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Brisk walking rather than going to the gym regularly is the key to a successful weight loss, a recent study from the London School of Economics said.

A research led by Dr. Grace Lordan said that 'regular, brisk' walking has been effective in losing or maintaining weight among people who are over 50 and have low income and among women, according to a report from Independent.

Lordan said that the result is aimed at primarily strengthening the campaign for walking in the UK, a country where a lot of people are inactive and has been battling the obesity epidemic for a long time now.

"Additionally, there is no monetary cost to walking so it is very likely that the benefits will outweigh the costs. It has also been shown by the same authors that walking is associated with better physical and mental health. So, a simple policy that "every step counts" may be a step towards curbing the upward trend in obesity rates and beneficial for other health conditions," Dr. Lordan further said as mentioned in LSE.

But how did Dr. Lordan and other doctors define 'regular, brisk walking'?

In an interview, the doctor said that brisk walking should involve breathing and an increase in heart rate that is different from the normal rate of walking.

"It needs to be that your face is red and you're perspiring gently, you're almost out of breath and almost struggling to talk to the person next to you. It isn't about going for a lazy stroll in the park, you need to be getting your breath up," Dr. Lordan said in a report from Daily Record.

Other professionals as cited in Independent also recommend the classic 10,000 steps daily requirement for exercise.

The health economics specialist also recommend that, aside from brisk walking, heart rate and perspiration will also occur after 30 minutes in doing exercises like (1) moderate-intensity sports or exercise, such as swimming, cycling, working out at the gym, dancing, running, football/rugby, badminton/tennis, squash, and exercises including press-ups and sit-ups; (2) heavy housework, such as moving heavy furniture, walking with heavy shopping, scrubbing floors and (3) heavy manual activities, such as digging, felling trees, chopping wood and moving heavy loads.

Dr. Grace Lordan's study is conducted by examining the physical activity levels from the annual Health Survey for England (HSE) from 1999 to 2012.