Walking: The Most Underrated Superpower for Body, Brain & Balance

Could you walk around the globe? Yes. In fact, your average non-pro athlete adult will walk about 65,000 miles in a lifetime, roughly circling the globe thrice. Mr. Jean Beliveau of Quebec, Canada, an ex-neon sign salesman, took the longest recorded walk in history, a 46,600-mile journey through 64 countries that took him 11 years to complete. Not bad at all. I can't help but imagine the calves and thighs of this 56-year-old man who trotted over 75,000 km in the name of peace and awareness about kids in violent situations, and was welcomed home like a hero.

Today, we’ll give a little ode to pacing around the globe, talk about walking benefits, and why walking actually works on a physiological level. We’ll also address the elephant making a dent in your carpet out there in the corner of your mind and answer whether walking really can help you lose weight, build muscle, and feel better in your body and mind, or is it just some large conspiracy made by the sneaker companies. But first, let’s get some context and stats on the benefits of exercise as easy as this, left-right, left-right. What does it do? Is brisk walking better than slow walking, and can walking even improve life expectancy? Maybe the fountain of youth was to be walked around rather than drunk from.

A stats walkthrough

If you were to walk at a steady, sustainable pace, you'd clock in about 2-3mph, with walking above 3mph considered brisk and far better for our mental and physical health. There is actually a correlation of the speed of walking and longevity, be it naturally walking faster as a predictor of all-cause mortality, or brisk walking as an exercise tactic to lower the risk of chronic disease and increase lifespan and health span (which is even more important. We don’t fear death in old age, but disease, suffering and the feeling of being a burden).
 

There were myriad studies examining what happens to biomarkers in regular walkers and the benefits of walking every day. A 2019 Mayo Clinic Proceedings Study analyzed data from about 475,000 middle-aged adults in the UK. Average walking speed was a better predictor of lifespan than body mass index (BMI), which has been a superstar in studies but is not very useful without the context of body composition.
 

• Brisk-walking women had a life expectancy of 86.7-87.8 years (compared to 72.4 years for slow-walking women,
• Brisk-walking men had a life expectancy of 85.2-86.8 years, compared to 64.8 years for slow-walking men.

The study also found that if you were to regularly walk briskly - like you're late for the bus or don't want your hot pie to get cold before you reach home - you'll live on average 15 years longer than non-walkers, or slow walkers. This is logical as the brisk pace will greatly improve cardiovascular health without bumping up cortisol as a HIIT exercise. Brisk walking will also lower systemic inflammation and target metabolic issues like insulin resistance and excess visceral fat accumulation, which are so characteristic of post-middle age and contribute to the development of chronic diseases and malignancies that plague people in the autumn of their lives. Basically, you'll look hotter, live longer, feel better, and be healthier, and it's completely free.

The added years of life have been explained by a 2022 study from the University of Leicester. The study established a causal link between brisk walking and arguably the most important marker of biological age - the telomere length. Telomere length in regular fast walkers was equivalent to a biological age up to 16 years younger than their actual age. Telomeres are an interesting measure and quite a common-sense solution from evolution. They act as "caps" at the end of chromosomes, which hold genetic information. Telomeres have the same function as an endcap on a shoelace, designed to stop the lace from fraying and deteriorating. As the cells divide and replace old cells, each new division comes with a bit shorter telomeres. Until, finally, they are gone, genetic material deteriorates, and the cells become senescent (old), making all sorts of mistakes in copying, resulting in disease, degeneration, and eventually death.
 

Our bipedal lifestyle is very efficient in terms of energy consumption and, if the body loves anything, it's efficiency and energy conservation. Not because it is cheap, but because for most of our human history, food was scarce and we had to put in some serious effort to dig out these tubers, raid a beehive, or catch a deer. We were also moving much more in pore-mechanized societies, averaging over 15,000 steps just going about our days, walking from village to village, to get food, water, firewood, and generally doing all of our daily chores to make the tribe or a homestead function. We were designed to move, and efficient muscle function, while regularly being hungry for days, was primary. So our locomotion system and body mechanics are more efficient than those of any of our close ape or monkey relatives. We're about 75% more efficient, with bone and muscle structure adapted to upright walking. Hip and pelvis position, longer legs and thicker femurs, more fatigue-resistant "slow-twitch" muscle fibers, and the benefit of having our hands free to work, produce, build civilizations, slap that behind, paint, make pancakes, hug, shoot...
 

Upright walking is an incredible feat of engineering in our gravity-laden 3D environment, requiring 200 muscles per step. Walking is such a complicated interaction with our surroundings that we still can't teach robots to do so properly, even though we’ve endowed them with incomparably more processing power.

