A Liverpool personal trainer has revealed the one thing she believes you should be doing if you want to lose weight. Aoife Okonedo Martin, from the city centre’s Ultimate Performance, said this exercise is great for both your mental and physical health.

The fitness fanatic said the beauty of this type of exercise “is that it is suitable for everyone, regardless of age or ability,” with there being a number of benefits. Aoife told the ECHO: “The benefits of taking short but frequent walks are innumerable. In terms of your physical health, walking is one of the most underrated activities you can do to improve your overall health and well-being.

“In fact, I have prescribed 10,000 steps a day for every single client I’ve ever trained for fat loss. This is because walking is a big contributor to your daily energy expenditure from what is often called NEAT, which stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

“Put simply, this is the energy expended from everything we do when we’re not sleeping or exercising (hence the “non-exercise”). If you’re looking to lose weight, then increasing your NEAT through short, frequent walks means you are increasing the number of calories you burn every day.”

Aoife said the average person burns around 500 calories for every 10,000 steps, which represents roughly the level of calorie deficit we need to create each day to lose one pound of fat per week.

She said: “You don’t need to do all 10,000 steps in one go. Five-minute walks spread out across the day will all add up. If you were to take 10 five-minute walks every day, which equates to nearly an hour across your day, you might find yourself burning between 180 and 300 calories.

“10,000 is not a magic number, and how many calories you burn varies according to the individual, how fast they walk, and so on. But it is a good baseline figure to aim for.”

Aoife said weight loss is not the only health benefit these walks will bring about. She added: “Walking is a low-impact, low-stress activity that almost anyone can do anywhere, no matter their current fitness levels.

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“It requires no level of skill, and it is very easy to recover as it is not taxing on the body compared to other exercise modalities, such as HIIT training.

“Exercises like HIIT act as a stressor on the body, and so for anyone who is already in a highly-stressed state – particularly parents who might be working long hours, sleeping poorly or eating a poor diet – this kind of exercise can be deleterious because it just adds to the stress burden which can compromise the immune system at a time when we want to be at our healthiest.

“So, low-impact forms of exercise like short, frequent walks can actually be more beneficial for stress management, health and immune function.”