If you want to stay fit and healthy, it’s important to exercise regularly. Walking is a great form of physical activity that’s free, low risk, and accessible to most people and is one of the easiest forms of exercise to incorporate into your day-to-day life. Walking regularly may help you burn extra calories, develop lean muscle, and reduce belly fat. This article explores how walking can help you lose weight and belly fat, in addition to other benefits.
The Calorie-Burning Effect of Walking
Your body needs energy (in the form of calories) for all the complex chemical reactions that allow you to move, breathe, think, and function. Furthermore, being physically active burns more calories than being sedentary. A sedentary lifestyle can contribute to weight gain and increase your risk for health problems, namely cardiovascular disease, heart failure, and mortality. Trying to get more exercise by walking more often can help you burn more calories and reduce these risks.
A 2021 study measured the number of calories regular walkers or runners burned after walking 1 mile (1.6 km). Results showed that walkers and runners burned, on average, 107 calories. This number will vary, however, depending on your weight, sex, and ethnicity. Furthermore, the study found that running burned more calories than walking, although the difference was small. This means that both forms of exercise, walking and running, contribute significantly to the number of calories burned and, therefore, weight management.
Walking 1 mile can burn approximately 100 calories. Walking creates more energy (calorie) expenditure. Moderate walking (3 miles per hour) will burn between 4 and 7 kcal per minute depending on the weight and conditioning of the individual. For instance, a 140 lb moderately conditioned person will expend approximately 4 kcal/minute or 120 kcal expended for a 30-minute stroll. A 250-lb. less-conditioned individual, however, will expend approximately 7 kcal per minute for the same walk with a total active caloric expenditure of 210 kcal. A 30-minute walk every night after dinner for 7 days can create an additional weekly caloric expenditure of 840 to 1,470 kcal!
To increase the intensity of your walk and burn even more calories, try walking on routes with hills or slight inclines. Walking uphill or on a gradient also increases the difficulty of the exercise and the number of calories people burn. For some, this may mean increasing the treadmill gradient, while others may want to incorporate more hills into their outdoor walking routine. People can also walk uphill more by using stairs instead of elevators or escalators.
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Walking and Muscle Preservation
You often lose some muscle in addition to body fat when you cut calories and lose weight. This can be counterproductive, as muscle is more metabolically active than fat. This means that having more muscle helps you burn more calories each day. Exercise, including walking, can help counter this effect by preserving lean muscle when you lose weight. Preserving lean muscle helps reduce the drop in metabolic rate that often occurs with weight loss, making your results easier to maintain. What’s more, regular exercise can reduce age-related muscle loss, helping you retain more of your muscle strength and function in later years.
Both endurance-type exercise (like walking) and resistance-type exercise (like lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises) help preserve muscle mass during weight loss. This is important because muscles help keep your metabolism running efficiently, meaning you burn more calories even when you’re at rest. Maintaining muscle during weight loss can make it easier to keep the weight off over time.
Reducing Belly Fat Through Walking
Storing a lot of fat around your midsection (abdominal fat) has been linked to an increased risk of diseases like diabetes and heart disease. In fact, men with a waist circumference greater than 40 inches (102 cm) and women with a waist circumference greater than 35 inches (88 cm) are considered to have abdominal obesity, which is considered a health risk. One of the most effective ways to reduce belly fat is to regularly take part in aerobic exercise, such as walking.
In a 2021 systematic review, researchers found that at least moderate aerobic activity was beneficial for reducing visceral adipose tissue. Additionally, exercising 3 times per week for 12-16 weeks and performing 30-60 minutes of aerobic activity reduced visceral adipose tissue. Another systematic review found that people on a calorie-controlled diet who participated in exercise showed a dose-dependent reduction in visceral fat compared with the controls.
Walking for Mood Improvement and Motivation
Exercise is known to boost your mood. Physical activity has been associated with improved mood, decreased feelings of stress, depression, and anxiety, and increased energy levels. It does this by making your brain more sensitive to the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine. These hormones relieve feelings of depression and stimulate the release of endorphins, which make you feel happy.
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Experiencing an improvement in mood when you walk regularly might also make the habit easier to keep up with than if you walk less frequently. What’s more, some studies have found that finding enjoyment in a physical activity can increase the likelihood that you will continue to participate in it. People tend to exercise less if they do not find the exercises they’re doing enjoyable. Walking is an excellent choice because it’s a moderate-intensity exercise. This is likely to motivate you to walk more rather than give up.
The health benefits of walking are well known: It boosts mood and metabolism. It reduces the risk of some cancers and chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Walking even has the power to extend your life.
Maintaining Weight Loss Through Walking
Many people who try weight loss programs end up gaining all or some of their weight back. Regular exercise plays an important role in helping you maintain weight loss. However, you must continuously engage in physical activity if your goal is to keep off weight that you’ve already lost. In fact, studies have found that people who exercise the most are usually more successful at losing a greater amount of weight, whereas people who exercise the least are more likely to regain weight.
According to the National Weight Control Registry, 94% of people who have successfully maintained a loss of at least 30 pounds for 1 year or more report increasing physical activity, mainly by walking. Incorporating more walking into your day can help you increase the amount of exercise you do and contribute to your daily activity goals.
