In this article on the AdMac Fitness blog, we’re going to do something a little bit different. We’re going to show you some REAL LIFE physical data from a fitness tracker app. We’ll show you a comparison data set between a day of ‘normal’ step count, and a higher step count.
The purpose is to show you the difference walking can make to your fat loss goals.
There’s no other variables in the calorie burn you’re going to see here. No additional training, no other activity. Just an uptick in the amount of steps.
We’ll start with a basic premise…
Walking is very good for you. It helps you to burn a lot of calories. It’s a way of moving with a very low ‘cost’ to the body in terms of impact and recovery requirements. It’s easy to do, it’s accessible (you can do it anywhere), it costs nothing, there’s no kit required, no learning required and no need to go to a particular venue to do it.
Taking those things as fact, let’s look in more detail the impact that walking has on activity levels and calorie burn targets…
We’re told to hit a daily target of 10,000 steps per day. There’s reasonable appreciable science behind this, but what does that look like in real life. Here’s an example of when I hit almost 10k steps…
I burned 3,354 calories that day and was ‘active’ (as in going about my usual day, not lying on the sofa, but not training either) for just over 8 hours. I only hit 50% of my daily activity target with those steps.
Now let’s look at what happens when on the following days, I was accumulating more steps. Again, there’s no training to influence this data - this is purely making a conscious effort to walk more, and accumulate more steps…
See the dramatic difference here.
By roughly doubling the amount of walking I did, I burned an average of nearly 700 extra calories per day. I was only ‘active’ for an extra couple of hours. Remember too, there’s no additional training here. I’m just walking more. Rather than driving to the shop, I’m walking. Rather than taking a lift, I’m taking the stairs. I’m not going on a purposeful walk for the sake of it.
I’m also easily hitting my daily activity target here, without heading out for a workout.
What can we conclude here?
We can draw three major conclusions from this data. In case they don’t jump out at you, I’ll help you with them…
#1 - Walking burns a lot of calories
By increasing the amount of steps I was taking in a day, I was burning around 700 calories per day extra. That’s an intense workout, and when you factor in a calorie deficit from a diet as well, you’re looking at serious weight loss potential.
#2 - Walking is repeatable
This data set is from three consecutive days. There’s no need for an extended recovery time with walking, unlike intense running or resistance training where the tissue damage can be greater. It means you can walk even on your rest days from the gym.
#3 - Walking is ‘stealth’ exercise
This activity was during my day to day life. I didn’t have to make time for it, I just had to make a different decision. Walking over driving, stairs over lifts, that kind of thing. It was merely a consequence of my decision making rather than my training intensity.
Whilst walking will NEVER replace weight training in terms of overall health benefits, my point here is to show you how effective walking can be at helping with a fat loss goal. This could be helpful on your rest days, on days where you might not have time to hit the gym, or times when you’re injured and lifting isn’t possible, but walking is.
Try to hit 15k+ steps per day for the best results.
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