Boost Your Metabolism - 20-Min Walking Workout | 40

Hi Walkers!

Does it feel like your metabolism has taken a permanent vacation? And the only way to get it back is with long, torturous workouts that you just haven't got time for?

What if you could kick start your body's fat-burning machine by working smarter, not longer?

This is a 20-minute walking workout that's going to show you how to use simple, easy-to-do tricks to keep your metabolism burning - not just during this walk, but all day long. 

Here's what I've got for you on this walk:

• Why shorter and harder intervals are your metabolism's best friend.
• Why "exercise snacks" - tiny movements you can do throughout the day to keep the flame alive – rock the free world.
• The time I learned to sprint on my bike after I accidentally rode onto a freeway.
• Background music to help you keep movin' and groovin' (yeah, baby).

You can do this walk outdoors or indoors on whatever equipment you have (and even while just walking in place or moving side-to-side). 

P.S. You'll hear a bell halfway through the walk. If you're outside, that's your cue to turn around and head back. And don't forget to hit subscribe or follow. 

Instagram/Facebook: @yourwalkingpodcast

Transcript

Today's walk's a little longer, and we're going to use some short and powerful intervals to fire up your metabolism. And then along the way, I'm going to share some simple tips that you can use every day to keep that metabolism boosted.

We are going to start out, as always, with a warmup pace. Deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Now, whether you're walking outdoors, you're walking indoors on a treadmill or walking pad, or even if you're just marching in place or moving side to side, anything works as long as you're moving. When we're working harder, if you're not walking outdoors—if you're on a walking pad—you can add some incline if you have that available. Or, if you're marching in place, you can bring your knees up when we work harder.

Roll your shoulders backwards, roll your shoulders forwards.

It's an easy pace, and I'm going to coach you on finding tight spots in your body, when to go faster, when to go slower, and just get an overall good walk in and clear your mind, which is important nowadays because our minds are so cluttered. At the halfway point, you will hear a bell.

For the first, like, 38 episodes, I never told you what the bell was for. So it is the halfway point. If you're walking outside, that means you can turn around and go back. Another deep breath in.

Just feel the road or pavement under your feet. We're going to chat a little bit while we walk about boosting your metabolism.

So you'll notice in a lot of the walks that we do, we do faster intervals or faster bursts and then slow it down, and faster, slow it down.

Not on all the walks—especially the shorter ones—but in some of the longer ones. And the reason we do that is what we're talking about today, which is boosting your metabolism. And those short bursts of effort really are scientifically proven to really help your metabolic health. As we get older, they help with building muscle.

And they really get that oxygen flowing, and they make your body work more efficiently—so kind of like working smarter, not necessarily longer. There's nothing wrong with longer steady state, but as we get older, we want to do some intervals. Now, they don't have to be all super-hard HIIT, but just go faster, go slower, or add resistance or add incline, just to get that little heart rate bump and to really get that blood flowing.

Another deep breath in through your nose.

And exhale through your mouth. Again, just keep on that easy pace. I'll tell you when to speed up, when to slow down.

Shake out your hands; try to feel for any tense spots in your body.

The little speed bursts that we do help our body use energy better, and they give us more of a workout in a short amount of time.

Another deep breath in.

And exhale. Also, when we do those intervals—I like to call them intervals; that's from my spin days—when we do those little intervals or bursts, it also helps avoid these afternoon crashes. It kind of turns our body on and into these machines that use the energy better. Shake out those hands now.

Make sure your feet aren't grasping—or sometimes I say crunching—aren't grabbing your shoes. Your feet aren't too tight. You want to feel a nice, natural stride. Everything is relaxed.

Except for your glutes—you can squeeze your glutes.

Now you're going to go a little faster. Just break out of that warmup pace. I do like to warm up, and the older I get, the more warmup I seem to need. And since this is a longer walk, we have the time. Just feel your body move. Feel your feet hit the pavement.

You're going shorter steps with a little bit more arm drive as you go faster. And you can vary your stride—almost… vary your stride. Take longer steps, or you can take shorter steps and go faster. Both of them will help bring that heart rate up a little bit. If you find some kind of a hill, some kind of an incline…

If you're working indoors, you can bring your knees up. You can add a little bit more resistance if you're on a piece of equipment. Let's hold onto this pace. It's a little bit uncomfortable. You can still talk. I learned when I was teaching spin how to talk while teaching, because let me tell you, that's really hard.

