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If you’re wondering how quickly you will lose weight if you walk a mile every day, the answer isn’t quite as simple as you’d hope. In fact, saying how many pounds you can expect to lose doing any activity — whether it’s walking, swimming, yoga or cycling — is tricky.
Let’s take a look at some common questions about walking and weight loss.
How Many Calories Does Walking Burn?
The number of calories you burn during any given activity is going to depend, at least in part, on your current body weight. If a 125-pound person walks for 30 minutes at a leisurely pace, for example, they’ll burn about 120 calories in 30 minutes. A 155-pound person will burn 149 calories during that same walk, and a 185-pound person will burn roughly 178 calories, according to the Harvard Health Publishing.
A mile is 5,280 feet or 1.6 kilometers. This may equal four times around a running track, but keep in mind that all tracks are different. If you’re walking around your neighborhood, consider investing in a fitness tracker to help you determine your distance.
Will You Lose More Weight if You Walk Faster?
Well, it helps. Intensity is a big factor in determining how many calories you’ll burn during any given exercise, and to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in.
According to Harvard, that same 155-pound person will burn 149 calories per 30 minutes walking at a 3.5-miles-per-hour pace — or roughly a 17-minute mile. If they speed up, they’ll burn more calories. Walking one mile at 4 miles per hour — which should take 15 minutes — burns 167 calories. If they walk 4.5 miles per hour — or a 13-minute mile — they will burn 186 calories. And if they walk even faster at a walk/jog pace and complete a mile in under 10 minutes, their calorie burn will increase to 223.
Let’s use that example of the 155-pound person to estimate how long it would take to lose one pound. To lose a pound, you need to burn around 3,500 calories more than you’re eating, according to the Mayo Clinic. If the 155-pound person walks one mile every day at 4 miles per hour — and eats neither more nor less than they normally eat — they’ll lose a pound after 21 days. That might sound like a lot of effort for not a lot of payoff, but you have some options for losing weight faster.
The first way to increase your efforts is pretty simple: Walk for a longer period of time (listen to a podcast or chat with a friend to make it more interesting). The second way? Walk faster. You may not be ready to walk faster than a 4- to 4.5-miles-per-hour pace, but over time you’ll get in better shape, which will allow you to increase your intensity, helping you burn even more calories.
For even speedier results, consider adding strength training into your routine two or three days a week, doing situps, pullups, push-ups, lunges and squats to start. Muscle helps speed up your metabolism — and results in your body burning calories throughout the day, so getting stronger will also help you lose weight faster.
Any Other Weight-Loss Tips?
Glad you asked. A healthy diet is an important part of weight loss. Try starting small and cutting out 200 calories a day. The first to go? Things like soda, snack bars and other processed snacks.
