Why ‘Easy Cardio Beats Weight Training’ for Kick-Starting Weight Loss – 3 Ways to Make Walking Work for You

If you’re completely new to exercise, or perhaps a little out of practice, the idea of picking up weights, heading onto the gym floor and figuring out which exercises to do can feel a little daunting. And if you’re starting from zero, it can seem like a bit of a stretch. So, where should you begin if weight loss is your goal?

Thankfully, you don’t need an elaborate training programme to get started. While a calorie deficit is fundamental to weight loss, how you create that deficit is up to you. Ideally, it’ll involve a combination of adjusted nutrition and increased movement, but increasing your activity levels doesn’t have to be complicated.

In fact, it can be as simple as walking. Coach Judd Lienhard believes that easy cardio can be a better starting point than weight training for some people trying to lose weight, particularly if they’re starting from scratch.

‘Everyone else’s advice for overweight people: Eat less and start lifting weights, cardio doesn’t matter. Take measurements often. My advice: Keep your calories about the same, double your food volume and go for a walk at the same time every day and for ten minutes after at least two meals,’ he says.

By increasing food volume, he means including more low-calorie, high-volume foods such as vegetables that can help keep you feeling fuller.

Lienhard explains, ‘Frequent, easy cardio is more important than weight training right now. Do that for two months and then we’ll talk about some easy bodyweight circuits. Don’t measure anything.’

His advice is supported by evidence. If you’re already eating at maintenance calories, increasing your energy expenditure through walking can help create the calorie deficit needed for weight loss, provided your food intake remains consistent.

Research has also shown that walking after meals can help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar levels. While these benefits don’t necessarily translate directly to weight loss, post-meal walking can also improve blood sugar regulation in otherwise healthy individuals.

‘Progress in developing habits is far more important than inches, pounds, or percentages,’ he advises.

He also explains that while gaining muscle is beneficial, especially in helping to prevent age-related sarcopenia, muscle gain isn’t ‘weight loss magic’. While coaches often emphasise the fact that muscle burns more calories than fat, the difference in energy expenditure is relatively small.

If you’re new to exercise, walking offers several advantages. It’s low impact, requires very little equipment or technical skill, and can be progressed gradually as your fitness improves.

More importantly, it’s something you can build into your existing routine rather than treating exercise as another major commitment.

Here are three simple ways to make it work harder for you.

1. Walk at the Same Time Every Day

Lienhard’s first piece of advice is deceptively simple: make walking a habit.

Rather than waiting until you have a spare hour or feeling particularly motivated, choose a time that works for you and walk at roughly the same time every day.

That could be a morning walk before work, a stroll during your lunch break or an evening loop after dinner. The specific time matters less than making it predictable.

‘Progress in developing habits is far more important than inches, pounds, or percentages,’ Lienhard says.

This is particularly useful if you’re starting from zero. The goal isn’t to immediately maximise calorie burn or hit an arbitrary step target. It’s to establish a routine you can actually repeat.

2. Take a 10-Minute Walk After Meals

You don’t need to carve out a huge block of time for walking. Lienhard recommends adding 10-minute walks after at least two meals each day.

These short bouts can be easier to fit around work, family and everything else competing for your attention, while still adding more movement to your day.

There’s also evidence that post-meal walking can help with blood sugar regulation. Research has shown that walking after meals can help people with type 2 diabetes manage their blood sugar levels, while other research suggests post-meal movement can influence blood glucose responses in otherwise healthy people.

The takeaway isn’t that a 10-minute walk will magically burn off your dinner. It’s that short, repeatable bouts of movement can add up and are often easier to sustain than trying to force one long workout into your day.

3. Progress Your Walking as You Get Fitter

Once you’ve established the habit, you don’t have to leave your walks exactly as they are.

Walking is easy to progress. You can gradually increase your daily step count, extend the duration of your walks or pick up the pace as your fitness improves.

You could start with a 10-minute stroll, build towards 20 or 30 minutes, then gradually introduce longer or brisker walks as your fitness develops.

The important thing is not to turn every walk into a workout. Lienhard’s point is that frequent, easy cardio can be a useful foundation, particularly when you’re new to exercise.

And unlike jumping straight into a demanding weights programme, walking doesn’t necessarily leave you so fatigued that you want to spend the rest of the day on the sofa.

According to Lienhard, there are several reasons why beginners may benefit from establishing a walking routine before heading into the weights room.

Lifting weights can cause considerable fatigue and muscle soreness, particularly for those who have never trained before. While experienced lifters may enjoy the challenge, beginners might find the experience uncomfortable or discouraging.

He also argues that resistance training can increase appetite and potentially reduce non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), the energy we expend through everyday movement outside of structured exercise. While this won’t be the case for everyone, feeling excessively fatigued after a workout could mean moving less throughout the rest of the day.

Then there’s the fact that building muscle takes time. Although resistance training is beneficial for improving body composition and metabolic health, muscle growth doesn’t happen overnight, and its contribution to daily calorie expenditure is often overstated.

That doesn’t mean you should avoid strength training. In fact, Lienhard’s approach is to introduce it once you’ve established a consistent movement routine, potentially starting with simple bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, bodyweight rows and lunges before progressing to heavier loads.

‘I said what I said. Yes, resistance training is crucial for long-term health and weight maintenance. But this is a marathon, not a sprint. So many success stories start with, “I just started walking every day”,’ says Lienhard.

His argument isn’t that strength training should be avoided altogether, but that building sustainable habits should take priority over trying to follow an overly ambitious programme from day one.

‘Habits must first be developed. That can’t happen without adherence,’ he explains.

And while combining resistance training with aerobic exercise offers substantial long-term health benefits, there’s little point prescribing an elaborate gym routine if someone struggles to stick to it.

Lienhard argues, ‘Too many “experts” in physiology out there that have no concern for psychology.’

Overall, the best exercise programme is one you can maintain. And if that means starting with a daily walk before gradually introducing resistance training, there’s nothing wrong with taking your time.

If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.

Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.

Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.