The question for this article is whether losing weight requires you to run or should you just move more in general including walking and standing more throughout the day.

My wife Kat is exploring whether losing weight can be done through simply being more active throughout the day or whether more intense like running is necessary. She recently had a role where she was on her feet all day. Just helping people out. She was surprised how much weight she lost. She hadn’t even been trying. At the same time she had been so busy there was no temptation or opportunity to snack during the day. She was happy, busy and her lifestyle set her up to lose weight. No running or intense activity. Just gentle regular movement.

Thinking about it, watching historical dramas like the tutors or Downton abbey you don’t see many people running. But most are active. Back then they had to be. The difference from then to now is most likely that for several hours of the day each person used to burn on average an extra 20 – 50 calories per hour. Not much on the face of it but add up each hour, maybe 3-4 hours and you have between 80-200 calories extra burnt per day. That can burn as much 1 stone of fat per year or prevent you putting on that much.

Food for thought ;-). This is how I can explain how we ate more during the war yet weren’t obese, we were more active throughout the day, we didn’t have all these labour saving tools and most people had to move more in general but there’s no proof yet. research just isn’t really done in this area. I’m hoping to inspire you to test this theory for yourself

The idea is to take care of the small values and the big ones will take care of themselves. Pun intended. If you can add 20 calories per hour to parts of your day for a while then it is easy to add another 20 calories at a time until you burn enough. The key point is not to rush and burn out or injured. Always remember you are burning more calories than you used to. Sooner or later it will pay off.