Lylye McDonald is a highly esteemed nutritionist, physical trainer, and weight loss guru. His website, www.bodyrecomposition.com is an incredibly useful resource.
One of key points of weight loss is losing fat. Each pound of fat is approximately 3600 Calories. Each. Single. Pound. A man’s average caloric intake should be 2700 (varies based on your metabolism) and a woman’s average caloric intake should be around 2000 (varies based on your metabolism). Thus diet and intake of calories has more on weight loss than workout and exercise. Still both factors need to be executed correctly to lose weight.
Here’s a brief chart from his website, but you should check out his diet programs and workout regimens.
Calorie Burn | Duration | Burn/Workout | 3X/Week | Estimated Fat Loss | 6X/Week | Estimated Fat Loss |
5 cal/min | 30 minutes | 150 calories | 450 calories | 0.128 pounds | 900 calories | 0.25 pounds |
5 cal/min | 60 minutes | 300 calories | 900 calories | 0.25 pounds | 1800 calories | 0.51 pounds |
10 cal/min | 30 minutes | 300 calories | 900 calories | 0.25 pounds | 1800 calories | 0.51 pounds |
10 cal/min | 60 minutes | 600 calories | 1800 calories | 0.51 pounds | 3600 calories | 1.1 pounds |
Frankly, the results are pretty dismal; you don’t even get to a one pound fat loss per week until you reach 6 days/week of an hour of fairly challenging exercise every day. Certainly the folks who think that brisk walking for 30 minutes a few times per week is going to have a major impact on much of anything without a complete overhaul in diet are incorrect; the impact is simply negligible.