They Were Wrong About HIIT - Walking is The KING of Fat Loss

I lost 100 pounds. And to do that, I lifted, I ran, I did HIIT, I did all of it. But the large majority of what actually truly moved the needle for me was walking. And if you look at the literature, whether it's fat loss or just longevity, walking literally just 5,800 steps per day, not running, not doing CrossFit, not doing HIIT circuits, that alone reduced the risk of dying by 40%. And that's from a huge meta-analysis with like 50,000 people. And then just adding a thousand steps to wherever you are right now is linked to a 12% drop in mortality. Okay. I mean, that's like 10 minutes of walking. But the thing is, this isn't just about longevity. Like there are specific things that happen for fat loss. And that's what we're going to cover in today's video. Because like one of these is a really interesting like glucose clearing mechanism that allows you to bypass insulin. There's another one that directly offsets the damage of being sedentary. So we're going to cover five specific reasons. Okay. So we'll get into the blood sugar and insulin thing. We'll talk about the fat oxidation piece. We'll get into muscle preservation and why it's easier on your joints. We're going to talk about how it offsets the damage of a sedentary lifestyle. We have all these cool things that I want to go into, and you're going to also learn exactly how much to walk. Another thing that's really important for fat loss that people overlook is what is called the protein leverage hypothesis. And this is very important before we even get to talking about walking. A lot of this hypothesis shows that we will continue to eat and eat and eat until our protein needs are met. So one of the best things you can do is allocate most of your protein earlier in the day. Because once you get your protein to a certain point, your brain no longer actively seeks food as much because you've reached your protein goals. So you don't have to go get calories and calories and calories just to try to get your protein. So things kind of calm down. One of the ways I recommend you do that is with a good quality whey protein. And the one that I use is one that is tested for over 200 contaminants and it only has five ingredients. It's called Puri. I had to ditch some of the protein brands that I consumed and even ones that I worked with because at the end of the day, the purity wasn't there. Okay, five ingredients in Puri. And they test every single batch and they publicly disclose the test results of every batch. That is legit transparency. So that link down below gets you 32% off when you start a subscription with Puri. And I promise you this is going to be the cleanest protein that you've seen. Like that is at least my take of it. I cannot find anyone that has the same level of authenticity, that has the same level of like awards and clean label certifications. Like it is legit. So that link is down below if you're looking for what I would say is the best protein powder that's on the market. Like again, you can look at the ingredients and you can see for yourself. So that link is down below or you can go to puri.com slash thomas. Let's start with walking and blood sugar. This one is probably one of the biggest deals. Like when you walk, the large muscles in your legs, like your glutes, your quads, like these are all contracting. And when those contract, they pull glucose out of the bloodstream directly without insulin even being involved. So most of the time your body relies on insulin to shuttle glucose into the cells. That's the whole mechanism that breaks down in type 2 diabetes, right? Cells stop responding to insulin. So glucose stays elevated. Everything downstream suffers from that. But muscle contraction bypasses that system, okay? So you're giving the pancreas essentially a break so it doesn't have to pump out insulin whenever your legs are clearing glucose on their own. So that same glucose that's floating around potentially causing damage when it's elevated, your muscles just soak up. Now exercise in general is going to do this. Not just like walking, but walking is the most accessible version for people. You don't need a gym. You don't need a program. Like you just walk, right? You just move. The second reason that walking is the king of fat loss is simple fat oxidation. When you walk at a low intensity, your body is using fat as a fuel source. Now you can make the argument that like a 60-minute run is going to burn more calories and therefore more fat than a 60-minute walk. And that is absolutely true. But as a percentage of fuel, walking pulls a significantly higher proportion from fat source and a lower proportion from glycogen and carbohydrate. And that matters practically because you can walk for a long time and multitask. You can walk for an hour, for two hours. You can walk all day. Okay? The longer that you sustain that low intensity effort, the more you stay in that fat burning zone. So you're never tapping into glycogen, or at least barely. And you're not burning through carbohydrate reserves. You're solely running on body fat. You're not spiking cortisol. You're not breaking down muscle. You're not stressing your central nervous system. And over time with consistent low intensity, like walking, you develop mitochondrial machinery to become more efficient at using fat as a fuel source all the time. So that is a true metabolic adaptation. And your body literally gets better at releasing and then burning stored fat the more consistently that you do it. When we were like hunter-gatherers, we walked constantly. I think that is how we potentially survive, right? We could hunt our prey over long domains, walking and slow jogging. Like we would just go forever. Okay? There probably would have been periods of feasting followed by these long periods of scarcity. And during those scarcity stretches, the body needed to