Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2812: The Most Overlooked Way to Burn Fat

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Walking might be the most underrated fat loss tool. In this episode, the hosts break down five reasons why simple daily walking can be more effective and sustainable than many traditional cardio methods. If you're trying to lose fat without overcomplicating your routine, this episode explains why walking should be part of your strategy. How to lose fat in 3 steps: ⁠mpfatloss.com⁠ This episode is brought to you by HUEL ! ⁠https://huel.com/MINDPUMP⁠ Use code MINDPUMP For MP exclusive offer of 15% OFF . New Customers Only.   00:00 Intro: Why Walking Is an Underrated Fat Loss Tool 00:35 Free Fat Loss Guide + Sponsor Mention 01:38 Why Trainers Used to Ignore Walking 03:26 Why Walking Is Valuable for Everyone 05:59 Reason #1: Walking Is Low Skill and Low Injury Risk 07:13 Walking Builds Sustainable Habits 10:20 Walking Helps Recovery and Muscle Growth 11:30 Walking Preserves Muscle During Fat Loss 13:03 Stacking Walking With Other Habits 16:11 How Daily Activity Burns More Calories Than Workouts 19:17 Why Walking Is So Easy to Stay Consistent With 21:09 Getting Outside and the Hidden Health Benefits

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded podcast in fitness entertainment history, also with the most five-star ratings. This is mind pump. Today's episode, we talk about five reasons. We give you five reasons why walking, good old-fashioned, easy walking, is the most underrated. fat loss tool. By the way, if you're interested in fat loss, we have a free guide. It's

How to Lose Body Fat in three steps, just three steps. You can get at npfatloss.com. This episode's also brought to you by our sponsor, Hew. Huell is plant-based nutrition. These are mere replacement shakes. They taste amazing. Proteins, some carbohydrates, a little bit of fat. It's a great source of nutrients. It's convenient. It's easy. Great amino acid profile. for muscle recovery. Again, it's plant-based. So if you can't have dairy, it's great. My favorite part is it tastes incredible. Tastes really, really good. And if you go on our link, you'll get 15% off. Go to hule.com. That's huell.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump. That'll give you that 15% off. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of

our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpump store.com. I'm talking right now. hit pause, head on over to Mind Pumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Walking, it's one of the most, if not the most, underrated fat loss tool. We're going to give you five reasons why you should walk and use this in your regimen.

Let's go. Every time we bring this up or talk about this on the podcast, it always reminds me what a terrible trainer I was. It does. I have, I have just have, I have, you know, we all have our own little stories that we share about, like when we, we admittedly, with the best trainers.

But I could, like, literally remember, like, scoffing at people. Totally. When I used to, we had this intake form that you would give somebody when the first time you met with them. And it's like a full questionnaire on their, you know, their exercise. Yeah, their history, their medical history, their past history and working out what they currently do for exercise. And, you know, a lot of times people, I walk.

That's what I do for exercise. I'm like, you don't do anything. Yeah, basically, you do nothing. Yeah, basically, that's what I'm saying? Basically, you're checking off nothing. And I'm laughing tongue and cheek now, but it always makes me feel terrible because it's crazy how it's been a 180 for me

later in my career realizing that this is the first place I start with damn near everybody almost almost everybody no matter what your goal is is actually managing their daily activity. And it makes me feel terrible because it was something that I scoffed at and made people feel like they weren't doing a good job. or that doesn't count.

And yet, here I am today. It's almost always the first thing I peer into and the first thing that I start to move people in the direction of. And so ironically. So even experienced lifters. Yes. Yeah, it wasn't just beginners. And that was the thing.

I always thought just like for the people that were like had no idea how to train. And like this is just the first, you know, introduction. But there's so much value in walking for so many different aspects. Well, we just had a conversation on the podcast. earlier the other day when we recorded an episode about us not walking. And we're setting walking goals for ourselves. For real. Yeah.

And it's important. Very, very advanced lifters, I'd say, yet, you know, need more of that in our lives. So it's interesting how valuable and how high I rank it today

versus what I would have ranked it 25 years ago. Someone listening might be thinking a few things, right? They might be like, well, walking, it's not strenuous. It doesn't, burn a lot of calories. Why is this like a great form of exercise or activity? Again, to be clear,

all forms of exercise, if done appropriately, right? So apply it appropriately for the right person. They all have lots of value. Okay. So almost any form of exercise, as long as it's done appropriately, is going to bring some value. We'll improve your health. Depending on which one you do, you're going to get more stamina, more strength, more mobility or flexibility. And if we were to rank forms of exercise for like athletic performance and strength and stamina, walking wouldn't make it too high on that list. And yet here we are saying that walking is this great form of activity. It's just wonderful form of activity.

