Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Walking 1 Hour a Day to Lose Weight
If you have been wondering how many calories you will lose while walking 1 hour a day to lose weight this post is for you. Many people are often curious about how many calories they will actually burn when they walk and if it is really worth it when walking an hour a day to lose weight. It is useful to know how far and how fast you should be walking in order to reach your goals.
This post will be about the amount of calories you can burn while walking to lose weight fast.
Walking 1 hour a day to Lose Weight – How Many Calories will You Burn
It is very useful to know how many calories you will burn from walking. In order to reach your weight loss goals you may wonder how to burn as many calories as you can from walking and if walking is even the right choice to get you there. For me walking is about more than losing weight, walking is an activity I enjoy with many other great benefits and one just happens to be that it helps you lose weight. In any case it’s always a good idea to keep track of your goals and progress.
Calories burned = work done:
It is the amount of energy you expend with the work you do that determines how many calories you will burn. You are moving your weight a certain distance, so a basic formula for the work done is: work = weight x distance. Let’s analyze this and see if it is useful at all. Your weight doesn’t really change unless you add weights to yourself when you walk but distance can change based on how far you choose to walk.
Notice that time and speed are not in the equation:
Let us consider if you were to choose a specific distance for you walk, say 5 km, and you keep this constant; we can influence the time it takes to do the work by running faster or slower. Maybe to some of your surprise time is not part of the work equation. If you run or walk the 5 km the biggest differences are how long it takes you to do the same work and also the dynamics differ slightly so there is a slight difference in calories burned. Walking to lose weight can be about just as much work as running!
Speed and time:
Naturally if you run you will get the job done faster but for a lot of reasons running may not be your choice for exercise. The main differences in running and walking besides the time it takes to finish the work are technique related. When running you are likely to use more muscles than when you walk; to maintain the speed and flow you use your upper body more. This causes you to burn slightly more calories however there are also aspects that can reduce the number of calories. When running you have a momentum but in comparison walking is pretty much a stop and go where you shift your body one step at a time without the springy momentum that running has. This momentum reduces some of the calories burnt from running. Speed is not the most important factor you should consider.
How fast should you walk:
The amount of calories that you burn doesn’t change too much by varying your speed but still there are factors to consider. Interestingly while walking 2 mph you burn about the same calories per hour as walking 4 mph. when increasing your speed from 2 mph to 4mph as your speed increases your calories burned per hour actually decreases. The difference from 2 mph to 3.5 mph is only about 10% less than the 2 mph; this is a very minor difference since if you had a 160 pound person for example they would burn 91 calories per hour at 2 mph instead of 83 at 3.5 mph (back up to 91 at 4 mph). increasing your speed of walking after that will only aid you more in walking to lose weight fast. My advice is to just choose a speed that you are comfortable with and over time try to increase the speed so you can walk faster and faster to get more out of your walking.
Distance:
Distance is the major factor within your control. If you want to burn more calories the best choice is to increase the total distance you walk and possibly even increasing the difficulty of the route, say by choosing a path that has an incline you can handle.
Bonus tip:
If you find yourself tired and worn out and you still have many hills left to climb before you walk ends you can take a break for a while or you can walk up the hills with a criss cross pattern and you will find it to be much more bearable. /\/\/\/\/ It would look something like that, it would take you longer to do but you will be happy you reduced the stress later on.
So when it comes down to it you will burn more calories in less time by walking faster but the most effective ways to increase your total calories burned is to walk further and to walk more difficult routes. I do not recommend adding weight as it can affect your posture as well as cause more harm than good. Remember that you can walk twice as far in the same time by walking 4 mph than walking 2 mph so try to increase your walking speed as well as your distance over time to be able to get the most out of walking an hour a day to lose weight.
Thank you for reading this post on walking 1 hour a day to lose weight.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment