The Only Weight Loss Free Ride

A few years ago I wrote a series of postings explaining how I’d managed to lose 35 longstanding pounds. Everything in that series was scientifically legit - a few biologists and nutritionists over the years have given it their “ok”. The following is not scientifically proven, but it makes sense, and works empirically for me and for the hordes of body builders who do weight loss a few times per year (they call it "cutting") and have it pretty much worked out.


I call this the “Free Ride”. It’s a feat of judo that makes a virtue of my schlubby condition (various injuries led to me gaining back a lot of weight I’d previously lost). As with most out-of-shape people, my heart takes a long while to fully recover from exercise. A couple months from now, that will no longer the case, but until then I enjoy this free ride!

When I finish my cardio workout, rather than shutting down the machine and going home, I reduce the speed to a brisk walk. It can't elevate my heart rate, but it can lightly tap the flywheel of my heart rate’s long slow-down, decelerating my already laggy recovery. It doesn’t take much. A perfectly comfortable walking pace keeps my heart rate in the cardio zone for a long, long while, just as if I were actually exercising.

It wouldn't work to do this at the beginning of my workout, when my heart rate's normal. But once my heart rate is already 140-ish, and would otherwise settle to 100 within 10 minutes, light walking keeps me north of 125. It’s like drafting in auto racing. A free ride!

The only problem is that this light walking can be boring. You may not want to spend 15 or 20 minutes ploddingly walking a treadmill (three words for you: Pod Frickin' Casts). I just bear closely in mind I'm getting work-free weight loss. It's the only such opportunity in the fitness game, and I’ll be damned if I’ll miss it!

Since walking is limitlessly viable for most people, the only issue is available time. If you can stretch this coda toward 30 minutes, you’ll get a level of workout fit people would need to kill themselves to attain. And you’ve gotten it nearly for free! It's the fatty's ultimate revenge.