Walk Your Butt Off!: Go from Sedentary to Slim in 12 Weeks with This Breakthrough Walking Plan

283 Pages·2013·2.99 MB·English

by  Sarah Lorge Butler

To the test panelists, who let me walk a mile in your shoes, this book is for
you.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: The First Steps
CHAPTER 2: Let’s Move!
CHAPTER 3: Make a Clean Sweep
CHAPTER 4: Put Some Muscle Into It
CHAPTER 5: The Healing Power of Sweat
CHAPTER 6: Pushing the Pace
CHAPTER 7: Keeping Your Momentum
CHAPTER 8: It Pays to Be Restless
CHAPTER 9: Start Counting Steps
CHAPTER 10: Staying on Course
Squeeze your glutes16 to moveCHAPTER 11: Walk Like an Athlete
CHAPTER 12: 60 Workouts and Counting
APPENDIX: Walk Your Butt Off! Workbook
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
If you’ve picked up this book, there’s a good chance you want to lose weight.
There’s also a good chance that you’ve tried to lose weight in the past and
haven’t succeeded. In both cases, I have fantastic news for you: Walk Your Butt
Off! will change your life—and your pants size—but you must be willing to
meet it halfway. If you’re ready to take care of your body and put your health
first, the Walk Your Butt Off! plan will arm you with everything you need to get
there and ensure you have fun along the way.
How do I know? This program was created by a trio of top-notch women, all
of whom have to work just as hard as the rest of us to sneak activity into our
crazy-busy schedules (which is why they’ve created a program that doesn’t
require hours in the gym and can be done anytime, anywhere). They know the
rewards that come from committing to daily exercise—more energy, better
health, and a body that looks good in jeans and a tank top—and their enthusiasm
for fitness jumps off the pages. Who are they? Well, there’s your walking coach,
ACE-certified fitness instructor and previous fitness director of Prevention
magazine, Michele Stanten. There’s also your food coach, Leslie Bonci, RD, the
director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and
all-around lover of real, delicious, good-for-you foods. And finally, there’s writer
and mom-of-two Sarah Lorge Butler, who helped Michele and Leslie put
together their program in a way that’s clear, concise, and enjoyable to read.
It wasn’t enough for Michele, Leslie, and Sarah to create a program that
should work for everyone. They wanted to be 100 percent positive that any
woman who picked up this book would have success if she followed the
program. So what did they do? They tested the plan on 19 real women, the
majority of whom were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. If you’ve already blown out
your 40th birthday candles, you know that they were up against all of the
challenges that make shedding pounds more difficult as you age: a slowing
metabolism, hormonal changes, and a jam-packed schedule. So when these same
women shed 10, 20, even 30 pounds, it became clear that the Walk Your Butt
Off! program works. And it works remarkably well.
Forget dieting. You won’t have to give up a single favorite food group to see
results on this program. In fact, Walk Your Butt Off! doesn’t even include a diet
program because we know that diets don’t work long plus additional for
seasoning
You will, of course, have to walk for roughly 30 minutes, 5 days a week. It
won’t always be easy—you’ll have to break out of those sedentary chains
that nearly all of us are enslaved in, thanks to desk jobs, long commutes,
and the constant lure of snuggling up on the couch for some TV time. But
Walk Your Butt Off! will inspire you to put one foot in front of the other
and will give you the tools to turn a simple walk into that life-changing,
magic fix you’ve been searching for. The rest is up to you.
My final words to you, dear friend: Look forward to your daily walks. We are
required to sit so often—sometimes for hours on end—that sitting is no longer a
reward. Walking, even for only 30 minutes a day, is a pleasure that only the truly
lucky get to enjoy, and it is such a treat. Tune in to how good it feels to move
your body, to breathe in and out, and, yes, to break a sweat. Be thankful you’re
alive, embrace the journey, and keep your sights set on the horizon. Walk Your
Butt Off! is here to show you how.
Happy walking,
INTRODUCTION
Walking gets a bum rap. A raw deal. Shafted.
The only time anyone makes a big deal about walking is when you’re about 12
months old. You take your first wobbly steps toward the outstretched arms of
your mom or dad before falling into the coffee table. With any luck, the other
parent captures the moment on video. But after that, no one pays walking any
mind.
Walking is the orphan child of exercise. It doesn’t have the dramatic grunting
of weight lifting, the giggling-with-your-girlfriends appeal of Zumba, the ooohm
of yoga, the cutting-edge gear of cycling, or the year-round competitive
