by Lokemun Magar

Created on: July 18, 2007   Last Updated: January 18, 2009

Walking can burn fats if we know how best to walk to burn fats. First of all, you need to work at the aerobic state, that is, raising your heart rate gradually to a comfortable one above your normal heart rate. If you start out too quickly, chances are that you will stop altogether or stop and then start, then stop and start all over again. That is bad for the heart and leg muscles.

Recognize that when we start feeling aches in our legs and uncomfortable breathing after the first one or two minutes, that is not the time to stop walking but to keep walking at the same pace until you feel comfortable. The discomfort is a way of letting us know that we are burning up blood sugar and soon our body system will start burning fats. Breathe deep and keep walking! If we stop walking whenever we fell the initial soreness, the lactic acid which is accumulating will not be burnt off and we will feel less inclined to want to continue walking.

How best to walk to burn fats? There is no single rule for that. The secret lies in raising our level of exercise to help us use up more calories until our body taps on the 'fats' in our body - those extra tissues that we want to shed. When we work our body harder than before, we will soon raise what we call the metabolism rate which is the rate at which our body burns calories. Therein lies the secret to burn fats.

Why are good walkers slimmer than those who amble around? The answer is a simple one. The faster and longer we walk, the higher our metabolism rate and the faster we start burning up unwanted calories and fats.

We can do the following to help us walk harder and burn fats:

Warm up your body gradually:

Begin walking at a comfortable pace and increase speed after your body feels stretched and relaxed. It will not do to start too quickly and stop because you have leg cramps.

Use inclinations:

Walk up and down slopes and stairs. This makes our body work harder and thus burn more calories. Do not be too ambitious and climb a slope too steep for our legs to take. Just as we want to build up our stamina, we also want to ensure that our body can take the strain. It will not do to wear out our knee joints and find one day that we cannot even walk a step. Choose walking routes that have slopes and stairs that are just the right challenge for your stamina and leg comfort. Have slopes or stairs alternate with flat surfaces for recovery and then uphill again.

Increase our body mass:

Use weights around arms, legs and waist. These weights make our

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