Ravenous Bugblatter Beast
Deep in thought
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2005
- Messages
- 1,189
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- Points
- 186
A round of golf is a 3.5 to 4 mile walk. Get a pair of comfortable shoes and don't make excuses. Your back is not going to get any better with a 45 pound gut pulling it down, slouching over in a golf cart.
Depending on the course, its layout and length, and how crooked of a player a person is, walking 18 holes of golf should be 5 to 6 miles of walking. A lot more people who are golfing should be walking while out there.
Anyhow WBL, it's best to go at things with a couple of lifestyle changes. I see you say you are walking with your wife, and that's important -- regular cardiovascular exercise like walking, and especially for someone who was recently a smoker, is good for improving your heart and lungs.
But you're going to have to watch your diet as well. On another board I frequent, it is often said, "Run for fitness, eat less to lose weight." The unfortunate fact of the matter is that if you do the minimum of cardio work every week, 3 times and 20 minutes each time, that one hour of cardio work may burn only 500 calories or less, depending on how vigorous the exercise was. 3500 calories equals one pound of fat on our bodies, so even presuming that your caloric expenditure already was balanced with your caloric intake, it would take 7 weeks with a minimum of exercise and no dietary changes to lose 1 pound.
So if you want to lose a 1 pound or up to 2 pounds a week, which is the general rate recommended because it can be done with sensible diet choices and adoption of a lifestyle which can be maintained, you're going to have to watch what you eat. I've never had weight problems, but from people I've read who started running but were also losing weight, those people liked the website http://www.sparkpeople.com as a free useful way to find out where all the calories were coming in.
Good luck. If you can do it, work on physical activity and diet, over time you'll be amazed at how much better you will be feeling. And it'll probably help your golf game as well.