To the test panelists, who let me walk a mile in your shoes, this book is for you. CONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: The First Steps CHAPTER 2: Let’s Move! CHAPTER 3: Make a Clean Sweep CHAPTER 4: Put Some Muscle Into It CHAPTER 5: The Healing Power of Sweat CHAPTER 6: Pushing the Pace CHAPTER 7: Keeping Your Momentum CHAPTER 8: It Pays to Be Restless CHAPTER 9: Start Counting Steps CHAPTER 10: Staying on Course Squeeze your glutes16 to moveCHAPTER 11: Walk Like an Athlete CHAPTER 12: 60 Workouts and Counting APPENDIX: Walk Your Butt Off! Workbook ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOREWORD If you’ve picked up this book, there’s a good chance you want to lose weight. There’s also a good chance that you’ve tried to lose weight in the past and haven’t succeeded. In both cases, I have fantastic news for you: Walk Your Butt Off! will change your life—and your pants size—but you must be willing to meet it halfway. If you’re ready to take care of your body and put your health first, the Walk Your Butt Off! plan will arm you with everything you need to get there and ensure you have fun along the way. How do I know? This program was created by a trio of top-notch women, all of whom have to work just as hard as the rest of us to sneak activity into our crazy-busy schedules (which is why they’ve created a program that doesn’t require hours in the gym and can be done anytime, anywhere). They know the rewards that come from committing to daily exercise—more energy, better health, and a body that looks good in jeans and a tank top—and their enthusiasm for fitness jumps off the pages. Who are they? Well, there’s your walking coach, ACE-certified fitness instructor and previous fitness director of Prevention magazine, Michele Stanten. There’s also your food coach, Leslie Bonci, RD, the director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and all-around lover of real, delicious, good-for-you foods. And finally, there’s writer and mom-of-two Sarah Lorge Butler, who helped Michele and Leslie put together their program in a way that’s clear, concise, and enjoyable to read. It wasn’t enough for Michele, Leslie, and Sarah to create a program that should work for everyone. They wanted to be 100 percent positive that any woman who picked up this book would have success if she followed the program. So what did they do? They tested the plan on 19 real women, the majority of whom were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. If you’ve already blown out your 40th birthday candles, you know that they were up against all of the challenges that make shedding pounds more difficult as you age: a slowing metabolism, hormonal changes, and a jam-packed schedule. So when these same women shed 10, 20, even 30 pounds, it became clear that the Walk Your Butt Off! program works. And it works remarkably well. Forget dieting. You won’t have to give up a single favorite food group to see results on this program. In fact, Walk Your Butt Off! doesn’t even include a diet program because we know that diets don’t work long plus additional for seasoning You will, of course, have to walk for roughly 30 minutes, 5 days a week. It won’t always be easy—you’ll have to break out of those sedentary chains that nearly all of us are enslaved in, thanks to desk jobs, long commutes, and the constant lure of snuggling up on the couch for some TV time. But Walk Your Butt Off! will inspire you to put one foot in front of the other and will give you the tools to turn a simple walk into that life-changing, magic fix you’ve been searching for. The rest is up to you. My final words to you, dear friend: Look forward to your daily walks. We are required to sit so often—sometimes for hours on end—that sitting is no longer a reward. Walking, even for only 30 minutes a day, is a pleasure that only the truly lucky get to enjoy, and it is such a treat. Tune in to how good it feels to move your body, to breathe in and out, and, yes, to break a sweat. Be thankful you’re alive, embrace the journey, and keep your sights set on the horizon. Walk Your Butt Off! is here to show you how. Happy walking, INTRODUCTION Walking gets a bum rap. A raw deal. Shafted. The only time anyone makes a big deal about walking is when you’re about 12 months old. You take your first wobbly steps toward the outstretched arms of your mom or dad before falling into the coffee table. With any luck, the other parent captures the moment on video. But after that, no one pays walking any mind. Walking is the orphan child of exercise. It doesn’t have the dramatic grunting of weight lifting, the giggling-with-your-girlfriends appeal of Zumba, the ooohm of yoga, the cutting-edge gear of cycling, or the year-round competitive opportunities that runners get. Even though