So I think we should explain why we're saying that when walking isn't the best for athletic performance. It's not the best for endurance. It's not the best for building muscle. It doesn't burn the most calories. Yet I place it at the top of lists when it comes to just general. activity. And I put it at the top as one of the things for fat loss tool.

Yes. Yes. And so here's the thing that, so let me just paint the context. We trained people for many, many years for decades. And we have trainers that work for us now here at Mind Pump that work with people. And there's a lot of things you have to consider when you're recommending a form of exercise.

And if you're not a trainer or you're not a coach, you might not even think of these things. But a trainer or coach has to consider these things because, you have to recommend something that's appropriate for somebody that has a high adherence rate that allows someone to be consistent and so forth. Otherwise, who cares, right? If I recommend a form of exercise that someone's not going to be able to do

is inconvenient, has a high risk of injury, or is going to take away from, let's say, our primary form of exercise, which is typically strength training, who recommend, it's not a great form of exercise. So I'll start with the first thing, and this is a big one. This is a big one. Everybody, a lot of people don't even think about this. This is a big deal.

Walking is a low skill type of movement. Meaning, if I took 100 regular people outside, just 100 normal people without major injury, all of them can walk and they won't get hurt. I can't say that for pretty much any other form of exercise. I took 100 normal people out there and I said, go run. In fact, I want you to run every single day. Or don't you cycle every day? or I want you to go do CrossFit every day.

The risk of injury becomes really high. Walking, everybody can still walk. It's appropriate. I can apply it to anybody. It's low skill. I could tell my aunt to walk. I could tell a bodybuilder walk. I tell an athlete to walk.

Anybody to walk to increase activity. And the injury risk is extremely low, which makes it very appropriate. By the way, there's more that goes to this. But that alone makes it very appropriate form of activity that can recommend it. Well, and in the context of what you're talking about with starting a client and training them, it's one of the easiest things that you can build, like what you can give to them and consider them continuing that forever. Yes.

Right? Like even the best, most intense program that burns the most body, if that builds the most muscle, the likelihood that that person can continue doing that forever or a long time is much lower than can I create habits. It's a sticky habit. around walking more frequently throughout someone's day, and at what percent or how likely can I keep them doing that forever? Much higher than any other modality. It is. And I'll also add this.

Like, trying to burn calories manually is kind of a losing strategy anyway. So yes, there are forms of exercise that burn more calories while you do them. But if you've listened to past podcasts, past episodes, your better bet is to try to speed up the metabolism through building muscle. Okay. So if you want to try to burn more calories, it's better off teaching your body to burn. burn more calories on its own, then trying to burn it manually.

But does that mean there isn't any value to increased activity? No, there's tons of value to increased activity. You have improved insulin sensitivity, which means you're not going to get these big spikes and drops and blood sugar. That affects lots of different behaviors. It affects cravings and energy and mood, changes your eating behaviors. It's also great for metabolic health, especially if you stretch that out over years. And so walking is just this great form of,

activity that's low skill, low injury risk. It's also this. It's very hard to pick a form of exercise that is appropriate for the person that is overstressed and overworked or the person who's well-rested, slept, you know, is well-fed, who can get after it. What form of exercise is going to benefit both of them? Walking. Yeah.

Well, and two, like in settings, if you're in work setting where you're sedentary a lot, there's not a lot of exercise you could just say, hey, do this. Right. within, you know, your work environment, whereas walking, you could plan that out where you could actually take these breaks and actually be somewhat productive with that with your body to also like spike your mood,

spike your energy, get things moving. And that has a cascading effect, you know, back into the training and the nutrition. Well, back to your low skill point is that, you know, when you first meet a client, you're learning a lot about that client to your, like what you're talking about with their other stress. that they have in their life.

And right away, after the first day I meet you, I can feel confident that telling you to walk X amount of steps or minutes in a day every day is fine. It's fine for everybody with knowing very little information. I don't know if, you know, three days of full body routines is going to be too much for you right now. I don't know if you can handle running for a half hour. Or is like, I don't know, I don't know if you could handle some hit sprints post or pre-workout or once a week.

