Is walking to burn calories worth it?

Hi all, I’m just wondering if walking is worth it, calorie burning wise? I did 27,000 steps yesterday and MFP imported the data from my iPhone and it was only worth 300 calories. That 27,000 consisted of a 2 hour hill walk and 3 hours of mucking out stables to get that burn. Today I got 15,000 steps and burned 180 calories. I’m 5’ 8 and 149 lbs. Obviously fresh air and mental health wise, walking is great, but in the scheme of things I’m wondering if calorie wise, is it worth it? Am I just better off not eating my mini Kit Kat and saving the time for a relaxing bath, or a good film?
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Replies

  • overeater1
    overeater1 Posts: 38 Member
    Thanks for the reply, it’s always great to hear another’s take on things. I know it’s terrible to admit, but health and fitness really are secondary to looking good in jeans and not despising my thighs and flabby stomach and hiding away in the summer. Such a vain and entitled attitude I know, but that’s the honest truth. I set my activity at sedentary so I assume that the calories burned are accurate enough.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,718 Member
    Some people have trouble with the Apple/MFP integration being inaccurate. I'm not an Apple gal, but I've seen it recommended to synch Apple to the Pacer app, then Pacer to MFP, for better results.
  • wunderkindking
    wunderkindking Posts: 1,615 Member
    edited March 2021
    Is walking worth it for me as a *weight loss* strategy?

    No.

    If I want to exercise to burn calories, I tend to go for something shorter duration and more intense. I don't like purposeful exercise.

    Am I going to walk in daily life anyway and let those calories be factored into how much I eat (in my case via activity level)?

    Yes.

    That 200 or so calories a day is 1400 a week. That's almost a whole extra day of food.

  • gionrogado
    gionrogado Posts: 45 Member
    edited March 2021
    doing 1 hour of body weight exercises everyday, or lifting 1 hour every day is more cost effective and time efficient, calorie and time-wise.

    edit: my job involves a full day of walking and going up and down things, and i was overweight. i only saw results when i started body weight exercises then lifting. there will come a point that walking will neither effect or benefit you. it just becomes a huge time sink, making your weight loss inefficient.
  • mthwbrwn
    mthwbrwn Posts: 104 Member
    One of the issues with a step-based evaluation of your walk is that it assumes comfortable light clothing and a flat track. If you are doing any hill work, are walking on broken ground, and with additional weight such as backpacking, the step based estimate is going to rob you of your work (and reward KitKats) .
    You may want to look into heart rate tracking. I use a Polar M400 and it is actually rather amazing how much more exertion you put out when going uphill, on broken ground, or carrying an extra 30 or so pounds. I've also never been any good and "perceived exertion" so its nice to actually be able to tell how hard I actually worked.

    There are also considerable studies showing that zone2-based exercise (low exertion) is necessary for building up base running endurance- Turns out, according to these studies, that treating every day like raceday is detrimental to building efficiency and endurance. So yes, walking (with intention) will always have a place in weight loss as well as well as with distance running. A little off topic but wanted to add that as another plug for HR monitors.

    That said, the debate will go on and on (elsewhere hopefully) about whether to eat back your calories, or half of your calories, or none, but as they say "there's no out-running a crappy diet."
  • Beverly2Hansen
    Beverly2Hansen Posts: 378 Member
    10,000 steps is 5miles. How many miles did you walk? A lot of step counters are wildly inaccurate tbh. If you something like 17miles that's not feasible daily. I walk 5miles a day, do some lifting(nothing serious) and eat well... it's worth it and sustainable but walking more is not.
  • sallyannmason1
    sallyannmason1 Posts: 2 Member
    I walk a couple of times a week as part of a daily exercise routine. I agree with Mthwbrwn, I use my HRM to track calories, I burn way over those numbers you mention. On shorter walks (3 to 7 miles) I use a weight vest too to increase the burn. I only eat half my exercise calories back, but as Mthwbrwn says, you could debate that until the cows come home, everyone has a different opinion on that one, but the steps you mention I believe that you burned a lot more calories than those mfp gave you.
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,400 Member
    Since Lockdown in Italy (our gym, pool, fitness center was closed last October) I've been power walking in the park every morning for 45 min. Walking is a legitimate exercise, and the best thing is you can vary it as you please. You can go faster, or slower. You can do hills, or flat. You can add weights or a heavy pack. You can do 2 min reg walking, 2 min med, and then 2 min as fast as you can (or jog)--repeat, repeat, ..........

