After a long, cold winter of such strenuous projects as reading, working on my Duolingo Spanish (a third attempt), exhausting my Hulu and Netflix video library, and playing with LEGOs, I forced myself upon a set of bathroom scales the other day and also found out that I’ve apparently been eating and snacking like a prisoner on death row.  The scale settled in on numbers that made me swear out loud when I read the final tally, but I then glanced up and took a good look at my physique in the mirror and mumbled, “yeah, that looks about right.”

Depressing way to start a morning.

Anyway, it wasn’t January 1^st, but it was time to make a new resolution.  Let’s be real, I’m not looking to hone my frame into a fighting machine that would break course records on “American Ninja Warrior”, but I’d like my “dad bod” to at least be respectable enough for me to take my shirt off at the beach and passersby not try to roll me back into the deep surf in a valiant attempt to save my life.

So what’s an easy, low-impact exercise that is not only good for me, but can help shed some of these unwanted, COVID-enhanced, sedentary pounds that I have picked up over the past six months?

Walking.

In the age of FitBits and Apple Watches, it’s relatively easy to have some sort of step counter or pedometer on one’s person, ready to count the number of steps taken each day.  So, how can someone use this to their advantage and turn walking into a fat-burning exercise?

Well, first things first – determine how many steps you are already taking on a daily basis.  A mile is roughly 2,000 or so steps – so if you’re already walking 4,000 steps (on average) in your daily routine, you now have to add in more steps to go “above and beyond” your normal range in order to burn more calories.  Every mile walked burns roughly 100 calories, so if a person commits to adding in an extra 6000 steps a day (approximately three miles), that’s 300 “extra” calories burned.  One pound is equivalent to @ 3,500 calories, so from here on out, it becomes one of those math word problems everyone hated in school.

300 extra calories a day x 30 days = 9,000 calories/month

9,000 calories  = 2.57 pounds/month “potential” weight loss

Since I have a desk job, it’s shocking to me just how little I move during my daily duties.  I’m lucky to get in 4,000 steps on a typical work day, so I’m trying to tally 10,000 steps every day (with my added “exercise”).  Odds are, if you live in my town, you’ll see me out walking.  I try to walk everywhere – to the bank, to the post office, and to the pharmacy.  I live close to the three schools in town, so you’ll often see me out trudging the well-lit sidewalks as I take lap after lap around the school perimeters in the late evening.  I anxiously await the buzzing of my FitBit bracelet as it signals that I’ve hit my 10,000 step goal each day.  Hopefully, it will translate into some loose-fitting pants and a gut that doesn’t look like I’m trying to hide a medicine ball under my shirt.

So make way for the walking man.  He’s on a mission to shape up and slim down.

Time will tell.