Irish neuroscientist Dr. Shane O’Mara, doing some interesting experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin, beautifully argues in his 2019 book, In Praise of Walking, that just the simple fact that we put one foot in front of the other shaped our entire evolution, wired our brains to dedicate a large percentage of processing power to movement and recognizing the position of our body in space. He believes that walking is still the top natural choice for a large majority of the population and that we’re not utilizing its physical health, mental clarity, and metabolic benefits to full capacity. We’ve crossed continents on foot, finding a place we could call home, or simply out of curiosity to see what lies beyond the horizon. Today, a large part of the population of developed, modernized countries is locked in sedentary jobs and cities that have subordinated their architecture to vehicles, rather than pedestrians, making something so rhythmic and deeply human as walking superfluous.
 

Is Walking Good Exercise?

Yes, a thousand times yes. We’ve sort of adopted the belief that exercise requires equipment, gym memberships, and expensive clothing when, in fact, movement has been, and continues to be, a normal part of life that needs no fancy fads or gadgets. It is entirely possible to get a good workout in and reap the cardiovascular & metabolic benefits, even if you don’t post about it or spend hours picking just the right tights. You don’t need dumbbells, bars, machinery, or a personal trainer. You can just go for a walk with zero preparation and adapt the speed to your current stamina and capabilities, hit it hard and then slow down, go uphill and downhill to engage different muscles, go up a rocky trail to challenge your balance, or go of path in the woods following the sound of the river for some extra cognitive benefits when learning to handle a new terrain.
 

Walking is a form of exercise that most people can do to some degree. It engages muscles, joints, cardiovascular systems, and the brain simultaneously, but it has one more ace up its sleeve. Unlike high-impact workouts like HIIT, walking is a low-stress, natural movement we were perfectly designed for. It is kind to the body but with a cumulative high return over time. If you’ve got a lot of stress in your life, you might buy the idea that you need to go and process it through the body by spending hours hitting a boxing bag full force, or doing an hour of Thai Bo or PX 90. Sure, you will get sweaty, hit heart rate peaks, and tone up those muscles, but if you’re already stressed or have hormonal imbalances, high-impact training can raise your cortisol levels. This is a bad thing.
 

This happens because the body perceives intense exercise as a stressor, activating the sympathetic nervous system, which has no sympathy for your peace and just pushes you into a fight-or-flight response. This is quite logical: if you're going at it so hard that you're tearing muscle fibers and are barely able to breathe, the body concludes that you must be running for your life. It releases cortisol, the stress hormone that triggers the breakdown of fats and glucose that you've stored in the body to provide fast energy, because that tiger is obviously quite close on your heels.
 

Look, the cortisol (and blood sugar) spike is completely normal in intense exercise and will, in most cases, typically drop quickly post-workout in healthy individuals. But we tear our bodies to shreds, not allowing them to rest, not convalescing when we're sore, not eating protein-rich foods that will serve as building materials to repair the muscle. We’re also blessed by the capability to imagine the future and remember past events, meaning we can easily borrow some stress from the past or future to obsess over and raise cortisol without ever doing a single jumping jack. All of this can keep cortisol elevated, leading to fatigue, poor recovery, and sleep disruption – a recipe for disease and hormone disruption, especially for women.
 

So walking is a gentle, low-impact, rhythmic activity that also activates brain networks involved in memory, creativity, and emotional regulation, making it both movement and medicine, equally beneficial for the young, old, injured, fit athletes, and absolute beginners. If you’ve ever looked down on walking as an exercise routine, go climb a hill at a brisk pace.

We’ve already mentioned most of the natural boosts you get by walking regularly, but let’s reiterate here again. The benefits of walking include (but are not limited to):

• Improved cardiovascular health (better heart health, less risk of heart attack and stroke, cleaner and more flexible blood vessels, lower blood pressure, and cholesterol regulation)
• Better insulin sensitivity (insulin resistance is fertile ground for inflammation, visceral fat accumulation, onset of diabetes, and destruction of nerves and organs, including the heart, brain, ovaries, liver, eyes, and periphery of the body, like toes and fingers)
• Reduced inflammation (there is nothing wrong with inflammation when it is controlled, it’s a normal immune response to a cut, for e.g. But once it becomes low-grade and constant throughout the body, we’re in trouble and hurling towards damaged cells and a depleted immune system)
• Enhanced mood and stress resilience (mental health and mood stability are under fire in a very fast-paced world; things change quickly, and we’re expected to keep up and process more information than ever before; stress is inevitable, but we can become better at not letting it get to us and enjoy life more).
• Cognitive clarity, creativity, and brain rejuvenation (if you’re stuck, go for a walk; walking can boost your creativity and problem-solving skills by whopping 60%, and some of the deepest thinkers on our planet figured it out on their own… it figures).

