Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Leslie Sansone is the creator of In-Home Walking and WalkAerobics and is the star of many of the bestselling fitness videos of all time. The original fitness host of QVC, the founder of Studio Fitness, and a contributing editor to Woman's Day, Leslie is visible throughout the fitness world. She lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three children

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Walk Away the Pounds

Center Street

Chapter One

Congratulations! By picking up this book, you have already made a statement about what you value in life. You've taken one small step away from being a couch potato or a desk potato, and one step toward a life of looking great, feeling great, and taking charge of your goals. True, it's only one small step, but that is how you start. In this book I'll teach you how to take more and more steps. Most of the things I'll show you are so simple that you won't even realize you're taking steps until you look back and see how far you've come. Sound too good to be true? Quite the opposite. As I've been showing people for twenty-five years, it's as easy as putting one foot in front of the other.

Walking is a miraculous thing. We tend to take it for granted, but just look at a toddler. When she takes those first wobbly steps, that look on her face is pure magic. It says, Gee, this is fun! It says, I'm one of you now! And it says, This is exactly what I should be doing! We human beings are designed to walk-and walk a lot. So many factors in our modern lifestyle-cars, remote controls, desk jobs-work against that, but you'll be amazed by how many good things fall into place once you make walking a regular part of your life. Fat melts away. Clothes fit. Food tastes better. Health problems disappear. Mood improves. Sex is more fun. Energy levels soar. Sleep becomes deep and satisfying. Stress evaporates. As it is for a toddler, life becomes something to embrace each morning, rather than a daily grind. And this is all because of exercise.

If exercise can do all this for us, then why doesn't everybody get some? Well, that is the bone I have to pick with the modern fitness industry. Watching those ultrafit pros do their intense workouts has never been terribly inspiring to me. I know that kind of body requires hours of dedication every day-and who has that kind of free time? Walking is my business, but you know what? I still need to squeeze my exercise in around driving the kids to baseball and softball practice, finding the pet lizard that has escaped his cage again, putting a nutritious dinner on the table, and being at my best for the meetings, public events, and decisions that make up my work life.

And here's the secret. It isn't hard to fit exercise in, because you don't need hours a day. You don't need six-pack abs. You aren't auditioning to be a stunt double in the next Charlie's Angels. Just give yourself fifteen minutes a day, for starters, and all the benefits will follow: the trimmer tummy, tighter muscles, lower blood pressure, reduced stress levels, and the satisfied feeling at the end of the day, knowing that you took another step forward.

I can't tell you how many hundreds of women have written to me, telling me the stories of how they lost real weight-twenty pounds, forty, sixty, even one hundred-following my walking program. You'll meet many of them in this book, hear their stories, and see their transformations. Starting by walking just one mile-or less-these women walked away the pounds and kept them off. I think the reason so many women have success with my system is because it is so easy, so gentle, yet so effective. You don't have to be coordinated. You don't have to learn any complicated poses or routines. You just put one foot in front of the other and walk, walk, walk.

THE PERFECT EXERCISE

When I began teaching aerobics classes in the 1980s, I didn't set out to change the way people exercise. I just taught the dance-aerobics programs I had learned. But over time, I gravitated toward walking and developed my own program, because that was what worked for almost everyone, regardless of size or fitness level. No matter how out of shape they were when they started, people lost weight through walking and became healthier and happier in the process.

What is it about walking that makes it more successful than other exercises? Part of it is the simplicity. Everyone can walk. It's so easy, in fact, that some people are skeptical about whether you can really get in shape by just walking. But studies are confirming what I've suspected all along: walking is excellent exercise. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, walking just thirty minutes a day, three times a week, reduces the risk of death from all natural causes by 55 percent! Walking also keeps you in the midrange of aerobic activity, where fat oxidation is most efficient. That's right: You burn more fat through low-intensity sports like walking than through intense activities that leave you gasping for breath, such as weight lifting or high-energy aerobics. Not only that but you also continue to burn fat after walking. And once you've been walking for a few weeks, you'll have raised your metabolic rate, so that you burn more calories all the time, even when you're sitting or sleeping!

Then there are the things that don't happen when you're walking. You don't crash. You don't get injured. You don't compete against someone else.

You also don't go broke. Too many people are hesitant to start exercising because they think it will be expensive and intimidating. Many people don't want to invest in fancy home equipment and aren't comfortable in a fitness club environment. Not a problem. Just lace up a decent pair of sneakers in your living room and you are ready to walk.

I didn't begin teaching with the concept of in-home walking, either. Again, that developed from teaching thousands of women and discovering what worked for them and what held them back. Having to drive to a fitness club to exercise keeps many people from doing it regularly. So does trying to do exercises that are too difficult. So does bad weather. Walking outside can be wonderful, but suddenly it rains for a week, you skip your walks, your energy sags, and the next week you find excuses not to get back to it. There is always a day when it's too hot outside, too cold, or when you don't want to deal with the dogs, the bugs, the traffic lights, or the car fumes.

But your living room is always the right temperature for walking. And when you don't have to worry about making forward progress, you can use my specially formulated series of moves-side steps, knee lifts, and so on-to work a much wider range of muscles than you can by walking around the block. Whether you use my videos for company, your favorite music, or a buddy, you'll find that the half hour you set aside for walking is a part of the day you always look forward to.

DO IT FOR LOVE

Before you hop up and start walking off those pounds, let's talk about motivation. You bought this book, which means you're ready to change your life. But are you really interested in a healthy lifestyle, or are you trying to fit into those old pants for your high school reunion in two months? If you're doing it for the pants, that's okay! Many people begin a diet or exercise program with an immediate goal of changing their looks, often for a specific event. If that's what it takes to get you started, great. But most everyone who loses weight for looks puts it back on again later. The reunion ends, the swimsuit season is over, and you slip back to your old habits. Worse still, if you lost weight through some sort of crash diet, your metabolism slows down, you burn fewer calories, and you gain the weight back even though you stuck...