You gotta breathe, and you gotta cue the class, and you have to not die. Those are the three things you need to keep in mind. I learned how to really keep my oxygen flowing and then put the words in where they were natural for my body.

Hold on to that pace.

Stand tall. Your elbows are back a little bit; your cadence is fairly light. When you're going faster, you have quicker feet, and you want to exhale a little bit deeper and kind of pull that stomach in so you can get any stale air out.

And then when you breathe in, you're going to relax your stomach so you can fill up the lungs all the way, because sometimes when our stomachs are tight, we really can't fill those lungs all the way.

Give yourself a little cue when you're walking.

You're a little bit uncomfortable here.

Just going to hold on to that speed.

When you're starting to do these speed bursts or intervals, you don't always have to go faster, aside from adding some incline. If you're walking outside, you can look around you and see if there's any equipment or anything you can use to make it like a moving gym. So there could be a bench, there could be a wall or curbs.

I like to do little step-ups on the curb if nobody's at the park. Usually there's some steps up there, and you can do those things—really bump your heart rate up. So it doesn't have to be just faster. Or you can even do things like push-ups, tricep dips. The parks usually are best so people don't stare at you from their cars, but you can get your heart rate up and get your little burst that way too.

Going to do our first little burst—not super fast. We're going to go for about 45 seconds. Deep breath in. Posture is nice and tall. Squeeze those glutes. This is not going to be a super-fast burst. It's just going to get your body primed and ready to go.

Hold onto that pace. Another deep breath in. Your legs are strong.

Stay with it, and we've got about 10 more seconds. Give it a little push…

And then slow it down a little bit—back to recovery. Another deep breath in…

And exhale.

Shake out your hands. How'd that make you feel? Woke you up a little bit? It's like your first little burst of the day. You want to keep your form. Let your breath lead, and deep breath…

And just settle in. Feel your body moving.

And that was our little wake-up. Now we're going to pick it up a little bit faster, but not a sprint. Little bit uncomfortable. We're going to hold this pace now.

So you can talk, but it's not going to be an easy conversation. It's not going to be an easy conversation—it's not going to be like you can tell a big, long story—but you can still talk at this pace. That's a good judge. When you have the intervals, you really can't say more than a few words at a time, but you should be able to—mostly—string a sentence together.

You are going to check in with your body. Another deep breath in. And exhale.

These sprint-style bursts are really good, especially as we get older, though, because, you know, when you're younger, you want to do these long punishing sessions. You want to do CrossFit; you want to do all these really hard things. But after a while, your body gets tired—starts to show wear and tear.

You can get overuse injuries, and so sometimes it's just better to do shorter. And a little bit of impact is good too. But do a shorter workout that doesn't stress your body as much, and you don't have to go like HIIT—which is high-intensity interval training—but just push it up enough to where you challenge your body, especially in the beginning.

When you go faster, add a little hill or a little bit of incline, you'll notice a big difference in your heart rate. You want to make sure you keep breathing. Going to hang on to that speed. I am going to tell you a little story about how I learned to sprint. I think I might've told this before; I don't remember.

So I was cycling with one of my friends, and we were in Oceanside, California. I'm biking along, and then this road gets more trafficky. And then I realize that this road is turning into a freeway. The freeway just starts. I've never thought about where the freeway starts, but that's where it started. Hold onto that pace. It's brisk, but not a sprint.

So we're cycling along onto this freeway now, which is the 78 freeway. And to the right of me, there are two lanes coming on from the 5 freeway. So if you know anything about California, the 5 freeway is really busy, and they're merging from the 5 to the 78. The 5 freeway lanes are coming in from the right. This little path I'm on is going to end in…

just a few feet. So I sprinted as fast as I could. I sprinted faster than Lance Armstrong ever did, and I picked up that pace because I had to get over two lanes of traffic, and that's how I pretty much learned how to sprint.

When you're staring death in the face, you are like, okay, I can do this. Yeah. So we call that episode “Blondes on Bikes.” Another deep breath in. Really fill up those lungs now. And exhale…

Shake out those hands. Still holding onto it.