Like, I'm figuring that out. So as a trainer, when you first get somebody started, is why the irony of how we started this conversation is that this is the first place I start everybody right away because I know that it's got so many other benefits besides just creating more activity and good habits and good behaviors around this person, which you'll get to the other four. and so right out the gates, I know we can start doing this thing. But I really like it because it's recuperative. Meaning it won't take away from your body's recovery ability that you're going to need

for the other more important or intense form. It won't just take away. It will facilitate and speed up. That's right. More blood flow, more oxygen, more nutrients flowing through the body is going to facilitate and speed up recovery. I remember, again,

another mistake. I know you could definitely relate to this because we've talked about this before, where, you know, I thought, go hammer the gym as hard as possible. Lay down, don't move. Don't burn another calorie. Don't burn another calories. Let all, that would build the most muscle. It's not true at all.

No. In fact, I would have built more muscle going out for 10,000 step days of walking and moving that blood, moving that nutrients, moving that oxygen through my body, it would facilitate that recovery faster than just laying there still. Right. In other words, someone who's interested in fat loss, a good routine, typical person may look something like two or three days a week of strength training, appropriate intensity, compound lifts. You've heard us talk about this before, get stronger. What other activity can I add to that that's not going to take away from the adaptation and the recovery that I need for the strength training?

Walking. Now, if I took that same person, let's say we're doing three days a week full body strength training and I'm having them do an additional two or three days of hit cardio. Well, it's going to take away. I'm going to have to really scale down the intensity of volume of the strength training oftentimes so that they have some of that ability, the recovery that they can use for the hit cardio. For walking, it doesn't take away. It often adds to that. So it's just a great addition to a strength training routine.

Also, when you start talking about hit and more volume of training, intensity, other things like that, you also have to consider calorie deficit or surplus. if they're in a deficit, having them walk more, you'll lean them out. Their body will tap into fat. Their body will utilize fat to fuel them through that process. You don't really pair muscle down with walking. No. You'd have to do a lot of walking.

Yeah, the amount that someone would have to do and the deficit. You have to walk like 40,000 steps. Right. And so that's another great positive. Again, I don't need to know a lot of information. They could be in a place where they're not even in a calorie surplus or maintenance. It could be in a deficit. And I can add a bunch of walking in there.

and most likely it's going to happen, they're going to just lean out from that. They're just going to lose more. Muscle preserving. Yeah, it's very muscle preserving. Versus if that person who's in maybe extreme calorie deficit, and training, and then I also stack high-intensity cardio on top of that, I sacrifice their body potentially paring down muscle.

That's right. Or that's way less likely to happen with walking. Here's one of my favorite things with walking. It's very easily stacked with other habits. So one of the obvious ones is you could put on some headphones, take a stroll, listen to a book, really get lost in the book or whatever.

But here, that's an obvious one, but my favorite habits with walking look like this. You're at work. You're there till 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock. You can go on a walk and have a meeting. You can go on a walk

and have a conversation with your friend. You can build your relationship with your wife when you get home on a walk. You can make the walk so meaningful that it's not even about the walk. It's about hanging out with that person, connecting with that person, making it something entirely different.

In fact, this is one of my favorite reasons to walk later when I get home after work. Is I go hang out my wife? Take the kids with them. Start it out with, yeah, start out with the wife. And then it's like, okay, let's bring the kids. Okay, let's bring the dogs. And it was just like this whole thing. But again, everybody comes back in a better mood.

And then, you know, a lot of this stuff, I feel like it's like unresolved energy. You know, it gets expressed. There's other habits that are great to stack it with, too. most of us end up going to the grocery store at least once a week. Park your car super far from where you got to go. You know, intentionally go to the grocery store instead of maybe Instacarting it. You go to the gym probably or some other place. Park far away.

There's walking. There's a lot of ways that you can make walking, you know, five, ten minutes here or there in all these things that you do every single day on a regular basis. That increases this activity increases as well. I'm so glad you said that. oftentimes exercise needs to be scheduled and done kind of all at once, right? I'm going to go running today. Well, you typically don't do three, you know, 10-minute runs.

It's typically one 30-minute run or something like that. With walking, you split it up throughout the day. If you work in an office, you do three, 10-minute walks. That's 30 minutes. And each one of those, you can stack with, take your coworker with you, or I need to discuss this thing with my boss or my employee, or I've got to work on this idea and I'm going to be on my phone, but why don't I go for a walk while I do it?

