You can exercise for hours, but if your daily calorie intake from food is more than your body’s daily calorie need, you will not lose weight. To lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than your body burns. By doing this, your body will start burning its stored energy, or fat, to make up the energy difference. Exercising will increase your body’s daily energy demand, but to lose weight, you still need to take in fewer calories.
To figure out how many calories you should be consuming, click here to read our calories blog post!
Now you don't necessarily NEED to slash your calories. It helps, but here's an alternative for you. Eat your maintenance level of calories and just walk.
The amount on energy/calories you burn is dependent on the intensity and duration of your walk, and also your body weight. A person who weights 100kg will burn more calories doing the same thing as someone who ways 80kg, because they are shifting more weight with each step. Because of this, the amount of calories you burn will differ from person to person, but on average if you walk at a slow pace (2mph) for 30 minutes you can burn around 100 calories. Pick up the pace to around 3-4mph and you can burn 150-200 calories per 30 minute walk. Doesn't sound too shabby!
A single pound of fat is the equivalent of 3,500 calories. So on a weekly basis if you eat 3,500 calories less than your energy requirement, you will lose approximately 0.5 kg per week. If your calorie intake and expenditure are in balance, allowing you to maintain a steady weight, and you begin walking 30 minutes a day without increasing your calorie intake, you'll have a rough idea of how many calories you burn from walking. If you go for a 30 min moderate paced (3-4mph) walk every day for a week, you burn approximately 1,400 calories per week. Do this for a whole month and you've burned 5,600 calories, equivalent to about 1.5lbs/0.7kg of fat loss. Do this for 6 months and you'll have lost 10lbs/4.5kg. Do this for a year and you'll be 20lbs/9kg lighter. This is without stepping foot in the gym, and without slashing your calories. This is if you were to eat your maintenance level of calories. Just something to think about!