Walk the Walk to Wow: Stacey Capers

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DON'T THINK WALKING is real exercise? Tell that to Stacey Capers, who tipped the scale at 221 pounds when she and her husband appeared on season six of "The Biggest Loser" last year. The Gainesville, Va., couple managed to lose a whopping combined 145 pounds.

And their journey, as the saying goes, started with a single step — and then a whole lot more. You can join them at their new boot camps, meant for folks of any fitness level, starting in Gainesville and Vienna this month (see Icando
fitness.com for more).

» EXPRESS: Why was walking important to your weight loss?
» CAPERS: Going back to Day One on the ranch, all we could do was walk. A lot of people who are overweight have joint problems, ankle problems, so we would walk — upwards of two and three hours a day. You've got to walk before you can run, right?

We got eliminated early, so when we came home, we still weren't up for running. We took every chance to get in extra walking — parking farther away, circling the mall. It wasn't that we had never walked before, but we had never used it in a way to make it effective for us to lose weight.

» EXPRESS: So, how did you manage to keep walking for two hours?
» CAPERS: It helps to have Bob Harper screaming at you. It's very tough to stay on a treadmill for two hours, so it's nice if you belong to a gym and can distract yourself with TV shows or an MP3 player.
Now that the weather's good, I walk outside. We love going on the W&OD Trail.
But you have to keep it semi-intense if you want to produce results. Use inclines, or incorporate a hill in your walk. It can be as hard as a run. I get more excited by interval walking — walking faster for two minutes, then recovering.

» EXPRESS: What was your reaction when you first saw the results of all that walking?
» CAPERS: I was surprised. That first week, I lost 9 pounds, and that was from walking. At no time had I ever lost that much weight in one week.

» EXPRESS: How do you keep walking as part of your routine?
» CAPERS: We take our two kids out for walks, push the stroller around and make it a family affair.
And we've done the Walk for Hope for years. It's always a good time. Those sorts of events are great because you're giving to a charity and you get something, too. They're not timed, you can take as long as you want, and you're adding years to your life.

Photo courtesy Stacey Capers