You’re not your step count, but you will become a product of how consistently you go and get a walk worth counting.

Average Walking Speed, Distance, and Time 

Depending on your age, fitness, body shape, potential injuries, or diagnosis, you may be walking anywhere from 2-4 mph, so let’s take 3-4 as an average for a more or less healthy grown-up.
 

We really do overestimate how many steps we take in a day, and for someone who isn't walking every day while harboring a deep interest in their pedometer, it’s quite hard to determine how many steps we’ve taken on any given route. We were just not wired to care for information like that, because it was of no practical benefit to the pre-industrialized human that walked long distances just as readily as we breathe. It would be like staring into a single tree in the forest of life and survival.
 

But, tracking yourself is useful information. If you have data, you know exactly what is happening and how you feel at any given tier of a step count and can calibrate and adapt to your needs, lifestyle, and possibly conditions you’re trying to reverse, like high blood sugar or muscle loss due to an immobilized period or medication, such as chemotherapy. So let’s answer some really common questions people ask when considering introducing walking as a permanent fixture in their life and wellness. High hitters include:
 

How long does it take to walk a mile?
About 15–20 minutes at an average walking speed (3–4 mph). You may be taller and have a longer stride, or be a naturally fast walker or more inclined to promenade slowly, so this may vary a few minutes.
 

How long does it take to walk 5 miles?
Easy math from the initial answer, but people who want to take walking longer seriously, like this 5-mile mark. It will take you roughly 75–100 minutes, depending on pace and terrain. It may be longer if this is an uphill climb or a mountain hike with less-than-ideal roads, but this is the ballpark.
 

How many steps is a mile?
Some like to measure by time spent walking, but others prefer the steps walked route. So a mile will be about 2,000–2,500 steps for most people, again depending on stride length, which is mostly determined by an individual's height, pace, and whether the terrain allows you to take a full stride each time.
So basically some more elementary math:

• How many steps is 2 miles? → 4,000-5,000
• How many steps in 3 miles? → 6,000-7500

If you’re wondering, “How many miles should I walk a day?” we really can’t answer that without knowing your circumstances. If you’ve been very sedentary or grounded due to injury, you may barely make it half a mile before you have to stop. If you’re reasonably in shape, 4 miles might seem a breeze. But basically, since walking is a low-impact activity, you can just keep walking. There seems to be some sweet spot at about 6,000-7,000 steps a day, where you get great metabolic, cardio-vascular, cognitive, and emotional regulation benefits, so aim for about 3 miles, meaning an hour, ideally of brisk walking, with some inclines to challenge you a bit.
 

Calories Burned Walking: Does It Actually Count?

Another point we’ve all sneaked around when considering walking for weight loss is “How much should I walk to lose weight?”. This is not the “How to get skinny fast” story. Walking absolutely burns calories, but is by no means a crash diet. It is for those who are serious about losing weight long-term and getting healthy, rather than just smaller. If you’ve been on the planet long enough, you already know these radical crashes never work anyway, so good riddance.
 

Still, it would be wise to adopt a healthier relationship with food and opt for whole foods. We don’t really care much which route you go here, and we are not about to be sucked into a polarized food war. As long as you stay away from the processed food and refined sugar (no, calorie is not just a calorie) and eat real food that will support gut health, actually keep you full, keep your blood sugar stable, and hormones humming along, you’re fine. Do what feels right for you and remember that consistently over time matters more than falling off the wagon and then curing the self and the wagon alike. The body is super adaptable; it doesn’t care if you’ve been good all week and then had a bickie. Walk it off or don't. It's just a bickie.

So, does walking really help you lose weight, and how many calories does walking really burn? First, we must realize that the benefit of exercise is not just the pure thermodynamics of calories in, calories out, because we’re not calorimeters that just burn things up. We have biochemistry and a much more complex interplay. For example, someone with high insulin may be walking for 10 miles, and will still not tap into their fat reserve; the weight lost will be just water due to perspiration. But if you walk consistently, you’ll help with insulin resistance and finally allow the body to reach into that fat once you turn off the signal to just store, store, and store (which is what insulin is).
 

So, how many calories does walking burn? On average, you’ll burn 80–120 calories per mile, so 3 miles will be 240-360 calories. Faster walking will increase energy expenditure, and inclines, hills, mountains, or a walking treadmill at an angle (if you can’t get outside) boost intensity and burn more. So yes, it counts, and walking regularly will definitely help you lose weight, and you can lose significant amounts of weight by walking. It will not be instant and will lack the gym bro drama, but it will be healthy and sustainable.

