Is Jogging The Best Way To Burn Calories?

Written by: Ashlin J Thekken

When you are at your ideal weight you ensure that your body is not carrying around an unnecessary “load”, which ensures less stress on your bone structure and also prevents undue pressure on vital organs. Most of the aches and pains that manifest are due to high amounts of stress on the bone structure owing to excess weight that’s held in your body.

A lot of organ based diseases, especially heart diseases, are owing to high fat deposition around them (excess weight is always stored as “fat”). And of course, a body at ideal weight looks more attractive than a body which is over-weight. These are good enough reasons for you to be committed to ensuring that you are at your ideal weight at every stage in your life.

Burning excess calories, that you obtained from your diet, is the best way to stay at your ideal weight other than bringing a moderation in your diet to ensure you don’t consume more than what your body finds sufficient. Jogging is one of the best aerobic exercises to burn off the excess calories, shave off the past fat deposition in your body and stay fit by improving the overall body stamina and vitality.

Jogging by definition means “slow running” or low paced running. So basically it’s about running at brisk pace without sprinting hard. However, a lot of additional benefits can be had when you integrate some sprinting into your jogging routine – I will discuss some pointers, on how to do this, later in this article. For now I would just like to make it clear that in the context of this post I am referring to jogging as “running” and am not holding a strict definition of pigeon holing it into a “slow paced” running.

Is Jogging The Best Aerobic Workout For Burning Calories?

In my perspective, when you compare jogging/running with other common work outs like walking, cycling, dancing (yeah, it can be considered a work out), resistance training (like weight lifting) or swimming, it seems to burn off more calories per minute, or per mile, as the case may be – I am sure there is researched evidence which backs this claim for most cases.

Scientifically, it’s suggested that we burn 1 calorie per liter of oxygen inhaled, so when you involve yourself in a strenuous activity which involves harder/deeper breathing you burn more calories. Jogging, integrated with some short sprints, involves a lot more breathing than the other work outs that I mentioned and thus burns more calories. Though, “weight training” is definitely a close match because of the amount of calories that are expended in enduring the resistance of the work out.

It’s suggested that jogging can burn close to 100 calories per mile. An average human being would take close to 10-12 minutes to jog a mile, so that’s like 10 calories burnt per minute, which is definitely a good number. It’s also suggested that if you weigh more than 150 pounds you end up burning 8-10% more calories than a person who is less than 150 pounds in weight – the logic being that the more strain the body needs to endure the more calories that are burnt in the process.

Are There Any Disadvantages To Jogging?

All physical activities are bound to strain your body, and when done in excess, or through an improper form, can lead to injuries – jogging is no different. If you are a beginner at jogging, you need to be extra careful the first couple of weeks, allowing the body to start adapting to the strain of this activity. Your muscles need to adapt, your bone structure needs to adapt and your stamina levels need to adapt. If you overdo this work out, before your body is ready, you are likely to acquire an unnecessary injury which may take time to heal.

It’s also suggested that jogging, being a “high impact” work out, puts a lot of strain on your knees, ankles and hip joints – which can lead to damage in the long run. But, knowing the intelligence of a human body, it’s my perspective, that if you continue jogging with the right form, in slow progression, without over straining yourself, your body will adapt itself to this routine without any injury to its body structure. In fact, your body will develop a stronger bone structure around the areas that are facing the highest impact, if you allow it the time to do so. That’s why it’s so important to start off slow and build the intensity gradually.