Walking For Fat Loss: Does It Work?

Walking For Fat Loss: Does It Work?

Yes, but you must do a LOT to see real results.

Dr. Robert Ross and a research team from Ontario, Canada tracked 52 obese men over three months. They divided the men into four groups:

•     Diet only

•     Exercise only

•     Exercise without weight loss.

•     No exercise or diet

Both the diet and exercise groups created a calorie deficit of 700 calories daily. In other words, each day, the diet-only group ate 700 calories LESS than normal. The group that only exercised burned an additional 700 calories a day by walking on the treadmill.

This is what happened three months later:

Group	Loss of fat	Muscle wasting
Diet only	- 11 pounds	- 4 lbs
Exercise only	- 13 pounds	- 3 pounds

As you can see, both groups lost a similar amount of weight.

Twenty minutes is not enough

The only problem is that the exercise program included 60 minutes of brisk walking EVERY day for three months. Now, I don't know about you, but finding the time to train for 60 minutes every day is not easy.

Most studies examining the effect of aerobic exercise on weight loss have used programs that last 30-45 minutes, 4-5 days per week. Weight loss with such routines generally averages around 0.2lb per week (yes, the decimal point is in the right place!).

Not much, right?

So why are walking programs so ineffective at promoting fat loss (unless you're prepared to invest about seven hours of your time each week on the treadmill)?

It is a fact that walking only burns a modest amount of calories. Each pound of fat contains approximately 3,500 calories. If we assume that 30 minutes of brisk walking burns around 350 calories, it will take AT LEAST 10 workouts to shed just 1 pound of fat.

If you plan to use walking as a way to lose weight, make sure you know you will have to DO A LOT to see real results.