And you can split up the walks throughout the day. By the way, the data shows if you do it that way, especially if you do it post-pran-eal, meaning after a meal, you actually get better health effects. It's actually better for you to split up a bunch of little walks than it is to do one long walk, especially if it's after your meals.

I mean, Justin's notorious for this, and as I've gotten older, of reframe, the way I look at this at home is just, you know, I many times, now choose to like clean up around the house or organize a closet or wash one of my car. Like this becomes like a thing that I do it not only because that thing needs to get done, but now it's like, oh, you know what? There's my activity.

There's my activity doing that. And I remember when we talk about this, when the first tools came out, now you have the Fitbit, the ORA ring, all these things. There's so many competitors. At one point, it used to be just the body bug way back in the days. And, you know, they partnered with 24 Fitness. so we were some of the first people to get to test those things out. And by the way, this is back when I wasn't a good trainer.

This is back when I was still trying to, like, kill my clients in their workouts and burn as many calories as we could in the workout because I thought I had to do that with everybody. And I remember all my clients, I got on those body bugs. And, you know, we would sit down when we'd meet once a week and look at their report from the week. And I remember many, most, not a couple or a non-a-lawful. most of my clients burned a majority of their high calorie days not with me. How's this possible? I'm whooping the shit out of them from this hour.

There's got to be like how, but it was on their Saturday when they did yard work or they went to the mall or they like they were just active and the calorie expenditure, even though you're making the case that it doesn't burn a lot of calories, it really adds up when you make it a part of your life. It does. When you compare a sedentary day and everybody has normally at least one of these a week, when you just, you sleep in for two hours, you don't have to go anywhere and do anything. Maybe you'll watch a little TV or you come in early that night.

That day of steps compared to another day when you would consider your high activity day, maybe you move a lot, whatever, go grocery, all the things. The calorie burn is actually pretty significant. In fact, I've seen thousand calorie burn differences. That's a good point because walking so accessible, because you could track your steps and just try to move more. cumulatively, it is more calories. Right. You're right.

Like a 20-minute, hardcore intense cardio session is going to burn more than, you know, 20 minutes of walking. But typically what happens is if you're tracking this and you're trying to hit 10,000 steps today, you do more of it. And overall, it does add up to your guys.

And that's what blew my mind was because we, again, this is back of my... I saw the same thing. Not good trainer days when I was trying to burn a lot of calories with my clients. And I'm going like, well, this is crazy. Well, the reason why that happened, I saw the same thing at him. I actually thought that the program was wrong.

and I had to go through a couple of times. What it was is that people would train with me typically on their work days. Yes. So they'd come. Sedentary jobs. That's right. So they'd come see me. They'd work out, let's say in the morning.

We'd have an hour hard workout. You would see on their chart, spike in calorie burn and then the rest of the day there was nothing. Yeah, they'd have this crazy five, 600 calorie burn with you. Okay? And that's an intense workout, right? That's you really, that's circling them, moving them, hitting them with some hit cardio. So you get like 600 calories burned over their maintenance that day that they train with you. Then they'd have a day where they burn.

earned a thousand calories more. And it's just, they were just, they were just busy all day. Yeah. And it's like, and I remember, what did you do? And they're like, I didn't do, I didn't do anything. It's like, I just, I just walked, I just had this, I did that. And then I was like, oh my God, what a difference. I had a client went to the mall.

And she was at the mall all day with her teenage kids. And I'm like, what did you do? Yeah. She's like, nothing. I'm like, this is crazy. Yeah. The other thing, too, is that what makes walking so great. One of the reasons why walking, when people,

People try to increase their steps. One of the reasons why they're more consistent with it is it requires no setup and no equipment. Yeah. I don't got to go change into my workout clothes. I can go for a walk on my work clothes. I don't need to go to the gym. I don't need special equipment. I just go for a walk.

And so because there's no setup, because it's so convenient, I end up doing more of it than if it were like I have to go on this run. I've got to get my shoes on. Better change my clothes. I'm going to go sweaty. Then I go shower. whatever, it requires no setup. You just go for a walk, makes it super easy. You know, that's part of why I think it's so underrated also is there's this myth around

like sweat is correlated to fat burn. Yeah. And that you need to be sweating and exhausted in order for the body to burn fat. And it's so not true. Your fat being utilized as energy is being in a caloric deficit. And if you can create a caloric deficit through walking and never sweating all day long, you'll get it. You can burn as much body fat.

if not more body fat. And I would argue more because of the point you're making right now. It's really easy to make it, you know, when you're dressed in work clothes, they're just, oh, you know what, I have a lunch break every day. Instead of me just eating lunch and sitting with my coworkers at the lunch. How about I think I had 15, 20 minutes of that time with a walk? That's right. And then I park further.

