THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

Quicker, more frequent walks are more conducive to weight loss, study finds

Workouts are getting shorter, and there’s no reason walking workouts can’t be part of the trend, even if weight loss is the goal.

The idea that walkers can join the growing community of exercisers who reap benefits from shorter workouts might seem contrary to the belief that walkers need to go long if they want to burn enough calories for weight loss.

But a study published in Obesity reported participants who split their long walk in two lost more weight than those who stuck with one long walking workout a day.

The study featured 65 overweight, sedentary women who were divided into two groups: One who walked once a day for 50 minutes/six days a week and one who took two, 25-minute walks a day/six days a week.

Each woman was prescribed a personalized diet plan designed to promote weight loss along with weekly check-ins with professionals. And to add an extra dose of motivation, each study subject was encouraged to recruit a friend to walk alongside her.

All of the women participating in the study had their measurements logged at the start of the 24-week intervention. Daily step counts were recorded by a pedometer that was worn at all times except while bathing or sleeping.

At the end of the 24-week trial, both walking groups lost weight and increased their daily step count.

The combination of diet and exercise has proved to be an effective weight-loss strategy. But what’s worth noting is the walkers who split their workout into two 25-minute bouts lost an additional 1.7 kg and had a higher step count than the once-a-day walkers.

“There was no significant differences in the estimated energy intake between the groups,” wrote the study’s authors. “Therefore, the significant difference in weight loss after 24 weeks between both groups may be due to a difference in physical activity energy expenditure between the two groups.”

The extra pounds lost by the twice-a-day walkers seems like a big win, but so, too, is the greater gain in daily step count, which suggests shorter, more frequent workouts can result in more exercise.

The twice-a-day walkers added an extra 2,965 steps to their daily step count, compared with an additional 2,196 steps by the once-a-day walkers.

The results of this study allow the time-challenged among us more flexibility in achieving their goals.

A 25-minute walk at lunch and another one after dinner is doable, whereas one 50-minute walk can be more challenging over the lunch hour or within that short window of time between when the dinner mess is cleaned up and end-of-day fatigue kicks in.

That said, missing from the data collected in this study is the speed of the walking workouts. The faster you walk, the more calories you burn, and since the study counted steps, not calories, it’s hard to know how intensity factored into the results.

Another caution for those who plan on trying to replicate the results is that the subjects were overweight, sedentary women between 18-40 years of age, which means the results may vary in other populations like men, people of lesser weight, older and more fit individuals.

If you do plan on trying to break up your walks into two shorter workouts, you might want to consider experimenting with picking up the pace.

The benefit of a shorter walk is you don’t need as much endurance, which means you can bump up intensity with less worry of running out of gas.

Try adding short 30-60 second bouts of speed walking, aiming for 130 steps a minute, somewhere around 10 minutes into your walk.

Intersperse your speedy intervals with 30-60 seconds of recovery, taking down the pace to a more comfortable speed before picking it up again. Repeat the fast/slow intervals four times, after which you’ll be on the home stretch for the finish line.

Or, add a five-minute stretch of sustained speed walking somewhere around the middle of your walk, and then take it down a notch or two on the return trip.

Remember to shorten, not lengthen, your stride as you pick up speed, increasing your turnover versus the distance covered with each step.

And use one of the many apps available for your phone to count your steps, monitor your pace and calculate time and distance travelled.

Armed with a plan, plus more sunlight at both ends of the day, go ahead and experiment with breaking your walks into two speedier workouts.

ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Try adding bursts of speed walking to your shorter walks and tighten up your stride. What you lose in endurance with shorter walks, you’ll gain in intensity.