“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.”

Melt Away 20% More Calories Easily

Vary Your Walking Speed

Everyone knows we burn calories when walking. What we did not know we could burn 20% more calories simply by varying our pace. Research has shown “that changing walking speed can make a substantial difference to the number of calories burned.” As a matter of fact, the research described how, “compared with maintaining a steady pace, walking at a varying pace can burn up to 20% more calories.”

That is a significant difference. But why would changing your pace burn more calories?

They researchers believe their study is among the first to measure the effect of changing walking pace on calories burned, or “metabolic cost.” Coauthor Manoj Srinivasan explains that just changing speed burns energy, but that is not usually taken into account in calorie-burning estimates.

Varying walking speed may burn more calories

Medical News Today

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, two engineering researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus describe how, compared with maintaining a steady pace, walking at a varying pace can burn up to 20% more calories.

They believe their study is among the first to measure the effect of changing walking pace on calories burned, or “metabolic cost.” Coauthor Manoj Srinivasan, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who heads the movement lab at OSU, notes:

“Measuring the metabolic cost of changing speeds is very important because people don’t live their lives on treadmills and do not walk at constant speeds. We found that changing speeds can increase the cost of walking substantially.”