This Is Absolute Easiest Way to Stay Lean.

I wanna share something with you.  It's probably something you've heard before but I'm sure someone needs to hear this again.  We're heading directly into winter.  I dunno about you but cold-weather season always means that I'll be slowly packing on a few pounds.  This year I want things to be a little different.  I'm tired of trying to shed extra weight when summer rolls around.   Instead, I want to discover the secret to staying lean and implement that habit into my life.


What's the secret to staying lean, you ask?  Well, I'm happy to share it with you.  And, best of all, this secret is much easier than you can imagine.
This summer I reached my lowest weight in over a year.  Before that, I seemed to plateau at an undesirable weight.  Not only did I weigh less, I felt lean and healthy.  Today, I'm about 3 pounds heavier than my lowest weight. But this time, I'm not nearly as lean as before.  Sure, I weigh more so I should be thicker but it's only a few pounds, so why is my body composition so different?


Here's my theory.

In order to understand what I need to do to get back to my leaner "summer body" I had to reflect on what I did to get there.  I tried to follow the rule of keeping my carb consumption to the first part of the day.  And that helped!  As a matter of fact, I've recently lost a couple of pounds by reinstating this rule.  But again, my body fat still seems a little high relative to my current weight.


After thinking about it some more, I remembered the only other thing I did differently this summer was incorporating a long daily walk into the mix.  The walks weren't really meant for weight management.  I primarily used them as a means of getting away from a computer screen to clear my thoughts.  Little did I know that this simple daily habit was having such a powerful effect on my body composition.


My father calls regularly to catch up.   Often, he'll boast about how many steps he got in for the day.  His average is at least 10k steps and sometimes he'll surpass his average by a few thousand additional steps.  Life gets busy so I hadn't seen him for a while.  When I finally got a chance to visit, I immediately noticed his lean, toned physique.  He barely had an ounce of fat on his body.  His muscles were well defined even though he admitted to falling off his strength training regimen.

Currently, I'm losing weight, but I don't seem to be getting much leaner.  If I had to choose between the two, I'd much rather have lower body fat even if the number on the scale remained the same. 

Could waking be the solution?

According to a recent study, older women who live an active lifestyle (meaning they walk 10k steps a day or more) all have one thing in common.  They all have a favorable body mass index compared to their less active peers.  This basically means that they weighed less and enjoyed a lower body fat percentage. 

In other words,  walking helps keep you lean.

Staying lean isn't just for vanity purposes.  I can still fit into every article of clothing in my closet but that doesn't necessarily correlate with my health.  Carrying around more body fat is very harmful to the body.  The last thing we want to experience is a greater amount of fat surrounding our organs.  Ideally, we want to stay lean and have a healthy amount of muscle.  Although I weigh almost the same as my lowest recent weight, I can tell that my composition isn't the same.  Which means that I gotta get back to walking again.  Obviously, diet does play a major role in how much body fat your body will store.  But sometimes we tend to forget how powerful an ally walking can be.