Walking works wonders

Press, 19 June 1986, Page 17

Walking works wonders

I suppose I became a believer in walking when my sister finally did it: she lost the 28 kilograms she had gained since marrying Ned. She had tried lots of diets, all of which only set her up for midnight rendezvouses with the cookie jar. Food restriction for Jane — as I’m sure it does for a lot of people — brought on depression, which only food (most effectively cookies) could erase. In five years of dieting, Jane had gained 20 kilograms. She obviously needed a new angle. And she found one, believe it or not, by breaking a leg. Unwieldly as she was at 78 kilograms, she stumbled one day while carrying groceries, shattering a shin bone so badly that running, aerobics or tennis were suddenly out of the question for a very long time, maybe forever. Jane’s rehabilitation did, however, allow for walking. She started very modestly (out to the garage and back with the help of a cane), but within a month was up to a mile. Her 4-year-old daughter Ellen would go along, pro-

viding more questions than conversation, of course, but making the experience anything but a boring one. Six months after the removal of her leg cast, Jane was up to two miles a day — and down eight kilograms. “For many people, a walking programme can be the single most effective method for losing weight,” says Dr Joel Grinker, a professor of nutrition at the University of Michigan. “It’s something most people can and will do. It doesn’t cost anything. And it doesn’t risk the kinds of orthopaedic injuries that running and aerobics do. All things considered, walking is one of the best forms of weight control a person can get into.” But is ithard enough really to do much good, you ask?

Pain doesn’t burn calories; mileage does. By laws of physics, you bum very nearly the same number of calories walking two miles as you do by running them. And research is finding you may be doing your heart just as much of a

favour as the jogger, too. Studies now show that the beneficial effects of exercise on blood fats occur with low-intensity activity as well as with high. (HDL cholesterol — the good kind — rose by similar amounts following 20 minutes of stationary cycling in a recent University of Pittsburg study whether test subjects rode easily or hard). It seems the time-hon-oured credo of “no pain, no gain” may need some revision.

Perhaps the best part of a walking programme for losing weight, however, has to do with the head. “I always come back in a better mood,” Jane told me about her outings.

“And I’ve noticed something else. Walking isn’t unpleasant for me the way jogging used to be, so I don’t feel this thing of having a right to reward myself with outrageous snacks. I come back feeling content, not tortured, so I don’t feel a need to compensate for anything.” Could a walking programme work for you? If dieting hasn’t, very possibly it could. In a study

that has now become a classic, Dr Grant Gwinup several years ago put a group of obese, unsuccessful dieters on a 30-minute-a-day walking programme, allowed them to eat as they wished — and ALL lost weight. An average of nearly nine kilograms in a year’s time, in fact.

“Dieting slows the rate at which the body burns calories, while exercise speeds this rate,” Dr Grinker explains. “That’s why food restriction alone is a very ill-fated way of losing weight. You’ve got to get the body burning calories rather than storing them.” Right Jane?

Copyright Universal Press Syndicate.

“Bodywork”

by

PORTER SHIMER