I walked for 2 days now, but i was pretty much strolling at a speed of 2 mph
and both times i walked for 1 hour and 30 minutes (3.5 miles). But does it matter if i walk fast or slow im still burning calories right?
Yup, you're burning calories. The faster you walk the more calories you'll burning, but even if you're walking slow you're still burning calories. For cardio benefits and calorie burning the key is walking fast enough to get your heart rate up.
The more unfit you are the quicker your heart rate will go up anyways. So if walking slowly still gets your heart rate up and gives you a bit of a sweat, there isn't really a problem.
The more your fitness increases then you will need to walk faster to get that heart pumping! But in the beginning I think it's better to take it slowly as you are more than likely to stick at it.
Well done! Walking is great excercise and can be very enjoyable especially on a lovely spring day!
I would get a heartrate monitor. They don't cost very much and should include instructions on how high your heart rate should be.
Well the amount of energy to walk a mile is the same whether you take an hour to talk it or 20 minutes. The thing is though that you can get more of an afterburn (calories burned after the fact) for cardiovascular workouts.
You can also look at doing HIIT where you use intervals which means you get a greater amount of calories burned rather than going the same speed.
And time figures into it for me. I just didn't have a couple of hours to spare so I figured I had to increase my speed. That is why I started running---I kept it up because I found I enjoyed the feeling.
Slow walking or Fast walking?
