Walking, running and burning calories...

Recently, my son who is not a runner, was saying that there's no major difference in terms of exercise value between running and walking, and that walking was preferable as it was gentler on joints. While we listened attentively to his opinion, intuitively, we knew that it couldn't be quite the same. That debate has been going on for eons and we needed some proofs to at least convince ourselves that running is more efficient and a more potent exercise than just walking.

First there's of course the fact that running a certain distance can be packed in less time and that's advantage number one. Thinking that both exercise are the same opens the door to absurd concepts like this one: I we're expending about 100 calories per mile when moving over level ground we'd use up the same amount of calories crawling or sprinting; this doesn't make a lot of sense to me! If I drive my car at 35 or 75 mph, there's a huge difference on gas mileage...

In 2004, researchers at Syracuse University compared the energy expenditure of walking and running with equations incorporating energy expenditure and took into consideration the true number of calories burned from exercise by taking away the “resting” calories we just consume while standing still. They found that the net calorie burn for the women was 91 running versus 43 walking. For the men the net calories burned was 105 running versus 52 walking. So, in reality, the subjects were burning more than twice the calories when running versus walking.

Sure, this is one case among many and it appears that at specific paces these result may vary as claims another study conducted by the Washington University School of Medicine. Yet, no matter how you slice it, the faster one goes, the more calories it burns and since it's much easier to go fast by running instead of just walking, we've decided to continue to run until our ankles, knees and hips begin falling apart!