People who are losing weight are usually interested in how many calories are spent when walking, since walking itself is usually undertaken with the aim of increasing energy expenditure.
From the point of view of common sense, such an activity should seem ineffective, but for people with extreme degrees of obesity, this type of physical activity may be the only acceptable one.
Calorie expenditure when walking
Walking will allow people who are unable to run due to health reasons to expend a certain amount of calories in excess of normal household and production costs. At the same time, walking can be combined with the road to work, the store, etc. You should not count on walking as an indispensable attribute of losing weight and, moreover, as a guarantee of indispensable weight loss.
Walking, as a means of losing weight, should be considered only in conjunction with a diet , while all types of energy expenditure (basal metabolism, industrial, household activity and walking) should ensure that the calories consumed exceed those received from food.
At the same time, in order to achieve stable and long-term weight loss, this excess, or imbalance (sometimes called a calorie deficit), should not exceed 400 kcal for women and 500 kcal for men (due to higher muscle mass).
Then any change in physical activity (including additional walking) should entail a corresponding increase in food consumption. This circumstance is usually perceived with distrust and even rejected, but these are the laws of physiology that cannot be argued with. Too much imbalance soon leads to a decrease in metabolic rate with a subsequent decrease in the rate of weight loss. As a result, there will be a lot of movement, little food, and no plumb lines.
However, walking will not be “superfluous” - more food will ensure the supply of sufficient nutrients, vitamins, macro- and microelements, dietary fiber, the enzyme system will work perfectly, and you will be guaranteed excellent digestion.
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Can 10,000 steps a day help you reach your ideal weight?
Most people need a deficit of about 500 calories per day to lose about a pound per week. According to Hirai, people who want to lose weight or maintain their weight should exercise at least 150 to 200 minutes a week. 10,000 steps a day can help achieve this goal.
Other factors are also important in weight loss. Thomas Hirai emphasizes the importance of healthy eating. “Losing weight through exercise is much more effective when combined with diet,” he says.
Burning calories by walking: how does it work?
Let's look at what actually leads to energy consumption when walking. When a person lies motionless (but is awake), and yesterday’s food has already been digested, energy is spent only on vital processes (the work of the heart, liver, kidneys, muscles and other organs), and the consumption is close to the basal metabolic rate (BMR), about 1 kcal/kg/h (this means that for every kilogram of body weight per hour, energy consumption is 1 kcal). At the same time, the pulse rate and breathing rate are minimal. When a person gets up, energy consumption increases and will exceed the BVR by 40% - additional energy is spent on pumping blood upward, keeping the body in balance, etc. This is accompanied by an increase in heart rate by about 15 beats per minute, frequency and depth of breathing to ensure increased air oxygen requirements.
Details about losing weight by walking - the most interesting facts.
And now attention - the person brings one leg forward and transfers his body weight to it (takes the first step). The height of the center of gravity (CG) of a person (located at the level of the II sacral vertebra) decreases. Anyone who has not forgotten school geometry remembers that the height of an isosceles triangle is always less than the length of two equal thighs. In our case, the length of the base of the triangle is the length of the step, and the length of the thigh is the length of the leg. (As an extreme case, imagine a person sitting in the splits - here the CG is the lowest).
As a first approximation, lowering the CG does not require energy consumption. But when a person pulls up his second leg, at this moment the height of the CG increases, which requires work to be done against the gravity of the Earth, and for this one has to pay - with energy, i.e. calories. With a constant step length, the CG makes a down/up movement for each walking cycle; when moving down, the accumulated energy is spent uselessly; when moving up, energy must be expended from the body’s reserves.
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You can walk at different speeds - from a walking pace of 3.5-4 km/h to fast walking at a speed of 7-7.5 km/h, while the average speed of a pedestrian is considered to be 5-5.5 km/h. As walking speed increases, step frequency increases and, accordingly, energy consumption per minute or hour increases. But what’s interesting is that the energy consumption per kilometer of travel remains virtually unchanged . This is not a paradox - this follows from the reasons for energy consumption when walking discussed above.
This ratio is violated only with very fast walking, but very fast walking (at a speed above 7-7.5 km/h) is irrational - running at such a speed turns out to be more economical than walking per kilometer of distance. (And cycling is even more economical - there is no cyclic increase in CG, you only have to overcome friction and air resistance).
Benefits of walking
The benefits of walking for young and old people are obvious. Walking not only strengthens your legs and reduces weight, the activity forces your body to work at a different level.
The influence of walking and race walking affects:
- musculoskeletal system;
- joints and spine, strengthened by blood circulation;
- the body is cleansed of waste and toxins;
- Cholesterol comes out and blood pressure normalizes.
Walking is the body's defense against disease. Scientific studies have proven that a twenty-minute walk reduces the risk of premature mortality by up to 30%, this applies to people with a sedentary lifestyle.
People who want to lose excess weight, having gotten used to daily walks, will only enjoy the process. Burning calories will become less important, the main thing is the beauty of nature and enjoying the picturesque places of parks and suburban surroundings.
