Long slow distance walk
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♦ Calculation of Fat burning zone ♦ Fat burning zone chart ♦ Walking vs. Running
♦ Fat burning zone vs. Cardio Training Zone
Long slow distance (LSD) walk can play a very important role to lose fat. When you walk at quick pace body start to spend energy directly from burning fat. You would be surprised to know that body breaks carbohydrate for its energy while you run, but it spends fat if you walk at a relatively good pace. Usually people think running helps to lose fat fast. But actually truth is if you run then you will spend calorie fast, but not by burning fat. As you run, muscles burn carbohydrate mostly to produce instant energy. But while you are walking, muscles burn your stored fat. So if you walk then you can burn fat directly. Let me discuss elaborately the procedure.
Slow twitching muscles, and fast twitching muscles
We have two types of muscles all over our body. Slow twitching muscles, and fast twitching muscles. When body walks slow twitching muscles produce energy for body, when body works fast, like if we run then fast twitching muscles produce energy. Now can you guess which muscles are which ones! Slow twitching muscles are the lean muscles. You can see them a lot when you look at a Marathon runner. When you see heavy muscles like those of a body builder, you know those are fast twitching muscles. Fast twitching muscles can help you to run fast, but they will be tired very soon.
Fast twitching muscles use carbohydrate for making energy. Those muscles know that you cannot run for too long, so they try to use the instant energy from carbohydrate.
Slow twitching muscles can contract for long time. As you walk for long time this muscles function. Since they know people can walk for a long time they after some time they start to use stored fat to produce energy, otherwise the instant energy from carbohydrate may run out.
So you know now why we it is better to walk than run, if you are thinking to burn fat. You have to walk at a higher pace and have to walk at least 30/35 minutes. Because when you start walking first 10/15 minutes (varies on individuals) body will use carbohydrate to produce energy, after that it will start to break the fat to produce energy. One very important thing here is, to burn fat most, you need to be carefully walk at such a pace so that your heart beat will be in fat burning zone. If you walk too lazily then you will not burn your fat properly. Also if you walk too fast ( or run) then you will enter in cardio zone. In cardio zone you will certainly burn more calories, but less percentage of them will be fat, more will be carbohydrate. Let me elaborate more here, but before you read furthur, if you wnat to know how to calculate fat burning zone, read my page on calculation of fat burning zone.
Walking or running - understanding of calories burned
If you are a jogger and really like to run, I am not going to forbid you to run. If you check carefully at the first paragraph I wrote "As you run, muscles burn carbohydrate mostly.. " - the term I used here was mostly. When you run very fast body use 100% carbohydrate, if you run slow, it use less carbohydrate and some fat, the slower you are, higher the % of fat it will burn. So running is always a good exercise for losing fat. Suppose you are walking for 30 minutes at a speed for 5 mile per hour, so you will spend around 325 calories. Most of these calories will be spend on fat (90%, which is 317 calories). Now another day you are running at a speed of 15 miles per hour for 30 minutes. So you will spend almost 1275 calories. But here majority of your calories will be burned on carbohydrate, a very small percentage (15% ) of your calories will be burned from fat. So here 191 calories ( 20% of 1275 calories) will be burned from fat, comparing to 317 calories you burned from fat. If you reduce the speed to 10 miles per hour and run again for 30 minutes, you will burn around 675 calories, but % of fat will be higher now, around 40%. So calories you are burning from fat in this case is 270 calories ( 40% of 675 calories). Let us summarize this things in a table below
Running or Walking
Speed
(miles per hour)
Total Time (min)
Total Calories
Calories burned from fat
Fat burned
Walking 5 30 325 317 0.09 lb or 41 gm Running 10 30 675 270 0.08 lb or 35 gm Running 15 30 1275 255 0.07 lb or 33 gm
So you see, running means more calories, but it will not ensure more fat burning. But still running has other advantage. Since you are burning more calories, though mainly form carbohydrate, but after you done running body will be depleted of carbohydrate, so if you don't take too much food after coming back from running , eventually your metabolism rate will remain higher and finally you will lose some fat. So running is not a bad option. But you must admit running is not an easy option as walking. Walking is actually an anywhere to do option. Besides here I am supposedly not dealing with the people here who are not a habitual runner, I guess. Finally if you don't want to go through all the math details, just skip all these things and plan to walk 30/40 minutes a day. Click here to read more on walking or running.
Now here is a walking calculator for you to check the calories you may burn on walking.
Read more for how to calculate fat burning zone.
Check the Fat burning zone chart
Walking can help lower blood pressure.