Diet and walking, does it really make a difference?

RiiNaCHiiCK09 wrote: »

Could just walking and diet help me lose my last 15 lbs? I know jogging would be better, but could walking be as effective for me as it has for my mom?

Of course. Jogging/running is more intensive cardio and so is certainly better for the heart, and it will burn more calories in the same amount of time, as walking, but it's still very exercise and it does burn calories. Get a pedometer (a Fitbit or something of that nature) to give you some extra motivation to walk further!

Walking 10 miles only burns slightly fewer calories than jogging that same 10 miles. When people say that jogging burns more calories than walking, they're usually comparing "for the same amount of time" not "for the same amount of distance".

Walking is a great way to increase your calorie burn and allow you to eat more while still losing weight. It's also good for health. Depending on exact stats, you're looking at burning somewhere in the ballpark of 100 calories per mile walked - probably just under (maybe 80ish?) since you're quite small.

All that said, with your statistics, you're probably looking at 0.5 pounds/week as the fastest healthy weight loss. This is because you are so close to an ideal weight already.

I know a lady who lost 150 lbs just walking. The smaller you get the slower it may go but it will still work . Just stick to your calorie goal a d if possible walk brisk.

Ps, yes walking is great. It is good for your heart/lungs and overall fitness level, but also burns more calories than sitting on your bum for the same amount of time. Burning more calories, when you have a low BMR/small body, is very useful!

I belong to a running club where I do a combo of speed walking and light jogging. The last 10-15 lbs can come off by cutting another 200-300 calories off of your daily intake for at least a month. Yes it sucks but it will shock your body into fat burning again. Burning that last fat is so frustrating. I quit smoking but gained 40 pounds with the quit - I'm so glad that life is behind me. Then I joined a fitness center learned weight training and then joined the running club. I'm healthier now than before and I had to learn to accept that the fat does take a lot of time to come off till I get a grip on my eating. Our bodies are all different. I am 5'3" and 145 lbs and still have 25 pounds to lose. Counting every single morsel of food is so important but keeping it up is so hard as I keep rationalizing that I deserve to eat more than I should. Getting that self discipline back is so hard. I can jog but I need to eat less.

Its all about calories in vs calories out.

Yeah, as others have explained, WL comes down to a calorie deficit. Think of your starting point as your baseline. Whatever you're doing now in terms of CI (how much you eat) and CO (how much you burn thorugh activity) results in you weighing 120 pounds.

Each pound = 3500 calories. So if your goal is to lose 15 pounds, you need to save/burn 3500 calories 15 times.

As others explained, you won't burn as much from walking as your mom did because as a smaller person, you burn less doing the exact same exercise. Since walking is exercise you hadn't already been doing, it's an extra calorie burn for you beyond your baseline. In other words, if you burn 80 calories from walking a mile, that's still 80 calories that you wouldn't have been burning otherwise. So they count as deficit calories. (Technically, since you would've burned some of those 80 calories just by being alive and sitting on your couch, they're not *all* deficit calories but it's easier and good enough not to think about that lol.)

Since you're already a healthy weight and your norm was a relatively low weight, I'd guess that your CI is probably in a good spot. It doesn't sound to me like you need to make any significant changes in terms of how you eat. To lose weight, you could create your deficit through just walking, but that would take a long time to accumulate 3500 calories 15 times. If you were to hold your original pre-MFP calories steady and simply add in 160 calories a day burned from walking, it would (on paper) take you almost a year to lose 15 pounds.

If you want to increase the speed at which you lose, then you'll either need a higher calorie burn or to drop calories too. In your shoes, I'd probably walk 2 miles daily, set MFP calories to a 0.5lb/ week loss, and not eat back my walking calories. That would cut the time to about 4 months. (Imperfect estimates.)