How Much Weight Can You Lose by Walking 5 Miles a Week?

The amount of weight that you can lose on a weekly basis by walking 5 miles every week depends on several factors, including your walking pace, how much you currently weigh and your eating and drinking habits. Consistently walking 5 miles every week is just one component to a successful weight-loss plan.

Weight Loss

Consistently incorporating walking into your regimen makes a significant impact on your weight-loss efforts because it increases the total number of calories you burn. Your body burns calories as it fuels a variety of processes and maintains your health each day. When you walk, you’re forcing your body to burn even more calories to fuel your working muscles. To lose weight, you’ve got to burn a greater number of calories than you consume every week. When you create a deficit of 3,500 calories, you’ll lose a pound of fat.

Calories Burned Walking

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To estimate how much weight you can lose in a week with your walking efforts, you need to first figure out about how many calories you burn during your workouts. This value depends on your body weight, as heavier individuals have to work harder and thus will burn a greater number of calories, as well as how fast you’re walking. According to MayoClinic.com, a 160-pound person will burn about 204 calories during 60 minutes of walking at 2 mph, and about 314 calories if walking at 3.5 mph. However, a person weighing 200 pounds will burn about 255 calories in an hour of walking at 2 mph, and about 391 calories when walking at 3.5 mph.

Calories Burned in 5 Miles

Using the calories burned when walking values, you can estimate how many total calories you’ll burn when walking five miles per week. If you are 160 pounds and burning about 204 calories when walking 2 mph for 60 minutes, that means you burn about 3.5 calories every minute, and it’ll take you a total of 150 minutes spread out over the week to walk 5 miles. By multiplying 3.5 by 150, you can determine you’ll burn a total of 510 calories for every 5 miles you walk. Using this same mathematical procedure, if a 160-pound person walks at 3.5 mph, it’ll take them a total of 86 minutes over the week to walk five miles and they’ll be burning 5.2 calories per minute, equating to a total of 450 calories burned every 5 miles. A 200-pound person walking at 2 mph will burn about 4.25 calories per minute, meaning they’ll burn a total of about 638 calories every 5 miles. When they walk about 3.5 mph, they’ll burn about 6.51 calories per minute and they’ll burn a total of 560 calories every 5 miles.

Rate of Weight Loss

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If proper diet and calorie maintenance is maintained, it will take a 160-pound person seven weeks of walking 5 miles per week to reach the 3,500 calories needed to burn a pound. It will take that 160-pound person a little over seven-and-a-half weeks to lose a pound when they walk at 3.5 miles per hour. The 200-pound person will lose a pound of fat every five and a half weeks when walking at 2 mph and in a little over six weeks when walking at 3.5 mph.

Considerations

These weight loss estimates from walking five miles per week are only accurate if you’re simultaneously following a healthy eating plan. If you take in more calories than you need every day, you’re unable to create the caloric deficit needed for weight loss. One high-calorie meal can cancel out the calories you’ve burned during your 5 miles of walks over the week.