How many miles do I need to walk per day to lose weight?

Weight loss is mostly driven by your food intake. You need to cut back your calories. Exercise will help, and it is important for moving internal fat, but the main thing is to reduce calories. I’d recommend you keep a food diary. Be very strict about logging everything you eat to see how many calories you are eating. Then you can determine how much you need to cutback to start seeing some weight loss.

It’s impossible to say how far you’d need to walk to lose weight. How fast are you walking? What terrain are you walking on? How large are you? All of these things will influence how much energy you burn.

The primary element in weight loss is the calories in though. So make sure you have a real sense of what energy you’re taking in.

I already calculated the amount of calories I was taking in, and day after day I actually wasn’t getting enough, according to a few different things. I’m not sure it would be safe for me if I cut calories out. I already avoid anything fried and I cut way back on my junk food, too. I really think it was mostly my hypo that started making things difficult for me. Before my thyroid was out of whack, I had an extremely fast metabolism and weight of about 130 at 5’9’’. I don’t even want to say how much my weight I rapidly put on. It was significant enough and fast enough to make me concerned. :-/

I said above that I average about 3mph and 2.7 miles a day on a treadmill (3.1 miles today, which I’m going to try to steadily increase, but it’s going to be difficult for me for a while) – at an incline of 0 most of the time, but sometimes I go up to a 4 (out of 12).

I just want some numbers to shoot for so I can be confident I’ll get somewhere.

There’s no magic number. It’s physics: calories in minus calories out. If the result is positive you’ll gain weight, negative you’ll loose weight. Bigger numbers means faster gains/losses. It sounds like you’re walking a reasonable amount and eating well. If you’re not seeing the results you want, your only options are to (a) further decrease your daily caloric intake, (b) increase your activity duration, (c) increase your activity intensity, or (d) some combination of the above.

I know you said you have a rib injury, and that’ll reduce your options, but if you could find a way to add strength training (maybe using a machine to do leg exercises—if you’re up to it) to your workout that has the advantage of raising your metabolism all day/night as your body repairs your damaged muscles and makes them stronger. Don’t be shy of heavier weights either (obviously respect your limits with your rib injury and disregard this advice if you have concerns). Many women are afraid to push their abilities when strength training because they’re afraid of “bulking up.” Women aren’t going to get bulked up without steroids

@gorillapaws I could probably use those weights you strap to your ankles, or do other things with my lower body, but I’m extremely limited when it comes to doing exercises with my upper body – which is a damn shame, because I would absolutely be working out much more intensely if I could. My rib has come far since I’ve been seeing a chiropractor and doing physical therapy, but it’s a very long road that I have to travel. Because of my rib, I’m not supposed to lift more than 2lbs at the moment… :-/

But yeah. I guess I’ll just try to gradually increase my numbers and see where that gets me. Once my hypo meds fully kick in, hopefully that will make it much easier on me and I can get back to my normal self.

Without knowing more detail about your metabolism than anyone without a medical degree could hope to comprehend, the only way to figure it out is keep walking further each day until you start losing weight. Back in my younger days (from ages 15 to 35), I had a high enough metabolism that I would burn off more calories sitting on the couch than many people did walking. I was only moderately active but required somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 calories a day just to maintain weight. Now that I’m in my forties, it’s a much different story and I’ve gone from 20 pounds underweight to about 30 pounds overweight without changing much about my lifestyle. Yes, metabolism matters!

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, in order to lose a pound a week, you pretty much need to drop about 3,500 calories a week or 500 calories a day. Your little walk, if done every day without altering your diet, is about half that. While it may seem long, 2.7 miles a day at a normal pace isn’t terribly much for someone who is going for weight loss unless they have some other exercise going on. Good for cardio, maintaining muscle tone, and for regaining use of injured legs, but not enough to actually drop pounds on it’s own.

However, walking with busted ribs sucks. Life in general sucks with busted ribs. So increasing your exercise probably isn’t really feasible for now, at least not to the degree required to achieve your goals just by walking. Until you are well enough to handle 7–10 miles a day, you’ll need to get that 500 calorie a day cut some other way.

Dropping 300 calories a day from your diet would work. Another thing that may help is biking. Unless you ride like me, it’s much lower impact than walking. Hell, on good roads/paths or using a stationary bike, it’s lower impact than rolling over in bed! As someone who has been through physical therapy a couple times and spent a couple months re-learning to walk without a cane I’m all about “low impact”, and with your ribs, biking may work well for you too. And biking at a relatively sedate 10 MPH burns about the same calories as leisurely swimming; both burn twice as many calories as a 3 MPH walk.

