How Many Miles To Walk To Lose Weight On A Treadmill?

It's probably safe to speculate that few people hop on a treadmill simply to expend excess energy. Most people use a treadmill to enhance their health and fitness and to help manage their weight. The cardio workout provided by walking on a treadmill can assist you in your weight loss efforts. How quickly you lose weight and how much you lose depend on several factors, including how much you weigh, how often you work out and how intensely you work out. More important than these factors, perhaps, is how well you manage your caloric intake.

Caveat

You can burn calories walking on a treadmill, and this helps you lose weight, but you won't burn so many calories you can eat anything you want. The calories you burn walking for an hour on the treadmill cannot compensate for even a few minutes of indiscretion in eating. A muffin, a couple of sodas, a fast food meal or any combination of tempting treats can quickly replace calories you've burned walking. Exercise increases your appetite and, according to psychologist Roy Baumeister, can deplete your self-control, making you more vulnerable to impulsive or indulgent eating. Walking on the treadmill will help you lose weight only if you effectively manage your calorie intake.

Benefits

When you walk on the treadmill, you use your biggest, strongest, most calorie-hungry muscles, including your gluteal muscles. When you walk at a moderately intense pace of 3 mph, you force your heart to beat faster and lungs to breathe deeper to supply the fuel and oxygen your muscles need and to carry away the waste products of exertion. You enhance your cardiovascular fitness, and your heart and lung workout burns calories in addition to the calories your lower body muscles burn. To obtain these benefits, MayoClnic.com advises people to do 30 to 60 minutes of cardio exercise on most days of the week. The American College of Sports Medicine notes some people might need to do 60 to 90 minutes of moderately intense cardio on a near-daily basis to lose weight. Of course, you burn calories even if you exercise for fewer than 60 or 90 minutes, but when you walk less, you'll burn fewer calories and lose weight more slowly.

Walking Calorie Math

If you walk at 3 mph for 60 minutes, you'll walk about three miles. How many calories you burn and how much weight you lose depend on your weight. If you weigh more, you'll expend more calories because it takes more energy to maintain and move your greater mass. A 150-lb. person who walks for an hour at 3 mph burns 236 calories, according to Bodybuilding.com. A 200-lb. person burns 314 calories, and a 250-lb. person burns 393 calories. You must burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 lb., so it would take a 150-lb. person about 15 days to burn 1 lb. A 200-lb. person would take 11 days, and a 250-lb. person would take nine days. If you increase the distance, you increase the weight loss proportionately. Walk twice as far to burn twice the calories and lose the weight twice as fast.

Incline

You can burn even more calories and lose weight more quickly by setting the treadmill on an incline. For example, the 200-lb. person who burns 314 calories walking three miles at 3 mph, burns 481 calories walking at a 5 percent incline, according to CaloriesperHour.com. Instead of taking 11 days to burn 1 lb., it would take about seven days.