Can Walking on a Treadmill Help You Lose Weight?

It's easy to think your workouts need to be long, grueling and intense in order to lose weight. But in reality, walking can seriously help you work toward your goal.

A gentle, low-impact form of exercise, walking at a brisk enough pace will raise your heart rate, burn calories and, over time, shed pounds.

If you have access to a treadmill — either at home or in the gym — you can walk even when the weather isn't cooperating. And, you can control the machine's speed and incline to get even more out of your exercise session.

Ready to give treadmill walking a try? Here's everything you need to know about treadmill walking for weight loss.

Healthy adults need at least 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderate-intensity cardio each week or 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) of vigorous-intensity cardio each week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Your body burns calories in proportion to your body weight. Here's a look at the amount of calories you'd burn walking for 30 minutes if you weighed 125, 155 and 185 pounds at five different walking paces, according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

As you can see, the faster you walk, the more calories you'll burn. And you can easily figure out what speed you're walking — and change it — when using a treadmill thanks to its monitor display. You can also opt to walk for more than 30 minutes at a time to burn more calories. For instance, a 155-pound person walking at a brisk pace of 3.5 mph for 1 hour would burn 267 calories instead of 133 calories.

If you burn, for instance, 100 calories when walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes every day — without cutting calories or performing other exercises — you'd lose about 1 pound for every 35 miles you walk, per Harvard Health Publishing. To shed more pounds, you would need to either walk faster, longer or add some inclines to your treadmill routine to increase its intensity (more on this below).

The intensity of your exercise has a direct affect on the number of calories you burn, as well as the benefits you reap from walking. You can do your aerobic workouts at a moderate intensity to lose weight, per the Mayo Clinic. Walking briskly at about 3.5 to 4 mph is a good speed to walk on a treadmill to lose weight.

In a moderate-intensity workout, your breathing will quicken but not leave you gasping, and you should be able to carry on a conversation, per the CDC. You may have to adjust your walking speed up or down to reach this intensity level.

You can add inclines, or hills, to your treadmill walking routine to burn more calories and activate your lower-body muscles. (When you work your muscles, you build more lean muscle mass, which helps you lose weight because you can burn more calories at rest by increasing your metabolism.)

Here are two treadmill walking workouts to lose weight. Keep in mind, you can modify either of these workouts to your ability by decreasing the treadmill incline, speed or total time spent exercising.

Created by Lauren Giraldo, who posted it on her YouTube channel in 2019, the 12-3-30 workout activates your calves, glutes and hamstrings and increases your heart rate, helping to improve your overall stamina and total calorie burn.

Here's how to do it:

• Walk on the treadmill at an incline of 12 at 3 miles per hour for 30 minutes

Created by ACE, this hill workout offers the same benefits as the 12-3-30 workout above with more intervals added in.

Here's how to do it:

• Walk for 5 minutes to warm up
• Walk at a 5 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk at a 7 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk at a 9 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk at a 11 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk at a 13 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk at a 15 percent incline for 2 minutes at an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10
• Walk at a 2 percent incline for 1 minute to recover
• Walk for 5 minutes to cool down

According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are many other mental and physical benefits of walking that go beyond losing weight. Here are a few:

• It reduces stress
• It slashes your risk of heart disease
• It boosts your immune system
• It's good for your joints
• It improves sleep quality
• It prevents against certain types of cancer
• It helps manage your blood sugar