Walking for Weight Loss: How Much Is Enough?

It is individual and will depend on your age, body mass, physical health, and how fast you walk. But, as we’ve already said, walking to lose weight really works when it’s regular, progressive, and sustainable. This means that you should walk daily, try to increase the number of steps once you become overly comfortable in a specific spot, and stay in it for a long time. Speaking of running, that's also a good exercise, but the impact force is far worse on the knees and ankles. Prolonged runs may raise cortisol just as high-intensity workouts, plus you’ve got a higher chance of an injury, which is not good news for older walkers. But if you’d like to break your walk with a sprint here and there to raise that heartbeat, you certainly can.

But here are some benefits of walking associated with how much walking a day you should aim for to get improvements in various aspects of health and wellness:

• Walking 30 minutes a day: metabolic and mental health benefits; ideal for beginners and people recovering from a disease or wanting help with blood sugar regulation
• Walking one hour a day for a month: noticeable changes in endurance, mood regulation, and often body composition; this is an intermediate level where you’ll see real physical changes, clothes will fit better, you’ll think clearly, and have more energy
• 7,000–10,000 steps a day: This number was arbitrarily introduced by a Japanese campaign from the 1960s … to market a pedometer. It is associated with weight management and significantly reduced disease risk. This is a fantastic goal to hit, but in reality, you don’t need to do 10,000 daily to see benefits. Consistent 6,000-7,000 will do the trick.

If you’re wondering “How much should I walk to lose weight?”, “How many miles should I walk a day?” or “How many steps to lose weight? - it is realistic to say this: Start with as many as you feel comfortable with and increase the step count when you feel that doing your regular route becomes too easy. This means you’ve built up some stamina and muscle and can do with a longer walk. But don’t push yourself to burnout. Our goal is sustainable growth that is comfortable and energizing. Ideally, you’ll take a holistic approach, prioritize sleep and quality food, and shift your mindset to accept stress as a normal part of life and a challenge you need to keep strong and agile.
 

Does Walking Build Muscle or Just Burn Fat?

If you’re dreaming of the Arnold physique, walking will not do that. You will not build bulky protruding muscles, nor will you start to burst from your khakis and T-shirt. You’ll primarily build muscular endurance, not bulky muscle mass that the bodybuilding aficionados are after. 

You will most definitely build a better body that will have:
 

• Stronger calves, glutes, hamstrings, and stabilizing muscles. 
  This is all very important for body mechanics, and as you get older, walking regularly will be one of the great predictors of resilience to injury, less risk of falling, and osteoporosis. Plus, the stronger muscles and tendons will make it less likely that you’ll break a bone, which heals very slowly and is very detrimental to life expectancy in older people. 
  
   
• Better muscle engagement due to inclines and brisk walking
  If you only have access to flat surfaces and paths, use those. A brisk walk on zero incline is better than no walk at all, but if you have the opportunity to use an incline in any way, shape, or form and play with gravity, do it. This will yield a better return on invested walking time, especially in improving cardiovascular health markers. But if you do want to channel your inner Rock, and would like some impressive muscle mass, you’re better off introducing resistance training in addition to walking. If you’re at risk for sarcopenia (age-related muscle mass loss), we’d highly encourage some resistance. 
  
   
• Improved muscle tone and metabolic efficiency with consistency
  You will definitely improve muscle tone and look leaner and better put together if you stick to walking. But this is only the (not to be dismissed, of course) aesthetic benefit. You’ll look like someone who takes care of themselves, but as your metabolism improves, you’ll also fix things from the inside. Better blood sugar regulation will mean you’ll have fewer or no cravings for sweet and salty snacks, and you’re more satisfied with your (preferably whole foods) meals. If you throw in an intermittent fast here and there, you’ll get the extra benefits of autophagy and allow your body to have some clean-up time, getting rid of cellular debris and recycling what can be recycled. The tissues in the entire body, including your skin, will effectively rejuvenate and operate more effectively.
   

But remember, walking is great at increasing lean muscle mass, meaning better blood sugar control, because hungry muscle cells gulp up all of the extra sugar from the bloodstream (this is the logic behind the advice to go for a 10-15 minute walk after a carb-rich meal). So yes, walking will build muscle, but not as much as when paired with resistance training.
 