Now we're going to slow it down just a little—not much—just to kind of recover yourself. Another deep breath…

Check in with your body.

Look around you and see, for the future—for another walk—what can you use as a burst? Do you have a park that you tend to walk past? Is there some open space? Kind of look now around if you're outside and just kind of see: What can I do in the future if I want to do more of an interval, more of a heart rate burst?

Or do some strength training while you're at it. If you're on an elliptical or if you're on a walking pad, when you slow it down a little bit, you can get off, and then you can do push-ups. You can do something to get your heart rate up and then get back on.

Now we're going to go faster. Going to keep it here about three or four minutes, but you want to be uncomfortable this time.

Want to feel that body move. Breathe and find a pace. If the music is too fast, you can slow it down and find that halftime note in the music. If you feel like you're not going fast enough, you can speed it up and see if you can find that extra note in the music.

And this is a really good spot where you're working hard enough so you start to release those endorphins and you start to feel happier. You start to feel calmer.

Kind of related to that is I saw the movie F1 recently, and it was okay. It was with Brad Pitt—still looks cute at his age. One thing they showed in the movie is when he got to, like, his zone when he was driving, and everything went quiet.

And that's how I used to feel when I was teaching spin. Sometimes, during this one particular part, I would just speed up enough or add enough resistance, and suddenly it would feel like magic. And that's where you want to feel when you go faster or when you do the burst—you want to get into that zone where everything quiets down.

Suddenly you can focus, and you just feel this moment inside where you're flying quiet; you're weightless. It's just like euphoria. And that is what they call the runner's high. But you don't have to punish your body in order to get there.

You'll want to make sure you breathe, and you want to make sure you push hard enough so that you release those endorphins—your feel-good hormones. And you want to get to that spot. And after a while, you start craving to get to that spot. And that's what motivates you to keep walking and keep moving. Hold onto it.

Deep breath in. See if you can get to that spot. Now you can go a little faster. You may not be able to push hard enough if you're walking outside, unless you're adding weights or you're on a hill. You can add a weighted vest as you get more used to walking. Another deep breath. Really push forward now.

You want to make it hard to talk at this point, but you're not completely out of breath. It's not a really hard interval, but it's a challenge, and we're staying here a little bit longer.

It's a few minutes. Hold onto it and breathe. Roll those shoulders backwards. Roll those shoulders forwards.

Your elbows are back. Hands are loose.

Your feet are landing under your hips.

We're almost there, and then we're going to back off that pace,

recover a little bit, and breathe.

So you're dialing that effort down, because you're going to trick your body. Your body's going to be like, oh, okay, well, this is good. This is easier. Because then after this, we're going to do another short burst. But you want to trick your body, so don't tell it what's going on right now. You want to be back at a pace where you can talk in fuller phrases and breathe.

And then, as you'll notice, the more often you do faster paces and intervals, the shorter your recovery needs to be, and you'll be able to recover faster—which is kind of fun, because that's a good way to see how you're getting in better and better shape. It was really noticeable to me when I first started spinning.

Back then, I was still 50 pounds overweight, and I was not in good shape. I could really see the difference. I could stand a little bit longer; I could recover faster. We're going to go again. Now you want to push it either quite a bit faster or add incline or find a hill.

Here we go—push it, strong and focused. Stay with it. This is not going to be super long. This is going to be about 45 seconds, but you really want to push it.

If you're at home just marching in place, you can do a little bit of jumps or those football things side to side. We get a little bit of impact too.

Shorten your stride, add more arm drive, hold onto this effort. It's steady, it's controlled, and we've got 10 more seconds to go. I want you to push it now. Whatever you're doing, do it harder.

And slow down your pace. Feel a little mosey right along. Smooth out your breath,

let your shoulders drop, but you're still moving. And to recover your heart rate faster, let's inhale for a count of 4—2, 3, 4—and exhale for a count of 6: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… and resume your natural breathing.

Another deep breath in.

Shake out your hands, roll out those shoulders.

Now we're going to go a little faster. It's not going to be a brisk walk; it's going to be moderate-brisk. We're going to hold onto this for about four minutes. This is going to help you clear your mind. It's going to help your body get ready for the cooldown. Now, we're not cooling down yet, but it's going to help your body transition to that.