For reference, my buddy decided to lose a little weight and he’s dropped about 50 pounds in the last six months, but he generally walks at least five miles a day and when he’s in the mood to actually do some physical activity (about once or twice a week) he’ll get on his bike for another 30–60 miles. All that on top of watching his diet; weighing out portions, refusing to eat anything that lacks nutritional info, and all that.

I’m thinking walking alone won’t do it unless you get pretty hardcore; at least 10 miles a day at 3 mph. And if you’re taking in more than about 1,800 calories a day (subject to a little adjustment based on factors like age and height) then it will be that much harder and slower.

Calories in < Calories out

I’m 100% hypo. I lost 30 pounds solely by eating similar to how you describe and meditating and with no exercise. One difference, though, is that I only ate brown rice as my starch/carb and avoided anything with flour, which seems to be inflammatory for me. By eating that way (and having everything organic) I was able to drastically cut my calories. I also skipped dinner because I generally wasn’t hungry.

Once I fell off the wagon, I gained back 10 pounds.

My point isn’t do what I do, but pay really close attention to what works for you. Cut everything you don’t need. Eat just enough to get to the next meal.

There’s a book called The Thyroid Diet that may have some suggestions that work for you. It’s written by an advocate, though, not any kind of medical expert.

edit:: I also wasn’t really eating meat

At least 3 miles or 1 hour.

I used to walk 3 miles in about 55 minutes, and kept to about a 1,500–1,600 hundred a day calorie count, worked great.If you live in an area with hilly terrain even bigger boost to your walking. My route included one hill that went on for about a half mile at around a 30–40% grade I’d say…whew…kicked ass. lol
I’ve fallen off the walking wagon but once you reach your goal weight you can still maintain on caloric intake alone. Morning exercise also boosts your metabolism for the rest of the day.

Thyroid issues screw stuff up badly. My dad had thyroid disease while he biked 100 miles a week and ate a vegan diet. He ballooned up to almost 100 pounds overweight even with an amazing diet and grueling exercise. Once he was medicated properly, all he had to do was wait a few months for his thyroid levels to normalize and he started losing weight very quickly—it was about 6 months before he noticed any difference, though. The only change he made was to go back to eating some meat now and then because he wasn’t getting enough protein.

You MAY find that you don’t need to change anything at all. It could be just a matter of waiting it out and keeping in touch with your endocrinologist.

@keobooks My doctor did say that it can take quite a while for the meds to kick in, so even though my last blood test yesterday showed I’m within normal range now, she said it cold be months before I see full benefits, even with exercise. I hope the meds help and get me back to a fast metabolism. I’m impatient.

@jerv Same here. My metabolism was crazy fast before everything went wrong. The combination of my injury and my thyroid going wrong really played a big part in the changes to my body. However, I think I will keep pushing myself, because I’m very eager to get back to the old me. I do have a bike and our weather is much nicer than it typically is this time of year, so I’ll start adding some biking in, as well.

@kevbo I’ve been researching foods on the Internet to eat and avoid for hypo, and so far there’s been a lot of good information.

I think I’ll just keep trying to increase my mileage as I go. Because this is about being healthy in general, not just losing weight. Thank you guys for your answers. :)

You’re welcome. Forgot to mention that I spoke recently (and casually) with my neighbor who is a career personal trainer. He basically said most bets are off with thyroid issues. Not that it’s hopeless, but just that it has a disproportionate effect on weight gain and loss relative to diet and exercise.

@kevbo Even with medication?

Well, the point, I suppose, is that it doesn’t take much variation from the norm to gain weight. If you are dialed in well enough, you’ll have a more normal metabolism, but “fluctuations happen” as they say. If you miss days or don’t take it on an empty stomach or if your level changes, then you’ll probably see a gain.

@kevbo If you were restricting your calories, then exercise isn’t mandatory… at least not for weight loss.

As soon as your rib injury heals up you might try doing slightly more vigorous walking workouts with a heart rate monitor. 50 to 60% of your maximum heart rate is what is known as the “fat burning zone’. Also you will burn K-cals from muscle “after-burn” for a few hours after your workout.

Also our bodies need regular physical exercise as part of obtaining and maintaining good health. It’s not a good idea to eliminated exercise from your routine unless advised by a medical professional.

Good health.

If you want to lose weight eat less… it is only logical.

IT is not really about excercise. You are eating too much for your body type.

