How effective is walking?

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Exercise is exercise. So it counts :O

I walk a heck of a lot, and it burns serious calories especially if you have a good pace. My HRM gives me a decent idea of how much I burn. Walking has been a great calorie burner for me personally, my legs are showing some decent tone, and I'm dropping weight from doing it too. I also combine kettle bell workouts with this too.

For people deep in the "morbidly obese" category, walking may be the only exercise they CAN do. Walking is all the exercise some people WANT to get. That is my "fitness plan" when I reach my goal weight- 30 minutes a day. My father in law lost a lot of weight by walking 30 minutes a day, and has been maintaining it with the same.

Absolutely count your walks! Set your activity level to "sedentary" and count everything!

A lot of people think they are more active than they really are, because we all spend a lot of time sitting at desks or in cars. If you have a job that requires you to be on your feet all day (hospital staff, retail, etc.) you are probably lightly active. If you have a job that requires you to do more than that (walking tour guide, lumberjack, etc.) then you are probably moderately active. Your job is only 8 hours or so per day, and there's a pretty good chance you aren't doing a whole lot (physically) outside those 8 hours.

How effective is it? Well, it strengthens your heart, increases blood flow to your limbs, gets your lungs working, and increases your energy level for the rest of the day. Those are all pluses in my book. You won't burn as many calories as you would by running, but you also stress your joints less. Sounds pretty effective to me!

What do you mean by subtract your BMR from your HRM reading?! I'm confused! When I plug my numbers off my HRM into the website for it (not MFP) it actually ups the cals based on my max and average heart rate.....so is the HRM giving me the true reading and the numbers plugged in on the website giving me the number without subtracting BMR?

Also as far as walking, my mom walks about 2 miles a day or so and htat is her only form or true "cardio" exercise and has maintatined her weight loss for 3 years! So by all means, WALK!!!

Your BMR is your Basal Metabolic Rate, which means is that it is the calories your body would burn for life functions if you were in a coma. So the idea behind subtracting these numbers is that since your body would have burned them anyway, you subtract them from your work out total. So based on my BMR, I would burn about a calorie a minute in a vegetative state. If I followed this method and got a reading of 135 calories in fifteen minutes, I would only enter 120 calories in my excercise. The point of it is to get more accurate records of burns since you are supposed to be eating your exercise calories back.

I used to walk and bike like crazy. I was eating 1,000-2,000 calories more than what I eat in a day now and I was maintaining not too much heavier than I am now. I would walk 10-25 miles a day and bike 25-40 miles a day. However, I was skinny fat.

Bear in mind that your HRM reading will also include your BMR so you will need to subtract your BMR cals from it to get a truer reading

I didn't think this was true with HRMs; especially if you are inputting VO2 max, etc. It's supposed to be taking all that into consideration when it gives you your calories burned number.

I work with kids (6 year olds) in an afternoon program and I thought to put my heart rate monitor on. Over the three hours I was there, it said I burnt 976 calories!? After subtracting BMR calories (about 180), it still is like 800 calories! I always considered my job as "lightly active," but wow. I guess it's easy to get surprising exercise during certain activities.

But thanks for all the insightful responses!

thats because HRM's are ONLY accurate while doing steady state cardio. Wearing them outside of these parameters will HEAVILY overinflate calorie burn display numbers..

Bear in mind that your HRM reading will also include your BMR so you will need to subtract your BMR cals from it to get a truer reading

As a rough guide, walking burns around 100 cal per mile so this would make it pretty close to that.

That is splitting hairs. It doesn't have to be that difficult.

So basically you subtract one calorie for each minute you are exercising? Sorry for the lame questions, I just have a hard time understanding it all because people have such conflicting thoughts/ideas/answers.

I would, because if I divide MY BMR by the number of minutes in the day, that is what I get. Your BMR may be wildly different, so your numbers may be very different.