10 Non-Obvious Ways to Walk More and Burn More Calories Daily

Boost your metabolism, burn more calories, and improve your overall health by creating powerful walking combos

If you want to lose fat, walking can be your superpower.

Several studies have shown how effective this simple practice is for reducing our fat percentage. So effective, in fact, that it’s even been shown to burn more fat than more intense types of cardio, like cycling.

Why?

For two main reasons:

1. As it increases our Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), it boosts our metabolism. For more on this, click here.
2. As it’s a low-intensity activity, it doesn’t overtly stress the body, which is another key component of successful fat loss. When stressed, our bodies retain as much fat as possible, especially around the belly. This is why walking can be more effective for fat loss than more intense forms of cardio.

In my case, my life changed once I started walking 10k steps every day. Though other habits have also helped (read more about them here), upping my daily step count is what has primarily allowed me to maintain a low body fat percentage for more than 4 years.

Moreover, I’ve also experienced other benefits.

I can now eat more as I have a faster metabolism. My sleep, cognition, and cardiovascular fitness have improved. And as a writer, the ideas that pop into my head while walking are gold.

Walking is the simplest and easiest way to massively improve your life. I love it so much that I even challenged myself to walk more than 20k steps for a month, which further proved how effective walking is for fat loss.

The problem, though, is time.

It takes the average person an hour and 40 minutes to walk 10,000 steps. But between sleeping, working, eating, commuting — existing, it feels impossible to carve out almost two hours of our day to walk.

Now, you don’t need to walk 10k steps per day. Recent research has shown that walking’s health-boosting effects start around 2,300 steps. But if fat loss is your primary goal, the more you walk, the better.

More steps = more calories burned = more fat loss (as long as you’re eating as usual)

Simple.

But that still leaves the issue of time. When are we supposed to do all this walking?

To tackle this issue, I came up with walking combos. In simple terms, it means combining walking with something you already do regularly. And I’m not talking about those that have been talked about ad nauseam, like:

• Parking far away from the entrance.
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
• Walking to nearby errands.
• Getting off two stops early (if you use public transportation) and walking the rest of the way.

All of these recommendations are excellent. They’re cliche because they work.

But if you’re still falling short and need to uncover other strategies to increase your steps, I’ve got you.

Here are 10 non-obvious ways to walk more and lose fat every day:

10 Walking “Combos” to Get in More Walking in Everyday Life

The following walking strategies are based on my experience and those of close friends:

1. Read-walking

Reading is one of my favorite hobbies, and a requirement since I’m a writer. News, articles, books — I read anything that might interest or nurture my skills for at least 30 minutes every day.

This is why, when I first set out to do 10k steps regularly, I figured combining it with reading was a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Now that I’ve been doing it for many years, I’ve come up with some best practices:

• Select a familiar and repetitive walking spot. This could be a park you frequent, a treadmill, or even your living room — my choice. As I can walk from side to side without watching my step, all my mental energy goes to reading.
• Use a Kindle. Physical books weigh too much. Plus, you can take notes or highlight the text without needing extra supplies.
• Wear comfortable shoes. Read-walking makes you feel as though you aren’t walking for real. But you are. 10k, 8k, or whatever your goal, can be a lot if you’re untrained, leading to knee pain. Here are 7 tips to find the perfect shoe.

Reading has always been a sedentary activity — and it should still be sometimes. But in a world where sitting is considered the new smoking, why not give read-walking a try?

2. Media-walking

This is a variation of read-walking, so I’ll be brief: If you want to watch a movie, scroll through social media, or listen to a podcast, why not do it while walking?

Most people spend around 2 hours and a half on social media per day. If we combined that with walking, we’d all be getting around 15k steps!

An easy way to start is to create a rule for yourself, like: “I won’t watch this TV show unless I’m walking.”

Off you go.

3. Walk and talk

My mom loves to talk. Whenever she calls me, we usually spend at least one or two hours on the phone (a weekend activity, of course).

Before, I used to lie on the couch as we talked about everything and nothing. Now, though, I walk around my living room as we chat, and before our conversation is done, I’ve already gotten my 10k steps.

Effortless.

Walking while talking on the phone is an excellent habit that will keep you physically fit and socially connected.

4. Walking meetings

After seeing how much walking had improved my life, my husband searched for ways to combine walking with his lifestyle.

He found his answer at work. Since he had many meetings over coffee or ones where notebooks or computers were unnecessary, he suggested having them over a walk.

