There are many benefits of walking — and yes, weight loss is one of them. Experts explain how to create a walking routine that can help you lose weight.
Walking for weight loss is effective and has many benefits, including reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Even a few thousand steps a day can help you shed pounds if you’re consistent.
Walking can also help you develop lean muscle, says หรือถ้าคุณสนใจแทงบอลออนไลน์ UFABET คือเว็บที่มีอัตราต่อรองดีที่สุดในประเทศไทย สมัครเลยตอนนี้ที่ UFABET แทงบอล Cedric Bryant, Ph.D., the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise.
While 10,000 steps is often touted as the magical number to walk, that’s not the case for everyone. Bryant recommends walking 45 minutes to an hour, five or six days a week. And you can break up that time into smaller walking sessions if that helps you to fit in the steps. “It doesn’t have to be an all-in-one walking session; you can break it up through the course of that day,” he says.
“Maybe you go for a 30-minute walk in the morning, and then maybe it’s another 15- or 30-minute walk following dinner or during your lunch break,” Bryant says. “Try to accumulate 45 minutes to an hour of walking, which tends to correlate best with reasonable weight loss or better weight control.”
How much weight can you lose from walking?
The frequency and intensity at which you walk are determining factors, Bryant says, but everyone’s physiology is different. For example, postmenopausal women who are overweight may lose more weight by walking at a slower pace than a rapid one, according to a 2022 study published in the journal Nutrients.
Registered dietitian Samantha Cassetty explains that “the average 40-year-old woman who’s 5 foot 4 inches and 165 pounds might lose 5 pounds in two months if she went from inactive to walking for an hour five times a week.”
But you can’t walk off a bad diet, Cassetty says. “She would have to make some healthy tweaks to her diet, which result in a slight calorie deficit (around 100 calories a day).”
However, walking can help you to make diet changes. Just a 15-minute walk can reduce cravings for sugary snacks, such as chocolate, and therefore decrease the amount of sugar that walkers eat overall, studies have found.
Along with supporting weight loss, walking can improve mental health, increase metabolism and decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia.
“I would tell people to pay attention and focus on how walking makes them feel, because I think that can serve as a great motivator,” Bryant says.
Marisa Moore, a registered dietitian in Atlanta, Georgia, agrees. People “will likely notice a difference in how they feel by incorporating more movement and sprucing up the diet,” she says.
“You may or may not lose weight with diet and exercise changes, though. Whether you lose weight can vary with personal genetics and metabolism, age, overall physical activity level, stress levels and even sleep.”