If you want to feel energetic and cheerful, take walks and walk to work. The result will not keep you waiting. Play sports and be healthy!
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Calculate calorie consumption when walking
It is usually customary to determine how many calories are burned per hour of walking using tables. Based on the above, there is no special need for tables - it is enough to know your weight and the distance traveled. Moreover, the tables will mislead you regarding the number of calories you are interested in expended. The fact is that in the tables, energy expenditures are given based on the results of instrumental measurements of the energy expenditure of people of different weights at different walking speeds, i.e. These values include basal metabolic rate. Having walked 5 km in an hour, a person weighing 60 kg will spend about 210 kcal, while 60 kcal will be the main metabolism, and the consumption for walking itself will be 210 - 60 = 150 (kcal). Having “counted” 210 kcal as a reward for walking, he will count the hourly exchange of 60 kcal twice - once as part of the daily exchange of 60 x 24 = 1440 kcal, and the second time for an hour of walking.
Tables of energy consumption for different types of activities were compiled for a completely different purpose than helping people lose weight.
And now the numbers for calculation are very simple. For each kilometer of distance, a person spends an amount of energy in kilocalories when walking that is numerically equal to half of his weight in kilograms. In this case, the weight should not be the one that you measure in the morning on an empty stomach and without clothes, but the real weight while walking, in clothes, shoes and with additional load, if you decide to make walking heavier or this happens (for example, you need to carry a backpack). So, the formula for calculating calories burned while walking is:
0.5 x person's weight (kg) x distance (km) = Kcal burned
Example: A person weighing 80 kg, walking 1.5 km every morning to his place of work, spends 0.5 x 80 x 1.5 = 60 (kcal) energy.
When walking uphill, energy consumption increases at the rate of 0.09 kcal/kg/km for each percentage of the steepness of the climb (these percentages you saw on road signs before the climb or slope).
Example: A person climbs a 12% climb. When calculating calories burned, instead of the coefficient of 0.5 kcal/kg/km, you should use the coefficient (0.5 + 0.09 x 12) = 1.58 (kcal/kg/km).
The level of basal metabolism mainly depends on the temperature and humidity of the air, which we do not include in the calories consumed when walking. Of course, these factors influence the comfort of walking.
Losing weight requires a calorie deficit
If you want to lose weight, your daily step count is just one of several aspects. Losing weight is mostly about creating a calorie deficit. This means that you must burn more calories than you consume. At the same time, energy can be spent in a variety of ways: through various sports, as well as through walking. 10,000 steps a day can help you reach your ideal weight. But be careful - this is not a guarantee of weight loss.
Fitness bracelets and smartphones for calculating calorie consumption
The fitness bracelet has a built-in motion sensor – an accelerometer. The smartphone, on which a special application should be installed, receives sensor readings via the Bluetooth wireless network and converts them into steps. And then the steps are recalculated into kilometers and calories according to the user’s weight, height and age specified when launching the application. It is clear that in this case, the accuracy of estimating calories burned is very low.
An accelerometer can also be built into a smartphone, but here the error is even greater, since the smartphone should be worn in a place where the accelerometer can well sense the vibrations caused by walking, for example, in a trouser pocket. All such devices are designed for walking or running, and in fitness training mode their readings are even more unreliable.
Calculate calorie consumption based on heart rate
In a state of rest while lying down, a person’s pulse is minimal and is called the resting pulse. When performing physical work, to meet the body's increased need for oxygen, the heart begins to beat faster, and the increase in heart rate is, to a first approximation, proportional to the power of the work performed (at the same time, at low loads, the heart rate is restrained by an increase in the volume of blood ejected by the heart into the aorta per contraction, and only then, when the stroke volume reaches its limit, does the load increase only due to increased heart rate).
You can calculate energy consumption when walking using the formula:
E = 0.002 x M x T x (P - PP)
where E is energy expenditure in kcal, M is body weight in kg, T is walking time in minutes, PP is resting pulse, and P is pulse during movement in beats per minute. The interesting thing about this formula is that it does not include the distance traveled, the speed, or the steepness of the climb - all this is taken into account by the heart rate.
The pulse rate can be measured by manual counting or with an electronic heart rate monitor, several times along the way, and take the average.
Example: A person weighing 70 kg walked a certain distance in 15 minutes, with a pulse of 90 beats/min, a resting pulse of 65 beats/min. Energy consumption is equal to 0.002 x 70 x 15 x (90 – 65) = 52 (kcal).
Such a calculation is also approximate, since the loss of calories when walking depends on the degree of training of a person (in trained people, compared to less trained people, performing the same work requires a lower heart rate), and the heart rate monitor is not able to evaluate it, and some information is lost.
There are also online calculators that allow you to calculate how many calories are burned when walking in an hour or other time. These walking calorie calculators usually require you to enter your weight, walking time, and distance traveled, and can be based on different algorithms since there is no single method for calculating how many calories you burn while walking for the reasons described above.