know how to run efficiently on its own fat. So walking taps into that system and gets you good at that. Then reason three, which is muscle preservation. I think this is one of the most overlooked ones. Because if you're trying to lose fat, the goal is to keep as much muscle as you possibly can while shedding fat. High intensity cardio can work against that. I love my high intensity cardio. I do it, but it absolutely, like excessive running, excessive hit, it will start to eat into that muscle tissue if you are not recovering and repairing properly, especially if you're in a deficit. Walking, it's very hard to do that. It's extremely muscle sparing. In fact, we've seen literature that improves angiogenesis, which is the development of new blood vessels into the muscle tissue. So that means better blood flow, better nutrient delivery, better muscle activation. So if you're resistance training, which I think you should be, walking is the ideal complement to that. You get your cardiovascular work, you burn fat, and you don't compromise the muscle that you're building in the gym. I am not opposed to doing some hard cardio. You should hit some zone four and some zone five, but not nearly at the proportion that we probably think we should. Walking should be the majority of it, resistance training, and then you should be building that cardiovascular ability, that respiratory capability, all with some periodic high intensity. The fourth reason is joint health. This is the sustainability argument that is super important. Running is great, sprints are great, HIIT is great. I do all of those things, but if the bulk of your active time is high impact, high central nervous system, everything is paying the price, especially your joints. So if your joints start to go, do the math. Your activity drops, your metabolic health drops, your metabolic rate drops, and you put yourself into a terrible spot. Walking isn't putting you there. It's non-concussive. It doesn't beat up your knees. It doesn't beat up your hips. It's fine on the ankles. As a matter of fact, a lot of evidence say it's supportive of all this. You can do it literally every day. The best exercise program we have seen for years and years and years is one that you can maintain for decades. So if you're walking an hour a day at age 45 and your joints are feeling good, you'll probably still be doing it 65 and 75 and maybe 85. Not always the case with high impact training. You see a lot of athletes bang themselves up and then end up very out of shape when they're older. I love to do hard things. I do all of those things, don't get me wrong. But if you looked at where I actually spend the bulk of my active time, it's walking. Walking with my kids at Disneyland. Walking with my family in Europe. Walking to go get waffles. The thing is, if you add walking in, you can do those things that would otherwise be like guilty pleasures, right? And I do that because I enjoy it and I want to still be doing it at 60, 70, 80. Now the fifth reason is the one that ties it all together. And this was from a study published in The Lancet that looked at over 1 million people and it found that 60 to 75 minutes of moderate physical activity per day eliminates the increased mortality risk associated with sitting more than 8 hours a day. Eliminates it. It doesn't just reduce it, it completely offsets the negative effects of being sedentary. Think about what that means for people that work desk jobs. They are sitting 8, 10, sometimes 12 plus hours a day. And there was a study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine projected by 2030 nearly one in two American adults will be obese and one in four will be severely obese. That is very close by. That's four years away, time of recording this. We are sitting more and gaining more than at any point in human history. And walking is the most realistic tool to fight both of those things simultaneously. With no gym membership, it doesn't take any money. You don't even need to block off a special hour. You can take calls on walk. You can walk your dog. You can park further away. You can get your sunlight, your vitamin D, like all the morning light exposure, the things that impact your circadian rhythm and your sleep quality. When you watch my videos, you say, I don't have time to do all this. Most of the things I recommend you can do while you're walking. You can drink your coffee while you're walking. It's not compartmentalized the way a gym session is. It fits into your life. It doesn't compete with it. It's sustainable. That's why it works, okay? So we have one activity that covers these massive mechanisms, clearing glucose without insulin, burning a higher percentage of fat, preserving your muscle, keeping your joints intact, and offsetting your sedentary job. So if you're currently at like 3,000 to 4,000 steps, you don't have to jump up to 10,000 overnight. Add 1,000 steps to wherever you are right now, and that alone is linked to a 12% drop in all-cause mortality. If you can work to 6,000 or 8,000 steps, that's where the mortality curve flattens the most, right? So if you're under age 60, aim for 8,000 to 10,000. Maybe drop it down a tiny bit if you're over 60. And if you're in a fat loss phase, walk fasted in the morning while sipping on your coffee or your green tea, okay? You're already in a state where your body's primed to oxidize fat, so having a little caffeine is going to help it. And it's going to extend that window without like an extra cortisol spike the way that super intense training can. Now, if you want to see specifically what walking does for insulin resistance at a deep level, check out this video next. It breaks down what happens at 8,000 steps per day for insulin resistance specifically and how your cells kind of respond in there. So that video is right here. I highly recommend you watch it. It's a good one after this, and I'll see you tomorrow.