My husband has created a “walking meeting” movement in his office.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Adding walking into social interactions can also be done in our personal lives:

• Ask your friends out to walk and have lunch instead of just hanging out at a restaurant.
• Get a dog and walk it out every day. And if you don’t want a dog yet love animals, help out at a local shelter.
• Try virtual reality (VR) activities when going out with friends. My husband and I recently went to a Tutankhamun VR exhibition in Barcelona, which was mind-blowing. We even got to virtually walk around an Egyptian tomb.

Every social interaction can be an opportunity to add more walking into your day.

5. Active Hobbies

We all need hobbies. They enrich our lives and imbue meaning into our days, regardless of what we decide to do.

However, practicing active hobbies like dancing, trekking, or even bricklaying (like Winston Churchill) is an easy way to get more steps in.

Past Alexa would’ve never thought she would one day hike up a massive mountain in the Spanish Pyrenees. I got winded after a walk around my neighborhood.

Yet here I am, many years later, trekking and hiking and loving every second of it — not to mention how easy it is to get 10k steps with this hobby.

6. Ten-minute walking desserts

Jessie Inchauspé — A.K.A the Glucose Goddess — is a brilliant biochemist who’s shared incredible tips to avoid detrimental blood sugar spikes.

One of those recommendations is taking a brisk ten-minute walk after every meal, like a dessert.

“As you use your muscles,” Jessie explains, “they will soak up the excess glucose in your bloodstream, in turn reducing the glucose spike of the meal you just had.”

Moreover, walking for 10 minutes after every meal can quickly add more steps to your day. And it simply requires your will to do it. For example:

• After finishing my meal, I do media-walking and kill three birds with one stone. I manage my blood sugar levels, get around 1k steps in, and relax while checking my phone.
• At work, my husband and his colleagues now go for a short walk around the block and pick up coffee at a nearby coffee shop.

Eat and walk. Eat and walk.

This can be our new mantra.

7. Walking meditation

This one seems weird, but it’s actually been extremely helpful for me.

I’ve wanted to meditate for years — yet failed miserably. Sitting still makes me feel restless. A barrage of random thoughts storm my brain.

But walking in nature or simply focusing on my breath while walking in my living room has been profoundly relaxing. A friend of mine even listens to guided meditations or mindfulness podcasts as she walks.

Our physical and mental health is growing stronger with every step.

8. Art walking

One of my best friends loves to paint as much as I love to read. And like reading, painting tends to be a passive hobby.

Inspired by my read-walking, my friend sought ways to make her art more active and came up with art walking. Occasionally, she’ll go out into the city or a park and draw short sketches of things she likes. As we live in Barcelona, there’s no shortage of beautiful landscapes.

Best of all, this isn’t solely constrained to painting and sketching. If you love photography, take your camera or phone and capture anything interesting.

The point is to combine creative hobbies with walking, making physical activity effortless and fun.

9. The treadmill desk

Every Wednesday, I receive a much-awaited email from publication coach Daphne Gray-Grant.

Her newsletter is ripe with tips on how to write better, faster, more consistently — and even more healthily. She has reported she gets around 20k steps on an average day (wow!) because she has a treadmill desk and gets a lot of her writing done while walking slowly.

This practice is excellent for our health (duh) but also our productivity. Exercise boosts memory, creativity, and cognition. Perhaps this is why Daphne’s newsletters are so good.

In my case, I’m looking into getting a treadmill desk for Christmas and giving writing-walking a try. It might seem crazy, but so was read-walking when I first gave it a shot.

Who knows?

Maybe I’ll be one of those people who regularly walk 20k steps.

10. Wait walking

This last one may seem too obvious to be on this list, but I’ve included it because most people waste this valuable opportunity.

• Are you waiting for a doctor’s appointment? Walk around, go to the bathroom, move your legs.
• Are you waiting for someone to get ready? Walk around the block — or wherever — and tell them to call you once they’re ready.
• Are you waiting to board your plane? Walk around the airport. Don’t just sit near the departure gate. This is how I always get my 10k steps while traveling.

Transforming your waiting time into walking time is one of the easiest ways to get more daily steps.

The Key: Create Powerful Walking Combos

What the strategies above have in common is that they combine walking with another beneficial activity: a walking combo. This allows you to add more steps even when you lack time.

• As I knew I needed to read more to become a better writer, I started read-walking in my living room.
• As my husband can’t leave the office for hour-long walks, he suggested incorporating walking meetings.
• As my artist friend wanted to get fitter while practicing her craft, she started sketch-walking.

Now’s your turn: Check your daily routine and combine walking with another activity. Pace around your bathroom while brushing your teeth, around the kitchen while your coffee brews, or around your living room while you scroll social media (you’re doing it anyway!)

This will drastically increase your daily step count, which will increase your metabolism and help you become a fat-burning machine.