Calories Burned Walking for Weight Loss
For most of us the connection between the food eaten and the calories it contains, the exercise we do and the energy used, is less than clear. If walking is a wonderful weight loss exercise and only 10 minutes twice a day causes us to lose weight it really can’t be that difficult to get the whole diet issue under control. Yet walking uses only 300 calories an hour as a generous estimate, less for a 60 kg woman. Aerobic or power walking could use 400 calories in the same time.
Can using an extra 100 calories daily lose weight when we know that a pound of fat is made up of 3500 calories?
Yet it does. Over time, and more quickly than these figures suggest.
Sometimes it can be easy.
Other times it takes a combined effort of diet and extensive exercise.
There is a magical process which works to make the calories in and out equation more productive than it looks from this information.
It occurs when a number of aspects of diet and movement, metabolism and body chemistry combine in such a way that weight loss occurs quicker than the simple burning of calories suggests.
All things being equal the benefit of calories burned through exercise is more than simply a withdrawal from the fat bank account but the increased metabolic rates and standing body rates of ongoing life support.
Knowing too much can be discouraging and irrelevant unless you are selectively using monitoring of behaviour rather than results.
The connection between food and calories made by recording food and calories eaten can be insightful and effective.
The connection to exercise is more problematic-it has more than a calories burned impact, dependng on the type of exercise it can effect metabolism as muscle uses more energy for maintenance than fat. And walking for weight loss can provide a way of feeling in control. it offers a solution after the horse has bolted i.e. having overeaten then walking can ameliorate the guilt or physical affects in addition to the calories burned walking.
Recording pedometer steps helps motivation towards achievement of a target such as 10,000 daily steps. It allows the user to become conscious of their movement and liable to add extra when possible. For eating the recording of food as it is eaten becomes a means of avoiding unconscious eating.
