Twelve Thousand Steps to Shedding Winter Weight

Finally, there's an exercise program that really does work. But therein lies the secret to it all: work. If you walk 12,000 steps a day-without eating more food-you will start to lose weight. It will be slow-about one pound a week. But it will happen-at least it has for me. And if you go on vacation and eat more than usual (in my case, a lot more than usual), then you will slow down the rate of gaining weight. Now, if you're really lucky, walking 12,000 steps will prevent you from putting on pounds even when you do eat too much.

Taking the first of 12,000 steps

For several years now, researchers have claimed that you need to take 10,000 steps a day to maintain good weight and cardiac health. But if you want to lose weight, you have to add on another 2,000 steps.

For me, 12,000 steps is about 4.6 miles and takes 90 minutes. But I am only 5 feet, 2 inches tall and a slower-than-average walker. Taking 12,000 steps-on a day when I'm working-usually amounts to taking two purposeful walks a day . For me that means walking for a good length of time outside my home.

Depending on what you do at home, that can add up to 1,000 or so steps before you even leave the house-for getting up, getting dressed, making a couple trips to the bathroom and getting some breakfast. And if you're chasing kids around the house or doing some kind of active work in your job, you'll really rack up steps without even trying. Even so, you'll probably find that you have to do additional walking.

The good part is that you don't have to take all 12,000 steps at once. You can add them up throughout the day. You can walk 5,000 in the morning, 4000 during lunchtime and a final 3000 after work or in the evening. You can do them slowly or fast. You can do them on the way to errands; they all count.

Tougher than you think

The bad part, or shall we say, the hard part of all this, is that you have to do it-take the steps, that is. If you're like me, 12,0000 steps turned out to be a lot farther and took a lot longer than I thought it would. At the beginning I would walk for about 30 or 40 minutes and find out I had only taken a few thousand steps-and then have to face that I needed to take another 9000 steps.

Getting Motivated

You don't count the steps yourself, of course; you use a good pedometer which counts them for you. I use the Omron pedometer (about $40) which is a top-rated instrument. You program in your age, weight, length of stride and another factor or two. And the pedometer does all the work for you-counting the steps, that is. You still have to walk.

Once you've walked a certain route more than once with your pedometer, you don't even have to use it. Amazingly, you'll walk almost the same number of steps each time, unless you take some brief detour into a shop.

But the whole point, even if you do know what number of steps you'll end up taking, is seeing that number go up. And that's what keeps you going. So let's see: today I took 12, 373 steps. Yes! Now I can put my feet up and enjoy just one more truffle. (I'm on vacation, so it's OK, right?)