. Studies do show that when you eyeball the food and you think actually this is a proper portion, I personally I tend to overestimate. Okay, because I just love to eat. Don't judge me, I love to eat. Don't judge me, I love to eat. So if I'm thinking just by eyeballing things is four ounces, it could actually be eight ounces, six ounces, and then even for healthy foods, if you eat too much, you just get too much energy. So the fact that you're walking all these steps and not losing weight, look at your nutrition. Also. Some of the things that we think are healthy are really not.

Speaker 1: 12:08

If you go to my Instagram page, I do have quite a few things on there, some lists of foods that we think are healthy foods. There are some big ones. The biggest one that I know is fruit juice. I get the question all the time. I juice at home. I get a fruit from the grocery store and I juice it at home. Why is that not healthy? I didn't say it's not healthy.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Actually, we shouldn't demonize any foods, but the problem with fruit juice is you have an overload of fructose. Imagine to make a glass of apple juice, I'm going to need about six, seven, eight apples, and then, worse off, I took away all the fiber that helps slow down the absorption of this fructose into my system. So you get a huge load of fructose into your liver at one time and your liver says, wow, system overload. I'm going to take this and quickly package it into fatty acids and some of it, if it's too much, will be deposited in your liver and it's just a vicious cycle. Ladies, let's not drink fruit juice every single day. The things that you do once in a while, once a week, once a month, is okay. This is the reason why you can have anything that you want once in a while.

Speaker 1: 13:30

So marrying proper nutrition with exercise is so important. I also get a question from people that say listen, I've been working out, I've been exercising and I'm not losing weight and I go walking all the time. For those of us in menopause, we know that you need just a little bit of resistance exercises to help you. Why? Because once you pass the age of 35, for women, naturally your estrogen levels start to drop. Your muscle mass starts to decline. Also, it's called sarcopenia. So if I'm just walking, it's helpful for my heart, for my blood vessels? Yes, it is, but I'm going to continue to lose the muscle just because of my age now. So when you lose weight, you lose fat, you lose muscle, you lose some water, it's just not only fat loss.

Speaker 1: 14:27

So just doing cardiovascular exercises like walking may not be enough. I need to add some resistance. How much? Maybe two, three times a week if I'm just starting off. If you're advanced, you want to do resistance exercises three, four times a week. And what does that mean? Pick up some dumbbells, pick up some barbells. If I'm at home, most of my workouts I like to do at home. You can use your body weight. You can do pushups, you can do planks, you can do squats.

Speaker 1: 14:58

This time in my online bootcamp program, we have a schedule. Some of it is cardio, some of it is lower body, some of it is upper body and some of it is just total body with weight. So we do these different body exercises. You can use your body weight, you can use resistance bands, you can use ankle weights or you don't really need any equipment. There's several exercises that you can do with just your body weight. So the message here is walking is great, it's fantastic, but you also want to add some resistance.

Speaker 1: 15:33

Now, how much walking should you do? I've got a question about that also. It really depends. Everyone is different. I'm different from you. Now, for me personally, I'm shooting for at least 10,000 steps per day. Why? Because I have already been walking for quite some time. If you're somebody who's just starting off, what I recommend is for you to just count, check your steps. Get something that can monitor your steps either a watch like this or your phone, or a pedometer something that can measure your steps for one day. For some people, you may notice that every day you're walking about 2,000 steps. That's your starting point. The next day, I want you to walk 3,000 steps. Do that for a couple of days and then after that, then the next, say the next three or four days.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Increase to 3,500. Increase to 4,000. Go up slowly, go gradually. You cannot go from zero to 100 in one day. Why? Because it puts too much stress on our body, on our minds. It's just too, too hard and then it's not sustainable. All the changes that we make, we want them to be sustainable long-term. Okay, so I think that's it for now and just to wrap things up and to summarize, I'm just talking about the things that we should not do when walking.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Number one do not ignore major medical symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, weakness, dizziness while you're walking. If that happens, go seek medical care, not next week, immediately. It could be your heart that could be catastrophic for you. Number two do not forget to warm up. Don't forget to stay hydrated. Don't forget to also stretch after you're done walking. Don't forget a healthy nutrition is key while you're walking in order for you to see the good results. And don't stay distracted when you're walking. Walk intentionally, increase that speed, keep your core tight, engage your arm muscles. It just works out so much better for you. All right, and I hope this information helps you. Have a good week ahead, my friends. Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Bye. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Thriving Through Menopause. We hope you found valuable insights and practical advice to support your journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, share it and review. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Remember, menopause doesn't have to be a challenge. It can be an opportunity for growth, renewal and self-care. Connect with us on social media, where we share additional resources, tips and advice to help you along your path. Once again, thanks for listening in and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of Thriving Through Menopause. Until then,