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If you are loving what you're learning in the podcast and you want to start applying it to your fitness routine, you can try one of our free classes. No credit card required, just drop your email to get access. This is a Upper Body Build class taught by myself. To take the class, visit portal.evlofitness.com I'm Dr. Shannon Richie. I'm a doctor of Physical therapy, fitness trainer and founder of eFlow Fitness. In the Dr. Shannon show, you'll learn applicable tools to improve your health based on science.

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Welcome to the show. Hi everyone. Welcome back. Today we are talking about how walking affects body composition. Walking is one of my favorite ways to stay overall active and it has so many benefits from cardiovascular health to being a really good activity for recovery day to mental health and anxiety reduction. But how does walking affect your body composition? Body composition is the ratio of lean mass to fat mass, and ideally we want a higher ratio, so a higher lean mass to fat mass ratio. Lean mass development, namely bone and muscle, can be increased through resistance training close to failure and eating enough protein. So while walking doesn't build significant lean mass, it can have an effect on fat mass. Now to what extent does it have an effect on fat mass? That's what I'll talk about today. If your goal is fat loss, nutrition will have the largest impact. Even if you are walking a lot, you will not lose fat if you're in an overall calorie surplus, so that's important to say. I also don't recommend tracking calories burned from walking or any form of exercise and adding that to a food tracker if fat loss is your goal. Fitness wearables are notoriously inaccurate and will likely unintentionally be overestimating your calorie expenditure. So if you're adding this to a food tracker, the tracker will add overall more more calories to your needs and this can put you in a calorie surplus unintentionally. So while walking can have an effect on body composition, if you're eating in a surplus, no amount of walking will result in much fat loss, so that out of the way there seems to be a dose or a volume of walking that will have the most profound effects on fat loss. Research shows that individuals taking fewer than 5,000 steps per day typically experience fat gain and are classified as sedentary, While those achieving 7, 500 to 10,000 steps per day demonstrate improved body composition markers. The benefits continue up to approximately 15,000 steps per day, though with diminishing returns beyond 10,000 steps. Studies of postmenopausal women demonstrate a linear relationship between steps and BMI, again up to about 10,000 steps per day, with clear incremental benefits at different stepping thresholds. So those achieving 5,000 to 7,500 steps per day show lower BMI compared to individuals walking fewer than 5,000 steps per day, while further improvements are seen in the 7,500 to 10,000 step range. However, research indicates no significant additional BMI benefits beyond about 10,000 steps per day, suggesting a plateau effect in body composition improvements at those higher step counts. This is likely because calorie expenditure plateaus at a certain point, so doing more exercise doesn't burn more calories overall and doesn't increase fat loss. Another study compared groups walking for 30 or 60 minutes with combined standardized diet. They found that both of these groups produced similar weight loss. This suggests that longer walking durations may not necessarily yield proportionally greater benefits. These findings point to a really important principle that I talk about on this podcast all the time is the law of diminishing returns. So research shows that while body composition improvements might show greater benefits, from basically zero to something, walking more doesn't necessarily result in more fat loss. So this creates kind of a complex relationship where initial improvements come relatively easily, but further progress becomes more challenging at higher volumes of walking. So just to summarize, if you aren't walking at all, some walking may yield some fat loss. But if you're already active and walking, adding more activity isn't necessarily going to be a huge contributor to your overall body composition. So shoot for 7,500 steps per day or more. And it's not just the amount of steps that matter, but also how fast you walk is important. Walking intensity plays a crucial role in these relationships, with reachers showing that a hundred steps per minute as the threshold for moderate intensity walking is important. So if you take a 30 minute walk, you should approximately take 3,000 steps or more. This isn't something you have to obsess about, but maybe just take a timer on your next walk and see how many steps you take in one minute. I did this on my last walk and I think I was around like 140 steps per minute or something like that. Additionally, research shows that steps should be taken in bouts of 10 minutes or longer for optimal body composition. So again, just to summarize, shoot for at least 7, 500 steps in a day and taking a hundred steps per minute or more in 10 minute bouts or more. Know that more walking may have some minor improvements and it also may have effects on other things like your Mood, mood and anxiety reduction. But the benefits on body composition specifically will be minor, if at all. So that's walking dosage. Another thing I want to discuss, which I think is interesting, is how walking affects hormones that influence body composition. Walking also affects cortisol. The relationship between walking and stress hormones is key. So walking, particularly when performed outdoors in natural settings, has been shown to reduce cortisol levels. In fact, I interviewed a neuroscientist on the podcast Nicole Vignola who spoke to this more. She described how walking engages a part of your brain that competes with the brain associated the part of the brain associated with anxiety, which makes walking a really great tool for anti anxiety. Not only will this make you feel better in the moment and reduce anxiety, but it can play a role in body composition. By managing cortisol levels through regular walking, you may improve your insulin sensitivity. This is because cortisol raises blood sugar. When blood sugar is high, insulin is released. This is a natural mechanism and nothing to fear. But when blood sugar is chronically high, we start to become insulin resistant. This has all sorts of negative effects, but as it relates to body composition, it may mean we store more body fat. So walking may positively affect some hormones that may indirectly or directly influence our body composition. So let's summarize everything that we've talked about so far. Shoot for 7, 500 steps per day or more, walking in 10 minute bouts. @ least walking with enough intensity so around a hundred steps per minute or more. I love walking because it can be a social activity. I walk with my husband and daughter. It's good for your mental health. It doesn't overly stress muscle so it won't negatively impact your recovery from your strength sessions. It makes a really ideal compliment to resistance training. So I hope this was helpful. We'll see you all next week, same time, same place. Bye for now.