Burn More Calories By Running

Running is an activity that every human learns without any training or instructions unlike other activities like swimming, skateboarding or bicycling. So why not use this easy but precious activity to burn calories, get in shape and improve your health? But an important question is how many calories does running burn? Calories burned per hour running shall depend on the miles you run in an hour that is your speed, intensity, terrain, height and weight. Like any other activity these factors play an important role in calories burnt from running.

Running burns approximately 124 calories per mile for a person with an average weight (man weighting 150 pound). The more you weight or the more you run the more calories you burn running. Some believe that walking and running burn the same amount of calories. However this is not true. Any continuous form of exercise burns on an average 5 calories for every liter of oxygen consumed. Running in general consumes more oxygen than walking. While walking your legs fall almost straight on the ground and the center of gravity falls smoothly on the top of your legs. But while running you actually jump from one foot to another which raises your center of gravity when you take off and lowers it when you land (as you tend to bend your knees while running to absorb the shock). The act of running involves constant rise and fall which requires tremendous amount of force to fight gravity.

How many calories are burned per mile of running?

These values however are based on the total calorie burn and do not consider the net calorie burn. Net calorie burn holds more significance when it comes to weight loss or weight maintenance. It is calculated by subtracting the resting metabolic calories burned during the time of workout from the total calories burned. Most of the time we only talk about total calorie burn and completely forget the net calories burned. This is because we want the figures of number of calories we burn to be big and bold. But researches prove that net calorie burn per mile running is almost double than per mile walking. Since you can cover almost double the distance while running compared to walking for the same time, you can burn almost 4 times more calories than walking in an hour.

Walking however is also a good form of exercise and like running it helps to burn calories, build your aerobic fitness, and strengthen bones. Running is in fact difficult than walking at a pace slower than 12 minutes per mile. But at faster pace walking is difficult than running and can burn more calories. The bottom line is that running is a very good form of exercise to burn calories. You can use the listed formula below to calculate the calories burnt in running. Net calories burn will give you the actual calories burned as it subtracts the basal metabolism calories. Walking formula applies to speed less than 5 miles per hour. At more speeds calories burned walking can be more than running.

Activity	Total calorie burn per mile	Net calorie burn per mile
Running	0.75Xyour weight (lbs)	0.63Xyour weight (lbs)
Walking	0.53Xyour weight (lbs)	0.30Xyour weight (lbs)

Submitted on January 16, 2014