Recommendations and Strategies for Increasing Walking
According to the Centers for Disease Control, it’s recommended to get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week to maintain a stable weight. In walking terms, that means walking for around 2.5 hours per week (at least 10 minutes at a time) at a brisk pace. Or, walking just 22 minutes per day also satisfies this recommendation. Doing more exercise than this has additional benefits for your health (and your weight) and reduces your risk for disease even further.
Read also: Weight Loss with Indoor Exercises
There are many ways to increase the amount of walking you do and achieve this target:
- Use a fitness tracker to motivate yourself to move more, see your progress, and set step goals.
- Make a habit of taking a brisk walk on your lunch break and/or after dinner. Perhaps you take a walk every night after dinner or first thing in the morning.
- Ask a friend to join you for an evening walk. Find a friend or spouse to walk with. This may make it an activity you look forward to everyday. This may also help you to strengthen your social relationships.
- Go for a walk with family and kids.
- Walk your dog every day or join a friend on their dog walks.
- Take a walking meeting with a colleague or take work calls while walking, instead of at your desk. Make your necessary phone calls (i.e., work, doctors’ appointments, calls to family members) while you are on your walk. You can also try pacing around your yard or home while making these calls.
- Do errands, like going to the grocery store, and any shopping on foot and in person instead of curbside pick-up or online shopping. Incorporate more walking into activities of daily living. Perhaps walk to the store, to work, or simply try to get some daily steps in doing some housework.
- Walk to work. If it’s too far, park your car further away or get off your bus a few stops early and walk the rest of the way.
- Try picking new and challenging routes to keep your walks interesting.
- Join a walking group.
- Use a daily step tracker such as a Fitbit, Apple Watch, or the health app on your phone to reach a daily step goal. You can even make a game of this by trying to beat your weekly or monthly average (on a side note, this worked wonders for my husband as he lost 40 pounds).
Every little bit helps, so start small and try to gradually increase the amount you walk daily.
The Importance of Consistency
Although exerting more effort walking (i.e., Walking faster or on harder terrain) may result in more energy (calorie) expenditure for that walking session, walking at more than a moderate pace or for very long durations may be counterproductive to weight loss goals as it may lead to decreased compliance and consistency. Oftentimes, it is not the intensity of the walking behavior that aids most in long-term weight loss, it is how often you are walking and how long you continue the most important behavior. It may be more helpful to look at walking as a long-term habit that you are trying to build.
Consistency is key. If you are looking to use walking as a weight-loss tool, plan on making it a long-term habit! Focus on getting in your daily walking rather than focusing on increasing intensity. Basic health in line with current recommendations can be achieved with a minimum daily step goal of 7,000 to 8,000 steps per day. A step goal of 10,000 steps per day is a reasonable goal to achieve weight loss and is supported in research studies. Aim for a step count goal of 7,500 per day if you can tolerate it but achieving more steps over your baseline is most important if that is all you can maintain consistently. Increase that step goal to 10,000 steps per day as you become more conditioned.
Walking Immediately After Meals
Walking just after a meal was more effective for weight loss than waiting one hour after eating before walking. For people who do not experience abdominal pain, fatigue, or other discomfort when walking just after a meal, walking at a brisk speed for 30 minutes as soon as possible just after lunch and dinner leads to more weight loss than does walking for 30 minutes beginning one hour after a meal has been consumed.
Repeated hyperglycemia after meals causes hyperinsulinemia and a resultant resistance to insulin, which is problematic for people who have mild diabetes mellitus or are at risk for diabetes mellitus, and for people with obesity, because insulin is the obesity hormone. Suppressing hyperglycemia after a meal will suppress insulin hypersecretion, helping to suppress the storage of internal fat and thus preventing obesity from worsening.
Additional Tips for Enhancing Your Walking Workout
- Add extra weight: Adding extra weight to a workout will increase its difficulty and the amount of energy the body has to use in the process. Weighted vests may also have other benefits. However, this approach is not for everyone. People with back or neck problems may need to avoid using a weighted vest, while others may need to work up to wearing the additional weight. As with any new exercise, a person should speak to their doctor beforehand.
- Maintain good form: It is important to maintain form and a balanced posture while walking. Sometimes, this in itself can result in a person strengthening new muscles.
- Incorporate resistance training: Adding resistance training exercises to a walk may help burn more calories and increase new muscle growth. To do this, people can take breaks from walking at regular intervals and use their body weight or outdoor equipment. Some exercises to try include squats, pushups, burpees, tricep dips, and lunges.
- Try power walking: Power walking is a form of brisk walking that focuses on speed and arm movement. It can be an effective way to increase the intensity of walks.
- Break up your walks: Some people may find it easier to maintain their daily exercise by doing shorter walks throughout the day instead of taking a much longer walk once a day. Doing this may even enhance the effects of walking for weight loss.
- Increase your daily steps: Simply increasing the number of steps people take throughout the day may help with weight management as well as overall health. A common recommendation is for adults to walk 10,000 steps per day.
Addressing Common Questions
- How much walking is needed for weight loss? This depends on a range of factors, such as how many calories a person takes in each day and how many they burn. The CDC recommends that adults do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week for overall health.
- Can walking target belly fat? It is not possible to burn fat in specific parts of the body with any type of exercise. That said, a general weight loss plan can reduce body fat overall, including on the belly.
- Can walking help with weight gain? Possibly, but it depends on the cause of the increased weight. If the cause is a calorie surplus, a person may need to combine walking with dietary changes. Similarly, if weight gain occurs due to an underlying condition, such as a thyroid disorder, people may need treatment for that first.