walking—racewalking—is an Olympic sport (betcha didn’t know that), it somehow still gets overlooked. Because walking is such an integral part of our lives, most of us fail to notice it as a form of exercise, a vital component of good health, and a powerful tool for weight loss. From the moment we put our feet on the floor in the morning until the minute we crawl under the covers again two-thirds of a day later, we rely on our two feet to get us places—the kitchen, the bathroom, into our cars, down the hall to the copier. It’s so simple, so essential to our identity as humans that we tend to not give it much thought. We think about walking only when we’re in pain and can’t move comfortably. THE POWER OF WALKING It’s time to reconsider. This simple movement, for which we’re designed, can work wonders. For conditioning: With walking, you’re developing the capacity of your cardiovascular system. You’re also building muscle in the legs and core and, when you walk at faster speeds, the arms and shoulders. For health and longevity: According to Dr. Steven Blair, professor of exercise science, epidemiology, and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, a little walking can stave off many diseases. Even if you’re carrying around more weight than you’d like, if you walk regularly, you’re healthier than someone of the same weight who doesn’t move. Walking 30 minutes a day offers protection from a host of ills, like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Simply put, statistics show that a little walking prolongs your life. It’s better to be overweight and active than thin and sedentary. Active people—no matter what the scale says —enjoy longer and fuller lives than inactive people. And, of course, the one everyone cares about … For weight loss: Walking burns calories at a steady, reliable rate. Walk enough and you’ll see results on the scale. Walk a little faster and you’ll see results quicker, too. Research shows that exercise is a crucial component of maintaining weight loss. If you get the pounds off, you’ll need regular exercise to help you keep them off. What’s more, walking couldn’t be easier. It’s low impact, requires no special gear beyond a comfortable pair of sneakers, and can be done anywhere. Even in place. An easy walk doesn’t require a shower. Walking trumps all other activities in the convenience department. For all these reasons, walking is worth a fresh look. ASKING QUESTIONS; FINDING ANSWERS That’s what we did when we created the Walk Your Butt Off! program. We wanted to see what would happen if people walked consistently at least 5 days a week for about 3 months. Back in October 2011, we developed a 12-week walking program and recruited 22 volunteers to test it out. We wanted the test panelists to tell us— honestly—about what happened to them. Could they start an exercise program? More importantly, could they stick with it? Did they get faster? Feel better? Gain health and energy? How did they do when the weather turned colder? When all the big-eats holidays—from Halloween through New Year’s Eve—confronted them? Of course, there was one major reason they wanted to walk: They wanted to lose weight. And, of course, we wanted to know what happened in that department, too. Could they shed pounds with walking? • Meet Our Experts Coach Michele Stanten has been walking, quickly, for more than 2 decades; and sometimes, when she’s out doing errands with her family, she’ll ask her husband to drop her a few miles from home and let her walk the rest of the way back. On a typical day working with the test panel volunteers, she was out there walking backward, her gaze trained on the test panelists, scrutinizing their form, telling this one to look up, that one to relax her shoulders, this guy to pay attention to letting his heels strike first. Michele was the fitness director of Prevention magazine for 20 years, and she has walked distances up to a marathon. When we entered a local 5-K (3.1 miles) road race together, she finished in 38 minutes—faster than many of the and walk back to the start at a more comfortable pace. through orunners. When she’s walking, she’s moving. Then we have Leslie Bonci, MPH, RD, CSSD, LDN, who is the director of sports nutrition at the university of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She helps everyone from individual clients struggling to lose weight to scholarship athletes at Pitt who need to eat for better performance. The most important thing to know about Leslie, though, is that she lives a normal life with a regular diet full of easy-to-find foods. It’s not all kale and tofu. She shops in a regular grocery store and has raised two sons while working more than full time. And frankly, she doesn’t love being in the kitchen. Instead, her husband, Fred, does most of the