According to a walking calorie calculator I used-
Weight 172lbs Distance walked 1 mile
Pace Duration Calories
Slow (2.5mph) 24 minutes 98
Normal (3mph) 20 minutes 96
Fast (3.5mph) 17 minutes 100
Very Fast (4mph) 15 minutes 102
Even though you burn more calories per minute the quicker you walk, walking slower takes a longer amount of time to travel the same distance so it equals roughly the same amount of calories burned?
Edit: thanks for your responses! I was aware running burns more calories per mile than walking the same distance due placing greater demands on the body/being far less efficient, I was specifically interested in walking speeds alone over the same distances?
Personal anecdote; I’ve managed to lose a significant amount of weight over the past 6 months walking 5 miles daily at a very brisk pace (4-4.5 mph average), today due to fatigue I took it easy, walked a lot slower at 3-3.5mph, felt less fatiguing but obviously took longer amount of time, a good trade off if it means I can walk at a more leisurely pace some days and burn roughly the same amount of calories over the same distance. 🙂
In: Physics
After nearly everybody compared **running** to walking in a question about **walking-vs-walking**, I googled and was maybe lucky.
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0486](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0486)
It has a paragraph about optimal speed; sorry but I can’t easily copy the formulas:
>(d) Optimal and preferred walking speeds are lower for shorter distances
>For the idealized bout of distance D (figure 1e), the energy-optimal walking speed vopt that minimizes Ebout(D,v) is given by the implicit function: (image) This metabolically optimal speed increases with distance D, approaching (image)for large distances (figure 2c).
>As predicted by the distance-dependence of optimal walking speeds, preferred human walking speeds in our experiment, both ‘average’ and ‘steady-state’ speeds, increased with distance (figure 2c). ‘Average’ preferred speed is the mean speed over the whole bout; a proxy for the ‘steady-state’ preferred speed is the mean over the bout’s middle 0.75 m (indistinguishable from averaging the middle 1.4 m). Model-predicted optimal speeds have a 0.96 correlation coefficient (Pearson’s) with experimental steady-state preferred speeds, which were within 1–2% optimal cost. Our subjects could accelerate to higher mean or steady-state speeds, but they preferred not to. Therefore, the time taken to accelerate–decelerate cannot explain lower speeds for shorter distances.
TL;DR: Walking fast is more energy efficient – probably up to the point where you feel comfortable if I understand it correctly.
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