Want to lose weight? Change your pace
Changing your pace while walking burns 20% more calories than walking at a steady pace.
Nidhi Seethapathi and Manoj Srinivasan from the Ohio State University lead the study which was published in the September 2015 issue of the journal Biology Letters.
Their results show that the very act of changing speeds burns energy, but that cost is not generally accounted for in calorie-burning estimations. The researchers found that up to 8% of the energy we use during normal daily walking could be due to the energy needed to start and stop walking.
“Walking at any speed costs some energy, but when you’re changing the speed, you’re pressing the gas pedal, so to speak. Changing the kinetic energy of the person requires more work from the legs and that process certainly burns more energy,” explained Seethapathi, first author of the study and doctoral fellow in mechanical engineering.
The researchers measured the cost of changing walking speeds by having people change their walking pace on a treadmill while its speed remained steady. Participants alternated between walking quickly to move to the front of the treadmill belt, or slowly to move to the back of the treadmill (watch a video demonstration). Prior experiments by other researchers changed the treadmill speed directly, which, it turns out, makes such experiments not applicable to real-world walking, Srinivasan explained. When the treadmill speed is changing, the treadmill itself is doing some of the work, instead of the person walking.
For more tips on how to burn more calories when walking, Srinivasan, who leads the Movement Lab at Ohio State, offers some simple advice: walk in a way that feels unnatural.
“How do you walk in a manner that burns more energy? Just do weird things. Walk with a backpack, walk with weights on your legs. Walk for a while, then stop and repeat that. Walk in a curve as opposed to a straight line,” he said.