Can walking radically change your body shape, and can you target an area, such as thigh fat? First of all, bodies are naturally shaped differently, and you can just as well be curvy and healthy and strong, and “ideal” bodies through history were as many as the beholders. Walking will reduce your overall body fat and boost muscle mass, so yes, your body composition will change to a healthier ratio, but you can’t target specific body parts, and this is true for most exercises out there. Doing crunches will not get rid of belly fat; it may strengthen the musculature below the layer of skin and fat, but the fat will still be there, unless you lose fat mass from your entire body. You may see some tone peeking through the fat, depending on the fat thickness, but only fat reduction will show true muscle definition. So losing overall body fat is what we actually want.
 

Beyond weight and calories, daily walking improves:

• Sleep quality
• Mental health
• Cognitive aging
• Emotional regulation
• Longevity

These are the under-appreciated benefits of exercise that don’t show up in mirrors and are less spoken about in our visual culture, but they show up in how you feel living inside your body. Skinny can feel as good as it wants, but if I can’t be both, I’d rather be happy, healthy, well-rested, and at least semi-stable, for a long, long time.

Walking Outside vs. Treadmill: Does It Matter?

Listen. There is an obvious answer here, but we agree with Dr. O’Mara that the best walk is the one you’ll actually do. Outside walking and treadmill both work as movement frequency is what matters. If a treadmill is your only choice, go for it. If it gets you moving after staring at a screen for 8 hours, it’s fantastic, and keep doing it. But keep in mind that when the opportunity arises to go for a walk in a 3D outside environment, you should take it, because:

Outdoor walking offers cognitive and emotional benefits (nature, fresh air, navigation of the unknown, and having to figure things out). Have you heard that not all who are wandering are lost? There is nothing like the feeling of discovering something new, not knowing what’s behind the next bend or forking the woods. There is the elation that I guarantee you’ve forgotten, and it’ll remind you of the open-hearted searches we did as kids, when we explored and learned by default in kid settings.
 

A walking treadmill provides consistency and control, but unfortunately not much novelty. Sure, you can put some music or a podcast on, but we need novelty for all the senses, You might find a tree in gorgeous autumn colors, make a new cat friend, smell the flowers blooming by the road, or pines from the forest, you might find an alternate route because you’ve been cut off by a river, or ice. Walking outside will engage all of your senses and your entire person.

People walking together gain social and psychological benefits, too. There is something in the rhythmic orchestra of putting one foot in front of the other and metronomic arm swings that is just conducive to good, deep conversation and stress reduction. Our brain actually works better when we walk. We can be a better co-walker, listen and understand more fully, offer better advice, and feel the other person’s story more deeply. And we can also get unstuck from stale problems and get up to 60% more creative.

Final Thought: Walk it Off

Walking is so mundane and ordinary that we’ve completely forgotten what an extraordinary feat of engineering, mastery, and universal medicine it is. It is not a sub-par exercise for those who can’t do anything else; it is not a backup for lazy days, but the original technology of health and wellbeing developed in collaboration with evolution.
 

So, stationed gazing upwards at a mountain of data on the benefits of walking, when considering introducing a good habit in 2026, maybe get yourself some comfortable shoes, a snazzy tracksuit, and a pedometer app to make sure you're getting your steps in. We greatly overestimate how many steps we actually walk in the day, but underestimate how many steps we can acquire just from doing regular household things, in and around the house. It all counts, and it is better to break up our activity throughout the day than to hit the gym for an hour after sitting on our bum all day. We agree; sometimes it is unavoidable to stay put, but no one is stopping you from getting up once in a while and taking a walk around the office or campus. You’ll literally come back to your desk smarter - refreshed, more creative, focused, and full of energy. If you’re stuck in anything you’re doing, you’re probably just not walking enough.
 

You can start with a pedometer to motivate yourself, and grab a wife, husband, sister, kid, or friend to give walking the benefit of therapeutic social interaction and connection. Don’t take people who annoy you. They’re not good for your cardiovascular health and quite reliably mess with blood pressure (but could motivate you to run away). Go walk in nature if you’ve got a forest, park, or meadow available nearby to get the mental and physical benefit of nature sounds, sights, smells, and some optimal vitamin D production from the sunshine.
 

Employing a couple of hundred muscles, costing zero, being utterly sustainable and easy, with no special equipment, training, or facilities needed, it is an untapped gem just waiting right there for us to figure it out. So in the big picture, we’re no different than our ancestors. We hold the same biology, and live in a social tectonic shift never before seen in our species. We have more comforts than ever before, but are getting sicker and increasingly spending more resources on medicine and treatments for chronic diseases stemming from avoidable lifestyle choices. Maybe we’re not sick and overmedicated, but underworked.

So, go grab those shoes and step outside. Don’t know where to go? Even better. Just start walking and explore the roads ahead. Stay healthy, curious, fast, focused, and infinitely hungry to find out what’s behind the next bend. Walk hard, play hard!