Friday, July 22, 2016

2 smaller workouts VS 1 big workout (personal non-scientific experience) for effective weight loss

For one of our fitness challenges at work was to walk 300 miles in 60 days, thus 5 miles a day. This was very extremely challenging. I was on vacation for a week and averaged 14-17 miles a day. Yet, I still barely reached the 300 miles on the last day (12 miles on the last day). I changed my schedule by doing 2-3 miles in an hour during lunch (40 minutes of actual walking).

During this period of time, I lost quite a bit of weight (around 10 pounds in 1 month). Before this I lost maybe 3 pounds over 4 months.

Once the challenge was over, my feet were quite sore so I took a break from the lunch walk, returning to my normal 1-2 hours workout after work. For the next 3 months, I gained 5 pounds. Granted, some of the gained weight was from the increased weight training (instead of pure fat burning or cardio). I do feel stronger and people say that I have trimmed a little (although I still cannot tell if they are just being polite).

I just returned back to walking during lunch since I got the FitBit. I am quite passively competitive. (I also learned someone was quite aggressively competitive but that's another post.) For me it is not all about winning (getting more steps than someone else) but more that I improve faster each week. To beat some of the FitBit friends (although I say it is not about winning, internally I still strive to beat them), I returned to my lunch walk.

In just a week, I have lost 3 pounds (under the minimum weight of my weight swings). After work, I still retain my usual routine but shorter.

I will continue to monitor this pattern but I am a believer that 2 smaller workouts are much more effective than 1 big workout for weight loss.


Update:
8/20 - Updated some grammatical structures.

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