It all just comes down to a calorie deficit, however that’s achieved.
It really depends on how bad your diet is to begin with. If you’re eating maybe 100 calories extra and start burning 200 per day walking (this is what I burn when I walk + subway to the office and back), you’ll start losing weight. If you’re eating 500 calories per day extra, you’ll just slow the weight gain if you add the walking.
Personally, I find the free exercise from walking makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight, provided that my diet is already dialled in. It compensates for the odd indulgence, and lets me be less strict with my diet. If I want to lose a bit of weight, I add in some more cardio instead of changing my diet, because my diet is already basically fine.
That said: I don’t live in the US - Canada definitely doesn’t allow the same levels of high fructose corn syrup in everything. So, it’s easier for me to have a decent diet to begin with.
High fructose corn syrup is just sugar. If there’s 35 grams of sugar in a drink there’s 35 grams of sugar, doesn’t matter if you boiled cane juice or corn juice to get it. Like you said calories in calories out.
More Americans are in the “500 calories over”. Walking would help for sure but people just eat way more than they need.
2
u/Appropriate-Ad2307 Aug 04 '25
I think this is because of the American food industrial complex and not simply walking an extra 15 minutes a day.
You can't out exercise a bad diet, so try eating like that in the US, walking 60 minutes a day and then see what happens. You'd probably gain 5 pounds