"Walking is an activity and not an exercise," says celebrity nutritionist, Rujuta Diwekar

In her latest live video on Facebook where Rujuta Diwekar, the celebrity nutritionist talks about myths and facts related to diabetes, she said something that blew away our mind - “walking is just an activity and not a form of exercise”.

We are sure the statement must have come as a major surprise for many who swear by their morning walks. Let’s dwell deeper into the topic.

Exercise is supposed to be a fitness regime that challenges the fitness level of your body. Walking is great but not enough to prevent loss of muscle mass and the metabolic loss that happens with age.

Maintaining muscle mass is important because muscles keep our metabolic system intact, prevent hormonal decline, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Not only this, maintaining muscle mass slows down ageing and other significant number of health issues.

Now that you know maintaining muscle mass is important, you should also know with every decade we lose 5 pounds of muscle mass after the age of 25 and 2-4 per cent of decline in the metabolic rate.

Now, to maintain the muscle mass and metabolism, strength training and intense exercise is a must. Walking is a low-intensity exercise and one needs to get involved in some intense workout that takes their heart rate up and helps them burn fat throughout the day.

Walking is important as every day other regular activity like eating and sleeping but to maintain weight, change your body and be healthy, your workout needs to be vigorous and intense.

Brisk pace walking can be considered as a moderate intensity cardio exercise. But the important thing here is the pace of brisk walk so that it can be considered as an exercise is different for different person depending upon their heart rate, age and fitness level.

To make it count as a fitness exercise, your heart rate should be 60 to 70 per cent of your maximum heart rate. At this pace, you can talk short but cannot sing. You breathe heavier. Walking at this pace should be your goal if you want to lose weight and be fit.

And to make your walking count as a vigorous-intensity exercise, your heart rate should be 70 to 80 per cent of your maximum heart rate. At this pace one is not able to talk and only speak short phrases.

Smartwatches and fitness bands with LED wrist heart sensors can be used to take your exercise pulse rate.

Also, walking in the correct posture is important as it does not only help one walk faster but also walk easier. To make your walking routine vigorous one may walk on steep areas or use stairs.