I think the article was a little misleading. She found the one point where the two activities overlap and then said it was the same.
Being the literalist that I am, I would have said that they could burn the same.
That said, you can’t just figure the average runner and walker by finding the mean points.
I agree. However I have usually heard it specifically stated as “Walking a mile burns the same calories as running a mile” which is fairer, if not necessarily completely true.
One practical, additional way that walking might also be helping you shed weight, Lobsang is that maybe when you’re out walking, you’re not eating.
I realise this is nothing to do with the energy expenditure equations of one activity vs another vs no activity, but going out for a long walk probably does mean you’re eliminating some between-meal snacking. Unless you’re walking to the chippy, of course.
As has already been noted, this isn’t true in any sense. In cold weather it is very likely that you will stil be shivering while you are exercising. IOW the body is generating absolutely no waste heat. Despite that you will still burn far more calories running in cold wetaher than you will simply by standing still.
Quite simply the vast majority of calories are burned during exercise to provide motive force. Nothing more, nothing less.
For anaerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise incurs no future metabolic debt, by definition.
You have in fact done a shedload of work.
The only thing you haven’t done is uselful work. Your muscles are tiny linear motors that need to zip back and forwards in order for you to push on anything. It doesn’t matter whether the object you are pressing moves or not. Your body is doing exactly as much work as if the wall were moving forwards under the same pressure. Precisely the same amount of work was done for the energy expended.
A simple test to determine whether work was done: has your body lost energy or mass as a result of pushing on the walll? If so then the energy must have been transferred from your body to something else. That is the very definition of work: the transfer of energy out of a system. So long as energy or mass is lost work must have been done.
Raising your heart rate by just 10-15% for at least 30 minutes gives you the best aerobic exercise. Running can become anaerobic easily. Fat burns best aerobicly.
“Tearing” muscle tissue is NEVER a desired effect of exercise - it’s something that should be avoided. Think of it this way: would you cut yourself in order to lose the weight of the blood? Not unless you’ve got some serious mental problems, you wouldn’t. That tearing you’re talking about is like taking a knife to yourself, only less orderly.
I thought muscle tearing, on a microscopic scale, is what happens any time you exercise so as to build muscle bulk.
Per mile, sure. Let’s go to the park. You walk a mile. I’ll run a mile, and then sit on the bench eating my ice cream while you finish up your exercise. :smack:
This is wrong. You’re thinking of a “pulled” muscle, while the statement was refering to microscopic tears that must be repaired in order for the muscle to rebuild itself. that’s why they call it body building.
I am not speaking in terms of biology but in terms of physics. Waste heat is heat generated by inefficiencies in the processes–when you walk, some energy is going into moving and some goes into generating heat. The heat is wasted energy in the physics sense, similar to heat from an internal combusion engine. In cold weather your waste heat is dissipated; that doesn’t mean there isn’t any waste heat. We may just be having a clash in terminology.
Future metabolic debt is not the only issue. One cite.
You have a point with regard to one kind of work that is done to create the push, however, you are doing no work on the wall.
Cite.