    If you're looking for a sculpted body, weightlifting and strength training are the way to go, but for just overall fitness, walking can not be sneered at. MFP gives me 300 calories for 45 min of brisk walking. So far, that seems to be accurate for me--66, 5'11'', 180 lbs. Best of all if you can do a mixture of strength and cardio.
  • LunaTheFatCat
    LunaTheFatCat Posts: 237 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    As for being 'worth it', I would hope that burning calories is not your objective, but also to improve health and fitness? 😉

    Thisa. I go for a walk every day, in fact I'm just about to go now. I love how it clears my head, how it gives me Vitamin D and yes it gives me some calorie burn as well but I can genuinely say that's not what I go walking for.
    If it's about calorie burn, I'd probably go for HIIT or spinning or something.
  • 406MamaBear
    406MamaBear Posts: 47 Member
    @Speakeasy76 - How did you start out your strength training? Specifically, what did you do in the very beginning to get you going?
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,464 Member
    Weightlifting will help you achieve your appearance goals.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,879 Member
    overeater1 wrote: »
    Hi all, I’m just wondering if walking is worth it, calorie burning wise? I did 27,000 steps yesterday and MFP imported the data from my iPhone and it was only worth 300 calories. That 27,000 consisted of a 2 hour hill walk and 3 hours of mucking out stables to get that burn. Today I got 15,000 steps and burned 180 calories. I’m 5’ 8 and 149 lbs. Obviously fresh air and mental health wise, walking is great, but in the scheme of things I’m wondering if calorie wise, is it worth it? Am I just better off not eating my mini Kit Kat and saving the time for a relaxing bath, or a good film?

    A few things to unpack here. For starters, when you're looking at data, you can't just take everything at face value and as gospel...you have to do some critical thinking and determine if what you are looking at is reasonable...in this case, 300 additional calories for 27,000 steps doesn't really pass any kind of sniff test...it's low. Apple is known not to play well with MFP...frankly, Apple doesn't really play well with anything that isn't also Apple. But yeah...the data you're getting doesn't remotely pass the sniff test.

    Secondly, if the only purpose of walking or doing any other kind of exercise or a workout is just to burn calories, you're likely going to be hugely disappointed. Unless you're training like an elite athlete and basically make your living by training, the calories you burn in a typical workout or bout of exercise is relatively nominal. What I mean by that is, for example, my BMR is around 1800 calories per day...those are the calories I burn just being alive and nothing else. A typical 45 minute or so cycling workout that I do burns around 200-300 calories depending on the type of intervals I'm doing for that particular workout...even a steady 60 minutes at temp is only going to give me around 400ish calories (maybe somewhere between 400-500 if I'm hitting more hills and such), even though it's fairly vigorous and my feelz are that I burned more...but my power meter doesn't lie. People simply don't burn the considerable amount of calories that they think they do with a workout or exercise. This is why it's said time and time again...your diet is going to have a much greater contribution to your weight loss than what exercise you're doing.

    As walking goes, I enjoy it. I walk pretty much everyday anywhere from 2-3 miles and that along with just going about my day usually give me in the neighborhood of 12K steps. I do additional workouts on my bike and in the weight room on top of that, as well as just going out to play a lot (active recreation). The walking is important to me as I have a very sedentary job...so it's important to me to just be active and walking is an easy, low impact thing I can do to be more active for my overall health. IMO, doing three structured workouts on my bike and a couple sessions in the weight room just don't cut it in regards to counteracting sitting around at my desk most of the day. Walking is also my mental clarity and mental health time. I walk...I think...I drink my coffee, and it gets me ready for the day ahead. That said, for me, doing more walking than I already do quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns in regards to how efficiently I'm spending my time and what I'm getting out of it. Doing more walking would mean forgoing other training and workouts that have a greater impact on my overall level of fitness.

    If your primary concern is aesthetics and body composition and looking a certain way, just doing stuff for calorie burn isn't great anyway...and frankly, walking isn't going to do much of anything to change overall body composition...your biggest and best bang for your buck there is going to be resistance training, either in the weight room or something else. Again, not something that is a particularly big calorie burn...but resistance training is how you change the composition and shape of your body.

  • Speakeasy76
    Speakeasy76 Posts: 961 Member
    Well, I actually have been doing some form of strength/resistance training for most of my adult life, except for a few years when I had kids/they were small. I'm very much a person who likes a program to follow or at least a template, so I'd either do routines from Shape magazine, do resistance training DVD's with my dumbbells or bodyweight at home, or classes at the gym. A few years ago, however, I really wanted to get more into heavy lifting. I researched books on Amazon, and the first one I got was New Rules for Lifting for Life because I was older by then. I also got New Rules of Lifting for Women, Strong Curves and most recently Glute Lab. By now, I'm comfortable enough with it that I'm creating more of my own program following a template.

    I'd also highly recommended looking into Nia Shanks "Lift Like a Girl" website. She has positive--yet realistic--messages for women in regards to how to view getting stronger.

    Below are a couple of the posts that are stickied at the top of this forum to give you more information:



    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1308750/so-you-want-to-start-lifting-great/p1

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10332083/which-lifting-program-is-the-best-for-you/p1