All those who want to lose weight know that proper nutrition and a calorie-burning cardio exercise are a must if you want to reach your goals. Experts also recommend brisk walking as a moderate-intensity exercise and if you do it right- walking far enough and at the right intensity – you can achieve your weight loss goals, especially if you’re also paying attention to your diet.
How Long to Walk Each Day for Weight Loss?
You must walk 30 to 90 minutes each day at a moderate-intensity of 60-70% of your maxim heart rate to start losing weight. The idea is to breathe harder than usually but to still be able to talk in full sentences. You can use a fitness app or a heart rate monitor to make sure you achieve the right heart rate intensity. It is also very important to walk for at least 2.5 hours weekly if you want to get on track with your cardiovascular fitness but you’ll probably want to increase the walking duration if you need to lose weight.
Overweight people need to walk at least 3.5-5 hours a week to lose weight and keep it off and this means at least one-hour walk a day, 5 days a week. Don’t forget that if you also perform other exercises on top of this, you will be able to burn calories faster and increase your chances to meet your weight goals. So, if you up the intensity of walking, including short periods of jogging or running or if you add resistance training exercises to your daily routine, you can even cut the duration of your walk-in half and still achieve the same benefits.
Does Walking Compare To Running?
Although you can achieve the same health benefits while walking -with lower injury risks – if you want to really lose weight, you must remember that the duration is key. It seems that a runner that has 68 kg can burn 340 calories on a 5 km run, when averaging a 30-min run, meaning 11.3 calories per minute. And the same person can burn 224 calories on a 5 km walk if he walks 60- minutes in total, meaning 3.7 calories per minute.
So running is definitely more efficient than walking if you want to burn calories but if you prefer to walk longer you can make up the difference. If we’re talking about the example above, you will need to walk for 1 h and 30 minutes to achieve the same calorie burn you have when you run for 30 minutes.
Are You New To Walking As A Weight-Loss Activity?
No problem. Just start with short periods of walking and try to make longer walks from one day to another without skipping more than one day in a row. If you want to burn calories and improve your metabolic rate, consistency is the key. Experts also recommend some strength training exercises to help you hit your weight loss goals and build new healthy habits. If you managed to lose weight and want to maintain your physical condition, you should spend at least 60 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week while eating less calories than you expend.
Start Tracking Your Meals
Calculating your daily steps and exercise intensity is important as long as you don’t forget about nutrition. If you’re trying to lose weight, diet is equally important as your workout. So find an app that can help you make informed decisions about the quantity and types of foods that you should eat and learn how to cut the excess calories so you will achieve a healthy deficit that allows you not only to lose weight but also to keep it off.
Calories and Fat Burned in 30 Minutes
As we were previously saying in the example above, after 30 minutes of brisk walking, you can burn those sugars that are stored as fat. To keep burning the stored fat, you need to build up a walking endurance that burns around 1000-3000 calories weekly. Improve your metabolism daily, 30 minutes at a time and from there keep pushing so your body will start burning fat for fuel.
In conclusion, if you start walking a bit more every day, until you will do more than one hour a day, 5 times a week while taking care of your nutrition as well, you will set yourself up for an effective weight loss plan. Good luck! You’ve just taken the first steps towards a healthy active lifestyle and even if now it may seem a little daunting, in time you will enjoy it and reduce the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease or diabetes.
