Incorporating regular exercise into your routine helps you reach your weight-loss goals. Walking can help you lose weight, but you must understand that the rate of weight loss will come slowly. You can increase the effectiveness of your walking sessions by increasing the intensity of the workout.
Walking
Walking provides numerous health benefits, including burning calories to support a healthy body weight. A 60-minute workout, for a 160-lb. person, will burn about 183 calories walking at 2 mph and 277 calories walking at 3.5 mph. The speed you walk is directly correlated to the number of calories you burn during your walking workout. The more you weigh, the more calories you will burn during your walk.
Contribution to Weight Loss
You lose weight when you create a caloric deficit, which happens when you burn more calories than you consume over a period of time. Walking regularly increases the total number of calories you burn and helps to create the caloric deficit. Every 1 lb. of weight loss requires that you create a caloric deficit of 3,500.
Rate of Weight Loss
Because walking increases the number of calories you burn, it can help you lose weight. However, it's not the most effective exercise for weight loss. If a 160-lb. person walks for an hour and at 3.5 mph each session, it will take 13 walking workouts to burn 1 lb. of body fat. Activities of higher intensity, such as jogging and running, burn significantly more of calories. That same 160-lb. person burns 584 to 986 calories jogging or running for an hour.
Considerations
Walking is still an effective exercise for weight loss for those who are willing to be more patient. You can increase how quickly you lose weight by walking faster and incorporating hill walking into your regimen. It's also important to note the impact your diet has on your weight-loss success. Walking increases the number of calories you burn, but you can further develop that caloric deficit needed for weight loss by limiting your calorie intake. Make healthy food and drink choices and consume only low-calorie, low-fat foods.
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