Yay!!!!!!!! I finally took my first step into losing weight. I went walking. I got so much inspiration from this website, I finally did it. Thanks to everyone. But I do have questions. What is more important, walking distance or the time you walk? Does eating grapefruit really help you lose weight? Thanks again.

I am not sure of the "right" answer to either one of these, personally I gauge off the time.

The only thing I am sure of is that eating grapefruit INSTEAD of chocolate cake will help you lose weight.

By the way...welcome and good luck!

I don't think i matters that much distance vs time. Both will increase as you get better at it. I use to walk a 20 min. mile so my walk would take 1.5 hours. Now I walk faster so I can take that same walk as a shorter walk and I have found some longer distances when I have more time.

Have you found www.gmped.com ? you can go to your neigborhood and find out how far your walk is or find new places to walk. For my area if i go to the hybrid view, I cn get the local town park and see the trails in the state park along with the streets.

As for the grapfruit. I don't know. I can't eat it, it upsets my stomach

yeesh I second that on the grapefruit... I loved it when I was a little squirt, but I just can't stomach it anymore.

I think what matters more is your dedication and consistency to walking, or any exercise for that matter. We can all do an hour of hard core aerobics, and then call it quits. IMO what is important is making time every day to get some kind of activity. Have a dedicated time for exercising sure, but also build in more activity.

Take me for example... I work in the networking industry, so yup you guessed it...I'm at a desk all.........day..........long. So I park my car furthest from the office, it's about 1/8 of a mile but it's better than 30 feet from the door LOL. I also park in the back of the parking lot when I go Krogering instead of close to the entrance; same with WalMart :shudder:, and any other places I go. I also do all the yard work at my house - raking, mowing, etc -it's great to get outside and make our home look nice and get health benefits to boot. If I'm watching a movie, I'll lay on the floor and do leg lifts or sit on my balancing ball instead of a chair. Then every night I do two videos of Leslie Sansone walking in my living room = 2 miles.

You'd be surprised how it all adds up, and lots of sites out there say more activity - even in spurts like what I've put here - all add up to benefits. Just some ideas to get those juices flowing

Ultimately it is important that you work yourself up to walking a 15 minute mile or 4 miles an hour. This is consider fit for the average female.

When I got back into exercising, I worked on comfortably walking 1 mile. Once I accomplished that, then I alternated between distance and speed depending on how I felt any given day.

My ultimate goal was to comfortably walk 3-4 miles at the 15minute pace. But my interim weekly goals was to just improve from week to week (no matter how small the improvement was).

Best of Luck - Lori

I love grapefruit, but dont know if its a weightloss ammp.. I think both distance and time play a factor, depending on your own personal fitness level.

Your ability to walk at a certain time can depend on your stature as well. 4mph is considered fast walking...but it is going to be much fast for someone who is 5'1" than it is for someone who is 6 feet tall.

Take that into consideration as well. When my husband and I walk together, he I counted that he takes 2 steps for every 3 that I take. My legs are shorter than his.


What is important, is not simply the time or the distance, but that YOU improve over time. I think distance is the thing, really, to start with. Many people when they start, can only walk 1/2 or 1 mile-especially if they are very sedentary or very overweight. They slowly progress to being able to walk 2 miles, 3 miles, or whatever.

At the same time, you will also over time become a faster, more fit walker.

So...I just think that over time you should slowly start increasing your walk, and become faster as well. In the beginning you might be walking 1 mile in a half hour, and later on, you might be fit enough to cover 2 miles in that SAME 30 minutes. So, you are still working out the same amount of time, but you are covering much more distance.