Think about it. If we only ate as much as our body needs we would never put on weight

I think we need to break away from this tradition of eating three times a day.

As human beings we are alot less active than our ancestors who spent most of their time doing hard work outdoors. .. So we need to eat alot less

I Think it is psychological and we can actually train our bodies to eat less. .. NOT STARVE.

Excercise is important but it should be something natural not as intense as most of us do nowadays in the gym etc. The real problem is that we eat too much but then overcompensate for this by doing extremely intense excercises like insanity and running or walking until our heart is about to explode

Quite true. I think a large part of why I managed to maintain a healthy weight for as long as I did was my habit of adjusting my food intake based on my activity level and only eating when I was actually hungry rather than just bored.

I was never really into the “three meals a day” thing either. Maybe a couple of large snacks to get me through the workday and just grazing at home. Many animals, humans included, think subconsciously that when they have a chance to eat, they should eat as much as they can because there is no telling when you may be able to eat next. It’s a hard mindset to get out of since it’s hardwired into our biology, and the era of food plentiful enough for humans to possibly survive by grazing as needed has been too short for biological evolution to eliminate that, “Must gorge!”, primal urge from our genome. And it doesn’t help that things like jobs limit one’s access to food; not all jobs are conducive to snacking while you work, so a social construct has a subtle effect on our biology.

@chinchin31 With all due respect, having hypothyroidism makes a big difference and it doesn’t merely boil down to eating too much for my body type. As a matter of fact, most people would say I don’t eat enough. I didn’t start gaining weight like this until something went wrong with my thyroid – it wasn’t simply a matter of overeating. I know you probably don’t mean it to come across this way, but completely disregarding the hypothyroidism comes across as somewhat ignorant and rude.

@DrasticDreamer, I see an endocrinologist who is an expert in relation to weight loss and management. His main focus is on calorie control. Even if you do have endocrinological problems, in the end, it still comes down to how many calories you’re eating. Other things can affect how well your body processes those calories, but the primary mechanism involved in weight loss is the calories you eat.

Perhaps try to see a specialist who can try to help you counter the effects of your thyroid to help you lose weight. You haven’t said how many calories you consume a day, but a specialist can monitor your metabolic rate amongst other things.

@Earthbound_Misfit Today I ate 1101 calories. Sometimes it’s even less than that – like 800 to 900.

That might be a little too low, which can make your body try to store fat for later use. Most reputable plans I’ve seen are closer to 1300–1600 calories base (varies by plan) before adjustment for activity. And that assume a normal thyroid.

My wife is currently eating around 1400-ish and her weight is doing what you want your’s to do; going down about a pound or two a week.

@jerv Yeah, exactly. That’s why when people kept telling me to cut more calories, I was trying to tell everyone why that wouldn’t be a good idea.

I think part of my problem is that I’ve always been a grazer. I prefer snacking on healthy stuff throughout the day rather than (usually) sitting down to big meals. I just need to eat larger amounts of good stuff.

But yeah, I did consider (once I realized how little calories I was actually getting) that that could very well be one reason losing weight has been hard. I had no idea my intake was that low until recently.

Have you seen an endocrinologist? Someone who can help you with your weight loss? I find I won’t lose weight if I eat more than 1100 calories. The difference is I’m seeing him and my low calorie intake is his instruction and I’m being monitored. It might be you do need to eat more. It is really impossible for us to say. We’re not doctors and we don’t have your records and can’t analyse your blood tests etc. Especially since you have thyroid issues, get a referral to a specialist who can work with you. However, weight loss is mostly about calories. As I said in my first post, exercise is particularly useful in moving internal fat.

However, exercise has a myriad of other benefits. Have you tried swimming and water exercise? I know I’ve suggested this to you before. Still go for a walk, but you can do water exercise with less risk of further injury.

@Earthbound_Misfit Not yet, no. This is all pretty new for me. But I’ll definitely talk to my doctor to see about getting a referral.

I swam last summer and I really liked it because of my rib, and it was actually helping it heal by strengthening the muscles in the area that need it in order to keep my rib where it’s supposed to be. So I’m definitely going to look into a community pool as the weather gets colder.

Meh. The last time I went swimming, we needed an ice axe to get into the water!

Thyroid function can make a big difference, but how big is something only your endocrinologist can say for sure. I concur with @Earthbound_Misfit on that,

Also, I wish to remind you that most weight loss plans are targeted towards those with normal thyroid function, so you should take their advice with a grain of salt. Assuming you can tolerate the sodium… you get the point.

@jerv As long as it’s iodized salt. :D