Is walking every day enough?

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Replies

  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
    I walk (and practice Pilates) because they make me feel good. So much so that I considered trying running but at 62 my knees are good (knock wood) and I don’t want to risk injury. I’m happy doing what I do and I stick with it.

    running can actually be good for your knees
  • PatriciaJane69
    PatriciaJane69 Posts: 13 Member
    Not sure how you can add friends yet but if anyone wants to add me please feel free, :D
  • edmudman
    edmudman Posts: 58 Member
    Thank you everyone for your replies, your thoughts and advice have been very helpful, ,i do enjoy walking and i have the pleasure of going along the coast & cliff tops so i get a good view :) , i will carry on as i am for now and see hiw i go, ✔

    Some advice I was given when I was doing alot of hill walking - if you want to keep being able to do alot of hill walking then use walking poles. They take a lot stress off the knees . I'm not talking about nordic walking, swinging them along on the flat, just for the ups and downs.

  • PatriciaJane69
    PatriciaJane69 Posts: 13 Member
    Ok,thank you ✔
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
    I had an ovary removed year before last with what turned out to be a very large benign tumor. My stomach was HUGE thanks to the cortisol being cranked out by the tumor, which causes fat to be deposited in the abdomen. If you are in a similar situation with your belly fat, it will take a while to see results, but there is hope.

    At first after my operation I wasn't fit at all and had difficulty walking long distances. I slowly worked up to more exercise and now can run 5k, lift weights, do push-ups, etc. It's just a matter of slowly building on what you can do.

    Walking is not the perfect exercise for this situation - higher intensity exercise plus strength training will have a better effect on cortisol levels and insulin sensitivity, which is also connected to abdominal fat and cortisol levels. I also found that using an ab roller and doing planks helped to correct the diastasis recti caused by the tumor, but you probably should not do that yet, and get the doctor's clearance first. But walking is a good start and better than not walking. The good news is you don't need to do high intensity exercise for long periods of time to get the benefits - ten or fifteen minutes helps a lot. And you can add a little bodyweight strength and even use household items like water bottles as weights. I started by just swinging bottles around while I watched TV.
  • jenilla1
    jenilla1 Posts: 11,118 Member
    It's enough! <3
  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    edited June 2018
    I totally rate walking as an exercise form. It's cheap and easy to do. Difficult to make much money coaching people to walk, however :) These days people put so much effort into HIIT etc because they get the same energy expenditure in a shorter time, and I get that. But the energy taken to climb a hill is the same whether you walk or run, the difference is the power (energy/second). You need more power to run up the hill, sure, but it's energy that matters. that's why it's calories in, calories out, not watts in, watts out.

    Not quite true, due to mechanical efficiency walking uses about 1/2-2/3 the energy of running.

    I walk and am mostly happy with it. But as far as HIIT (which you had a more direct comment on earlier), there are 2 very different forms IMO. There is HIIT as "discovered" by track coaches cross training distance runners and finding that their carefully controlled diet wasn't high enough in calories once they started doing this. They were getting an increase in burn that lasted quite a while after the exercise. but these were elite athletes whose "slow" part of HIIT is what a lot of people doing popular HIIT do as the high intensity part. The popular version is Somewhat High Intensity Training. ;)
  • spartan_d
    spartan_d Posts: 727 Member
    rheddmobile is correct. I most certainly do not deny the value of sticking with something that you enjoy. That doesn't diminish the fact that more intense exercise yields a host of benefits.

    Not to mention that you're comparing the calorie burn per mile rather than the number of calories burned over the same period of time. Factoring in the time to shower and change clothes is a squirrelly move at best, especially since someone can plan around those activities to eliminate that overhead. A lot of people shower before going to bed, for example, so this adds no overhead if one schedules the run accordingly. Or, since sensible exercises will also incorporate some resistance training, adding the more vigorous cardio after this strength training eliminates that overhead as well.

    Based on the numbers, I'd also wager that the calorie burn in this hypothetical example includes the base metabolic calorie consumption consumed during that period. You burn more calories just by sitting around for 60 minutes than you would over a 30 minute period. To make an accurate comparison, it's not simply the total number of calories consumed that matter; it's the total number of calories burned due to the exercise in question.
  • spartan_d
    spartan_d Posts: 727 Member
    To expand on what I said earlier, this analysis shows that the increased calorie burn from running is much more significant than what stanmann571 said. Not to mention that it has additional relevant benefits, such as greater appetite suppression and (as @rheddmobile said), better hormone regulation.

    The article does correctly emphasize some of the advantages of walking, such as increased risk of injury. It does, however, illustrate that running is much more efficient. I'd argue that it's also better at building enough of a cardio base for one to do eventually much more vigorous exercise (extended hill repeats and interval training, for example) in which the increased calorie burn would be much more significant.

  • CarvedTones
    CarvedTones Posts: 2,340 Member
    spartan_d wrote: »
    To expand on what I said earlier, this analysis shows that the increased calorie burn from running is much more significant than what stanmann571 said. Not to mention that it has additional relevant benefits, such as greater appetite suppression and (as @rheddmobile said), better hormone regulation.

    The article does correctly emphasize some of the advantages of walking, such as increased risk of injury. It does, however, illustrate that running is much more efficient. I'd argue that it's also better at building enough of a cardio base for one to do eventually much more vigorous exercise (extended hill repeats and interval training, for example) in which the increased calorie burn would be much more significant.
    Huh? Increased risk of injury? Typo?

    I can't run anymore; it's too painful with the meniscus tears (they don't really repair them, they do things to make them less troublesome and clean up the "loose matter" from the tears and other wear that get in the worst places during movement and cause a lot of the pain. I am not quite a candidate fr replacement and I am not sure I wold want to yet (age 59). I walk pretty briskly, ~4.3 mph, and I often walk up and down a nearby hill with a 200' rise. I burn some calories. My favorite high burn exercise that I can do is SUP paddling. If you are paddling hard with few breaks, the burn is in the high hundreds per hour. I hope I am still active enough to keep doing it when I retire and live at/on water. But walking will likely be a primary exercise.
  • estherdragonbat
    estherdragonbat Posts: 5,283 Member
    Which low-fat diet?