And you just, and you would create these habits. And all of a sudden, you become a person. By the way, average American steps less than 4,500 steps a day. You also become the average American who steps 4,000 or less to the average American who's now stepping 8,000 steps every day. And I'll tell you right now, if you take a person from 4 to 8,000 steps, you've doubled their activity.

You've doubled their activity and movement. And they don't even feel like they've worked out real hard. And that does add up. It does. And lastly, you know, walking does, and it does this quite consistently and quite well, is it typically gets us outside. Now, other forms of exercise do as well,

but because walking requires so little setup or no setup, I can do it whenever I want or need to change my clothes, I end up going outside a lot. I end up going outside a lot more than I normally would. And that has its own health benefits. Like getting sunlight is good for you. It's very good for you, especially when you compare it to not getting any sunlight.

Most people, especially people who work office jobs, get so little sunlight than when they go for walks, part of the health benefits and the mood lift that they feel is just getting out in the sun. It also gets you outside around people. And this may not have been a big deal 30 years ago. But these days, it makes a big deal to be around people. And that is rejuvenating and can encourage relationships and conversation. It gets you out.

It gets you out from the cave. We're so locked in to being indoors. I don't think that this is talked about enough. I think that it's one of those kind of afterthoughts that, yeah, yeah, we know getting outside is important. Like everybody knows. But you, and you think because you walk to your car, you do this, like, yeah, I get outside. It's like, but. to your point about today versus 30 years ago,

the average person spent several hours outside compared today, where we've now completely flipped that. So this has changed a lot, and we don't have a lot of history to show all the detrimental stuff to not getting any sunlight consistently for a lot. We haven't had enough generations age and get older to see that. And so I think we'll look back 40, 50 years from now and talk about this period of time.

time when we've got under a bunch of fluorescent lights, locked ourselves indoors for eight, 10 hour days, all the time for decades on how detrimental that was to our health. And so I think this isn't talked about enough how important it is for us to do this. There's definitely some kind of physiological benefit to being in nature, not artificial, you know, environments. And I remember listening to a guy in a podcast, he was trying to like define it. And there was like, you know, certain doses of it, whether it was like at a park or whether, you know, you're immersed, you know, in a field or you're actually in a force where there's no other signs of civilization. And he's like, that's like the mega dose.

Yeah. And there was some kind of like calming effect to that. And like your brain received, you know, a lot of benefit from that. It's, are you, anybody who's ever. I feel it. An office job consistently for weeks or months and then taking a vacation to the coast or the forest for three days, can't tell me you don't feel that.

There's definitely something, too, to seem very far versus, like, always seeing things right in front of you. That's right. And so, yeah, from that perspective, you don't really get that unless you're really observing, like, a big expanse of you. Well, I'll tell you.

You know, it's funny that how, well before the science has got up to even prove any of what you're saying, humans have naturally gravitated that. That's it. Yeah, we were wanting to live by the coast and in the trees. and see, see long the, the horizon. Like, I mean, we just naturally have done it.

There's a reason why we've naturally gravitated with it. And by the way, this is for, for centuries. And when we did everything outside already, when we still gravitated that, today, we're locking ourselves in these boxes with blue light on us all day long. You cannot tell me. Some of the best health you'll see in populations are in cities that are coastal. So the weather's decent.

So they go outside a lot. And then these are older cities where driving is inconvenient. Think of like San Francisco. You have to walk everywhere you go. And people have longer lifestands. I can speak personally to this. Like we produced this podcast and this show. We're locked in this kind of sound proofed room all day long.

And if I don't go outside a few times a day, man, by the time we're done here, I feel totally fried. I looked up the data, by the way. the majority of Americans spend roughly 30 minutes total a day outside. Total. Yeah. That's outside. Wow. So.

And what was that just sad? 30 years ago. Yeah. I mean, you were outside quite a bit. Yeah. So, you know, going for walks tends to put you outside. It's low skill. Anybody can do it.

It's recuperative. Won't take away from your other more intense exercise. You stack it with other habits. It's pro relational. That's my favorite part. Requires no equipment, no setup. And you go outside. Walking, phenomenal form of activity.

By the way, we have a guide on losing fat. Lose fat in three steps. It's free. You can get it at mpfatloss.com. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

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