Walking a form of cardio?

Walking is a great form of exercise, especially in the beginning.

^ This.

I lost my first 20 lbs with walking. I started off at a slow pace and gradually increased distance and pace. You would be surprised how many calories walk an hour at even a 'leisurely' pace.

For anyone who thinks walking is not a form of exercise . . .

I feel like everything has been said now and there's no need to post on this thread.
But I'll add some content anyway. Walking is what I did to start and how I lost most of my extra weight. Walking more, and faster, prepared me for running. Walking up stairs and hills prepared me for body weight resistance training, which prepared me for heavy lifting. Walking is still my main form of "cardio," although I like a nice 5k or 5-6 mile slow run once in a while and will soon be doing something more intense that I always wanted to do. None of what I can do now was even thinkable to me before I started walking a lot. OP, lace up your shoes and hit the pavement, and enjoy yourself and your increasing fitness.

every soldier who has ever marched 20 miles is in agreement.

There is a world of difference between humping 80 pounds of gear 20 miles and "I walked for 40 minutes, feel the buuuuuuuurn...."

What the solider is doing is most definitely exercise,

strawman much?

because you've just "debunked" an equivalency that nobody has made.

pat yourself on the back and go away now.

every soldier who has ever marched 20 miles is in agreement.

There is a world of difference between humping 80 pounds of gear 20 miles and "I walked for 40 minutes, feel the buuuuuuuurn...."

What the solider is doing is most definitely exercise,

strawman much?

It's your strawman, mate, you introduced the "20 mile soldier" to MFP's Land of The Thirty Minute Walk.

i don't suffer fools well and right now, i am particularly not interested in suffering your brand of foolishness.

you're the one who imagined an equivalence in your head between a soldier on a 20-mile march and a somebody on MFP doing a 40 minute walk. i didn't say that, so don't try to put words in my mouth. my comment (above) SOLELY addressed whether or not walking was exercise.

moreover, if you think people on MFP only go for 40 minute walks, you are also mistaken. some days i walk as many as 17 miles solely for the cardio calorie burn. i may not be "humping" an 80lb rucksack when i do that, but i can promise you that at the end of those 17 miles, i am every bit as tired as one would be from any other cardio exercise.

Good for you! Walking can definitely be a cardio workout, if you walk fast enough to raise your heart rate. For most people, walking won't burn a lot of calories, but if you're also eating at a deficit, burning an extra few hundred calories every day helps.

Lol. Walk your *kitten* off. I don't care.

If were going to start qualifying it, then let's go for it. Yes, walking 20 miles through tough terrain with 50 lbs on your back is exercise. That's not what MFP people are doing. Walking very fast on a steep incline is exercise, as long as you aren't holding on. I see a lot of walkers where I live and in the gym on the treadmill. They are not walking more than 3 MPH. They are not exercising. They are just going for a walk. I don't hate walking. I do it too sometimes. But, the way I see most people walking, it's not exercise. It's light activity.

For people that are very obese or severely out of shape, walking is a great start. With a good diet, they should be able to progress to something more strenuous, eventually.

okay i'll walk my *kitten* off. and i guess if I get thinner this way while counting cals I can say I lost weight WITHOUT working out and start a thread about it. only to be bashed by everyone saying if I was walking and burning cals that way I can't say I lost weight with diet only.

MFP can't win for loosing. (pun intended).

ETA: the mispelling of losing as per MFP standards.

MFP doesn't make it easy to log your walk, because you have to calculate your speed, and enter your time, instead of enteringthe distance and time that you walked. I work out my distance using MapMyHike.com.

i put in my time and estimate the speed as compared to workouts i've done on the treadmill that shows my speed. thanks for that site though, i will try that.

This week I've doing a lot of walking. I've walked for 50 minutes at least 4 times this week. I was wondering if walking is considered working out I guess. I noticed I was extremely sore in my legs, butt, and a little in my stomach after walking this week. I took that as a good sign. Along with my walking I've been drinking plenty of water and counting my calories.

Walking is awesome and I consider it to be the "gateway" drug of fitness. Walking leads to jogging which leads to running which leads to 5K's...etc.

As others have said, you can make walking really pay. One way to tell that walking is a good workout is to check your heart rate and breathing. If you have your blood pumping and labored breathing, you are getting a decent workout.

It's getting the blood flowing much better than just standing or certainly than sitting, and that has health benefits. The intensity will make it qualify as 'cardio' or not, I believe, but there are benefits to lots of exercise that don't reach that level. Do shift up the intensity to make it more cardio for you if you find it too easy, because that's easy to do with walking.

But anything that gets circulation going is better for everyone (not just 85-year-olds) than doing something that doesn't. Except for sleep, naturally That's not to say that weight-bearing exercise, flexibility work, etc aren't also important to health. I think they all are.

Whether 'it's a workout' or not is one of those internet questions I hate, lol. WTF is 'a workout', especially when the definition is said as if it represents everyone? Swimming and cycling or dancing aren't workouts to a lot of folks. So? They all still have benefits, no matter who is doing them and how easy they are for that person.

for a 200lb person,

a 5 mile walk at an average pace burns about 530 calories

a 5 mile run at an average pace burns about 790 calories

they are both workouts, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

OP not only is it a great way to exercise, but there's an app made by the same people who did Zombie's Run! that will track it, and work it into an interactive story while you do it! I haven't used it, but I've used ZR and ZR2, as well as the ZR 5k training, and all of those are amazing.

If you're interested: https://www.thewalkgame.com/

for a 200lb person,

a 5 mile walk at an average pace burns about 530 calories

a 5 mile run at an average pace burns about 790 calories

they are both workouts, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Agreed!

There's also MapMyWalk and Runtastic for tracking your walks and estimating calories burned.

Great!

..oh, yeah, someone else mentioned mapmyhike.

I lost 50 pounds in 4 months just by walking my *kitten* off everyday. It's all about consistency.