opportunities that runners get. Even though walking—racewalking—is an
Olympic sport (betcha didn’t know that), it somehow still gets overlooked.
Because walking is such an integral part of our lives, most of us fail to notice
it as a form of exercise, a vital component of good health, and a powerful tool
for weight loss. From the moment we put our feet on the floor in the morning
until the minute we crawl under the covers again two-thirds of a day later, we
rely on our two feet to get us places—the kitchen, the bathroom, into our cars,
down the hall to the copier. It’s so simple, so essential to our identity as humans
that we tend to not give it much thought. We think about walking only when
we’re in pain and can’t move comfortably.
THE POWER OF WALKING
It’s time to reconsider. This simple movement, for which we’re designed, can
work wonders.
For conditioning: With walking, you’re developing the capacity of your
cardiovascular system. You’re also building muscle in the legs and core and,
when you walk at faster speeds, the arms and shoulders.
For health and longevity: According to Dr. Steven Blair, professor of
exercise science, epidemiology, and biostatistics at the University of South
Carolina, a little walking can stave off many diseases. Even if you’re carrying
around more weight than you’d like, if you walk regularly, you’re healthier than
someone of the same weight who doesn’t move. Walking 30 minutes a day offers
protection from a host of ills, like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Simply put,
statistics show that a little walking prolongs your life. It’s better to be overweight
and active than thin and sedentary. Active people—no matter what the scale says
—enjoy longer and fuller lives than inactive people.
And, of course, the one everyone cares about …
For weight loss: Walking burns calories at a steady, reliable rate. Walk
enough and you’ll see results on the scale. Walk a little faster and you’ll see
results quicker, too. Research shows that exercise is a crucial component of
maintaining weight loss. If you get the pounds off, you’ll need regular exercise
to help you keep them off.
What’s more, walking couldn’t be easier. It’s low impact, requires no special
gear beyond a comfortable pair of sneakers, and can be done anywhere. Even in
place. An easy walk doesn’t require a shower. Walking trumps all other activities
in the convenience department.
For all these reasons, walking is worth a fresh look.
ASKING QUESTIONS; FINDING ANSWERS
That’s what we did when we created the Walk Your Butt Off! program. We
wanted to see what would happen if people walked consistently at least 5 days a
week for about 3 months.
Back in October 2011, we developed a 12-week walking program and
recruited 22 volunteers to test it out. We wanted the test panelists to tell us—
honestly—about what happened to them. Could they start an exercise program?
More importantly, could they stick with it?
Did they get faster? Feel better? Gain health and energy? How did they do
when the weather turned colder? When all the big-eats holidays—from
Halloween through New Year’s Eve—confronted them?
Of course, there was one major reason they wanted to walk: They wanted to
lose weight. And, of course, we wanted to know what happened in that
department, too. Could they shed pounds with walking?
• Meet Our Experts
Coach Michele Stanten has been walking, quickly, for more than 2 decades;
and sometimes, when she’s out doing errands with her family, she’ll ask her
husband to drop her a few miles from home and let her walk the rest of the way
back. On a typical day working with the test panel volunteers, she was out there
walking backward, her gaze trained on the test panelists, scrutinizing their form,
telling this one to look up, that one to relax her shoulders, this guy to pay
attention to letting his heels strike first. Michele was the fitness director of
Prevention magazine for 20 years, and she has walked distances up to a
marathon. When we entered a local 5-K (3.1 miles) road race together, she
finished in 38 minutes—faster than many of the and walk back to the start at a
more comfortable pace. through orunners. When she’s walking, she’s moving.
Then we have Leslie Bonci, MPH, RD, CSSD, LDN, who is the director of
sports nutrition at the university of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She helps
everyone from individual clients struggling to lose weight to scholarship athletes
at Pitt who need to eat for better performance. The most important thing to know
about Leslie, though, is that she lives a normal life with a regular diet full of
easy-to-find foods. It’s not all kale and tofu. She shops in a regular grocery store
and has raised two sons while working more than full time. And frankly, she
doesn’t love being in the kitchen. Instead, her husband, Fred, does most of the