This is how long to walk daily to lose weight, research reveals
Scroll through social media right now, and you’ll be flooded with posts from fitness influencers and even celebrities talking up the perks of walking to get in shape. Walking is clearly having a comeback-meets-glow-up of sorts, but it’s easy to miss a crucial detail when wading through workout plans and gear recs: How long should I walk to lose weight on a given day?
At baseline, walking has obvious perks. 'It’s a good way to burn calories, given that it uses your legs—a big muscle group,' says Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab. But walking is also not intimidating for many people, making it more likely that you’ll feel confident taking up a walking habit and sticking with it long term. 'It’s a good on-ramp to exercise that most people can do every day,' Matheny points out. The modality also can be fine-tuned to meet you where you’re at; tweak the pace, incline, and even the weight you’re carrying easily to add or reduce challenge.
Of course, walking offers a lot more than weight loss benefits. Research has found it can boost your brain health, ease back pain, and even help you to live longer.
If weight loss is your goal, here’s how long to walk to lose weight, plus how to maximise your walking sessions for more efficient and effective weight loss.
Meet the experts: Mir Ali, MD, is the medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California. Rekha Kumar, MD, is an an endocrinologist at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. Albert Matheny, RD, CSCS, is co-founder of SoHo Strength Lab. Michael Russo, MD, is a weight loss surgeon at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center.
The perfect distance or length of time to walk for weight loss depends on several factors.
Weight loss is complicated, and the way your body responds to activity is individual, reminds Matheny. There are also factors like your starting body weight, current activity level, genetics, and diet to consider, he adds.
Beyond that, experts generally recommend walking more than you are currently to try to lose weight. 'People should walk as much as they can, rather than being sedentary,' says Rekha Kumar, MD, an endocrinologist at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. 'If there is a distance that can be walked, it should be.' (Meaning, if you have the option of driving to a neighbour's house or walk over, it’s really best to use your feet!)
Of course, most of us respond well to hard and fast numbers (fair). An older study published in the journal Obesity determined that, when paired with a calorie-restricted diet, walking 10k steps a day was helpful for weight loss, especially when people did 3,500 of those steps at a higher intensity. (The same takeaway could not be shown for 7,000 steps a day.)
When a group of 10 medically-obese female college students and 10 normal or average weight female students both walked at a moderate pace for 10k steps per day (or for about 45 minutes) for 12 weeks without changing their typical diet and other daily physical activity, the overweight group showed improved body composition and cholesterol markers, in a small 2020 study in the Journal of Exercise Science and Fitness—while the other group did not experience significant changes from the walking routine.
A 2024 meta-analysis in JAMA Network also concluded that you need to achieve at least 150 minutes per week of aerobic exercise at a moderate intensity or higher for notable reductions to waist circumference and body fat. But note this: 150 minutes breaks down to 30 minutes, five days a week.
For weight loss, walking at a moderate pace for 30-45 minutes per day, or 150 minutes per week, is generally recommended and supported by studies in the past few years. If you were to add speed, incline, and/or resistance, you may be able to walk for a shorter amount of time to reap the same weight loss benefits.
Ten thousand steps a day (or about 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how fast you walk) 'is generally a great goal,' Matheny says—but that doesn’t mean you’re screwed if you walk less than that. If you’re currently logging something like 2k steps a day, even ramping that up to 4k steps or more can have an impact on your weight loss efforts, he notes. Every little bit of walking helps contribute to metabolic activity and calorie burn, which matter when it comes to weight loss.
Also consider this: Walking for 30 minutes a day translates to roughly 100 to 200 calories burned depending on your body weight. If you do that seven days a week, you're looking at 700 to 1.4k extra calories that you wouldn't have otherwise burned—and that adds up.
Is walking on its own enough to lose weight?
While it’s possible to lose weight more effectively by increasing how much walking you're doing, experts generally agree that there’s usually more to weight loss than that. The challenge of weight loss 'is primarily dietary and hormonal,' says Michael Russo, MD, a weight loss surgeon at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center. You can't walk off poor nutrition or completely disregard your personal health needs (say, if you have an underlying condition that impacts your weight) and expect to lose weight.
Mir Ali, MD, medical director of MemorialCare Surgical Weight Loss Center at Orange Coast Medical Center, agrees: 'The majority of weight loss is going to be due to diet,' he says. 'Exercise contributes and is helpful but, if you’re not changing your diet, you’re not going to see as many results, no matter what exercise you do.'
If weight loss is your goal, adding 'additional structured exercise' beyond walking will be the most helpful, Dr. Kumar says. She lists off using weights, doing yoga or Pilates, and 'any strength training,' as being good options to enhance your weight loss efforts from walking.
Dr. Russo agrees: 'Weight lifting or resistance [training] is extremely beneficial in maintaining muscle mass while you’re on a weight loss journey,' he says.
While weight loss is complicated and includes a slew of factors including genetics and nutrition, adding more steps to your day is never a bad thing. 'Just try to do more than you’re doing now,' Dr. Ali says.
How To Optimise Your Walks For Weight Loss
Pick up the pace. The goal of walking for weight loss is to challenge yourself. While you don’t need to be a puddle of sweat every time you walk, ramping up the pace to make your walking sessions a little harder will help increase your calorie burn, Matheny says.
Walk on an incline. If you’re walking outside, this means heading for hillier areas to try to push yourself more. But if you’re walking on a treadmill, increasing the incline is a quick way to make your workout harder, Matheny says. Just don’t hunch over the handlebars or hang onto the railing, he warns—this will work against your efforts.
Add weights. Matheny isn’t a huge fan of walking with weights in your hands, given that it can throw off your gait and increase your risk of injury. But he says you can try a weighted vest to add resistance. Just slowly add weight to your walks—like, go for a shorter walks at first or do intervals with it on—to gradually increase the challenge as you go.
While doing several of these tweaks at once, like increasing the incline and adding weight, can help support walking for weight loss even more, it’s best to start slow and gradually add these together versus trying them all at once.
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