Any exercise is good exercise, but when it comes to losing weight, it’s hard to beat running. After all, running is one of the most efficient ways to burn calories. If you’re already a runner, keep on keepin’ on. If you’re not a runner yet but interested in losing weight, here are four reasons running can be the best exercise for weight loss.
- Running works even when you’re at rest. High-intensity exercise like running stimulates more ‘afterburn’ than low-intensity exercise. That is, even when comparing running with walking the same distance, studies find that running will lead to greater weight loss, most likely because your resting energy expenditure stays elevated after you run. In a long-term comparison study of runners and walkers, kilojoules burned through running led to 90 per cent more weight loss than calories burned through walking.
- Running is time-efficient. Even if the myth that running a mile and walking a kilometre burn the same number of kilojoules were true, running is a considerably faster way to burn those kilojoules. Most people can run two or three times as far as they can walk in a given amount of time. At the other end of the spectrum, super-intense but short workouts may burn more kilojoules per minute per running, but because they’re so short, your total kilojoule burn isn’t as great as if you ran.
- Running is convenient. Though many of us have accumulated a vast arsenal of GPS gadgets and tech tees over the years, little is actually required to go running. You can do it alone. You can do it almost anywhere. You don’t need any equipment beyond a pair of running shoes. For this reason alone, running is the best workout for weight loss because it’s cheap, it’s accessible, and there are fewer barriers to maintaining a routine, even while travelling.
- Two words: runner’s high. The first rule of exercising for weight loss is that if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t stick with it. Fortunately, studies support what many runners have experienced on an anecdotal level – running can actually get you high. Scientists have found links between moderate to intense exercise and morphine-like brain chemicals called endocannabinoids, which suggest endorphins alone aren’t responsible for the occasional flood of euphoria that rushes over you during a hard run. That floaty, happy sensation you had after your last race – makes you want to go for another run, right?
