This is an area where calories is scary misleading. The 30 minutes walking is indeed low in the direct impact. For some reason, it punches well above expectations, though. Probably something about base metabolism and such, but whatever it is, you will lose more weight from walking than you'd expect.

Similarly, people probably walk way way less than you would expect. It is kind of scary to see how few steps I can get on a standard day.

Yea, I suspect it has a pretty low effect in terms of calories, but it helps immediately bring your blood sugar back under control within <5 minutes of walking or so. At least that's what my experience is wearing a CGM for a few weeks now.

That's maybe the magic of "walkable neighborhoods." You just walk over to the store/the cafe/the restaurant real quick, and then you walk back. It was only maybe a few hundreds steps, but that's enough to put away a ton of the glucose you just dumped into your bloodstream.

It is shocking how little walking is necessary to have a massive impact on glucose. 500 steps or so is easily enough for me.

I started walking on my way to work and back (London, UK). It's about 5k + 5k steps. Plus a 4k step walk after lunch. Together with a limited calorie intake (2k cal a day) it made wonders. It was crazy to watch the first 5kg just vaporize in 2 weeks.

I went down to 1800 calories and the remaining 10kg were gone in 6 weeks.

You mind sharing your before/after weight and roughly how lean you were? If your metabolism is already dialed in (i.e. you were not obese) this might totally work and be very effective for fat loss.

93kg to 78kg, 180 cm. Did not look fat, but my face got round and belly was forming. Haven't seen my abs for years and years by then. Surprisingly, 80 kg was like no abs at all and 77.8kg was a 4-pack already.

I wrote earlier that reforming my diet to protein-centric, 1800-2000cal a day + 15k steps walking + some lightweight kettlebell work was enough to get things going. I used myfitnespal, really useful.

It wasn't too hard, to be honest, as I am relatively used to training. For some ppl even walking 10k a day is a challenge.

Especially for people who are very obese :)

For comparison, I recently went from 132kg (290lbs) to 111kg (245lbs) in the last 5 months without counting calories, on a very-low-protein, ultra-high-fat diet.

Re. the abs, I've never had them but my impression is they're hidden by basically the last 5lbs of fat you'll lose. So nothing and then they're suddenly there makes sense. Congrats!

And yes, abs are not the most important thing. Depends on genetics, max weight, fat distribution. Doesn't really matter In practice.

Back when i doing boxing in early 2ps I was as low as 69kg, and still didn't see the full 6-pack. Go figure....

Congrats! That's huge! I know it's a very liberating feeling, both physically and psychologically.

My collegue went from 115kg to 85kg some time ago. I know it's a different kind of game. Took a year for him. He was younger, in his late 20s, so running was still an option for him. I am In my late 30s, and traumas accumulated so i had to accept that calorie counting was the only remaining option.

Also, I'd suggest still working from a high-protein approach. You get to keep you muscle, especially if you do some reasonable amount of training.

My entire hypothesis this time around is that protein is making/keeping me fat, and I went super low protein on purpose :) Of course it could also be something else. Everybody freaks out about the low protein though haha.

On a day to day basis it usually isn't a lot of excess calories eaten either, but over a year or 10 those small discrepencies can add up.

In my experiments wearing a glucose monitor, even 5 minutes of walking has a massive effect on blood sugar. Might not make you slim, but might prevent your diabetes if you're borderline.

I counted the steps. Under 600 steps. Not even around the block, and a ~20mg/dL reduction in blood glucose.