So other ways you can boost your metabolism is strength training. And it doesn't have to be a lot. It doesn't have to be an hour at the gym every day. I like to do splits sometimes where I work my upper body one day, I work my lower body another day, and you don't have to go to the gym. You can do it at home with body weight only. You can do push-ups. You can do squats. You can do Bulgarian split squats, which suck really bad. If you have gliding discs or paper plates, you can use those, and those will really work your butt. And adding muscle to your lower body helps your metabolism come up in general because the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn.

Sure, it's not a huge amount, but it's better than nothing, and it helps you burn calories more throughout the day. And then you have an afterburn. You usually have a higher afterburn with weight training than you do with just cardio, but you really do need both cardio and strength training.

Hold onto that pace. Want to be uncomfortable, but it's not a big push right now—just enough to be like, “Ooh, I'm still working.” So your head is clearing. Feel happier, maybe. Take this time for you.

And moving throughout the day—not just walking, although getting out and walking for five or 10 minutes is an amazing way to, you know, get your body moving again and keep that blood from being stagnant. But if you can do—I think I talk about this a lot, don't I?—if you do some squats throughout the day or push-ups throughout the day. Do something like five minutes every hour or five minutes every two hours; you'll keep your metabolism up, and you'll bring your metabolism up so that way you're not just sitting there and not moving. And before a meal… Hold on to that speed. Just do that throughout the day.

If you can, try it for this week and then let me know. Because you just—yeah—gotta make a habit. You can set a timer on your phone, as long as it's not really loud and scares everybody around you, and just get up from your desk and do something that adds a little bit of muscle to you.

When you use the bigger muscle groups, or multiple muscle groups like push-ups—that's why I keep saying them—you use multiple muscles, so you'll burn more calories, but you'll also bring your metabolism up every time you do it.

So think about that—burst throughout the day. I call them exercise snacks or exercise treats. Depends if you think it's a treat or not. It's also great to do things like that if you're on a conference call where nobody can see you, or on a Zoom call if your camera's off.

Hold onto it now. Another deep breath in—little bit of a push, a little bit uncomfortable. What was I going to tell you? I just said, I'll tell you a story about that later. Let me think for a second what I was just saying. Roll those shoulders backwards. Nope, I can't remember now.

I'm going to remember when I'm done, aren't I? Yes.

Roll those shoulders forwards.

Just hold onto this pace.

Okay, now you're going to slow it down a little bit.

Go back into the database, Helen—go into your Rolodex. What were you thinking about?

Slow your pace a little bit more. And I remember the story. I grew up in Norway, as you may or may not know, and I came back to the U.S. just before I turned 18. And I was born here. My then-boyfriend at the time—who turned out later to become my husband… I can't remember what the team was.

I don't know if it was the Angels or whatever team it was. But they were playing baseball, and I asked my then-boyfriend, I said, “Do you think they'll ever make it to the Super Bowl?” And he said, “No, they'll never make it to the Super Bowl.” And I go, “That's sad. How do you know that?”

And he goes, “Because it's a completely different sport.” I didn't know that baseball didn't have a Super Bowl, because what did I know? We didn't have baseball or football in Norway. Yes, because I'm a blonde. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wasn't blonde back then, so I don't know. Slow it down a little bit more.

Now you are going to take a deep breath in and exhale.

Think about what workouts you can do smarter, not necessarily longer.

Sometimes you need those longer workouts, especially for your mental health. But when you don't have a lot of time, just fit in what you can and move, and you have to create new habits to do that. That's why the phone trick with the little reminder works out great—because you remind yourself until it becomes a habit.

If you catch—was it last episode or a couple episodes ago?—I talked about fitting workouts into your day, and I gave you a bunch of tips, and there are tips on my website. Walking and Talking Show. You think I would know.

I'm really bad at self-promotion, obviously. Slow it down a little more now.

Remember to fit in some strength training. Keep moving throughout the day. Add a little strength burst throughout the day. And if you don't have a lot of time, find one of my 10-minute walks or my 15-minute walks, because I do some intervals in there as well. And it really helps clear your mind, especially if you're crabby.

Slow it down again now. Easy feet, easy steps. Another deep breath in. Remember to relax your stomach, and exhale.

And I'll see you next time on Walking and Talking with Helen.