Running Vs Walking Calories – All You Should Know!

Regardless of whether you walk or run, both are great forms of cardiovascular exercise. However, one burns more calories than the other.

Neither is necessarily better than the other. The choice should come down to your fitness and health goals.

However, there are times when we want to lose more weight or improve our cardiovascular fitness.

This article compares running vs walking and may help you decide which is better for your fitness and health journey.

We also discuss running vs walking calories, and how each form of exercise can help improve your health, fitness, and body in the process.

If you’re looking to burn more calories or lose weight fast, running is a better choice. But walking can also offer numerous benefits for your health, including helping you maintain a healthy weight and reducing the chances of injury when exercising.

Health Benefits of Walking

Physical exercise doesn’t need to be complicated or taxing on the body. Sometimes, simple low-intensity exercise can provide a similar benefit to more intense training.

A simple daily walk can not only allow you to clear your head and get you outside, but it can also help you live a healthier life.

For example, taking an easy walk each day can help you:

– Maintain a healthy weight
– Help you lose body fat
– Prevent conditions like heart disease, strokes, and high blood pressure
– Improve your cardiovascular fitness
– Strengthen your bones
– Improve your energy
– Strengthen your muscles
– Reduce stress and anxiety
– Improve your balance and coordination
– Strengthen your immune system
– Improve mobility

However, the faster and further you walk each week, the more benefit you will get from walking. For example, the faster you walk, the more calories you will burn. It will also improve your heart health and endurance in the process. Much faster than brisk walking.

Health Benefits of Running

While the health benefits of running are similar to walking, there are some beneficial components of heading out for a run instead of walking.

When it comes to running vs walking, running trumps when it comes to:

– Building stronger bones
– Improving cardiovascular fitness
– Burning more calories
– Building more muscle
– Improving mobility
– Increasing flexibility
– Improving endurance
– Increasing V02 Max

Because running improves general fitness much faster and much more than walking, you will see quicker results with weight loss, cardiovascular fitness, and overall health.

Walking Vs Running – Which Is Better?

If you are comparing walking vs running, there is no overall better choice of exercise. Walking has many of the same health benefits as running. However, if your goal is to increase weight loss or improve your fitness, running is a better choice.

If your goal is general health and to improve your general fitness, walking is the better choice to take. Walking will place less stress on your bones and is a much easier exercise to start. It is also much easier to combine brisk walks into your daily routine than running, making it more accessible for people to do.

Walking may also be better for people that struggle with weight-bearing exercises like running. It places far less stress on the bones and muscles than running. However, it won’t strengthen the muscles and bones as well as running.

Generally, when comparing running vs walking, both provide numerous health benefits that can make you live a healthier lifestyle.

 

Running Vs Walking Calories

When comparing running vs walking calories, running is far superior to walking. Running burns more calories per minute than walking. There is a 30% difference when comparing the calories burned during a run and walking the same distance. This means that a 30-minute run will generally burn more calories than a 30-minute walk. However, it is much harder to hold the higher intensity for longer.

For some people, it may be better to walk for long periods when starting out running. This way, they can burn more calories than they would be running. Then once they can run for long periods of time (30 minutes or more), the running would outweigh the calories burned walking. It will also give the beginner’s bones, tendons, and muscles time to adapt to the load placed on the body when running.

In general, if your goal is to lose weight, running should be the preferred option. That is unless you struggle with injuries or poor cardiovascular fitness. Then we recommend you start walking first. Then we recommended combining the two as regular walking can prevent burnout from running and help the body recover faster between runs.

Running Vs Walking Calories – Final Words

Even though running improves your health more efficiently than walking. Running does pose far greater risks than walking. Even a small amount of running can carry more injury risk than walking for twice the distance. This is mainly due to the load placed on the body with every stride.

Walking is generally far easier on the body and makes it much easier to increase the time spent exercising versus risk factors.

However, the calories burned in walking will never come close to that of running. So, if your goal is to lose weight and burn more calories, try adding a few runs each week to your fitness regime.

Alternatively, combine both walking and running together. That way, you can get the benefits of both and reduce the chances of picking up an injury when running.

If you are unsure of how many calories you burn running vs walking, purchase a sports watch and do a walk and run over the same course and distance, then compare the two. You will be surprised how much more calories are burned when running.