Every type of exercise helps you lose weight. Though doing 15 minutes is not going to have much effect every little helps. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories worth of exercise so that’s quite a lot of stairs if you want to lose 10lbs. I think exercise does have indirect benefits on weight loss though because it gets you up and motivated and improves your mood all of which help you to stick to a healthy eating plan.

Jan

I was thinking about climbing up and down the stairs at my dorm for about 15 mins every morning (or every other morning since some days I have class very early). I’m looking to lose some weight, ya’ see. I’m also on a low carb diet.

I was wondering, do you think doing this for exercise about 4 to 5 times a week will help me lose weight? How speedilly do you think it would happen? I’m 21, 5’4, and about 150 lbs, looking to lose 10 or more.

As I said to Donna, this is something I can’t answer as everyone’s need and for exercise and ability is different. In any case, we all need a full range of exercise so stair climbing by itself is not enough as this has is mainly an aerobic exercise though it strengthens some of your muscles too. You definitely need exercises for upper body strength and flexibility too.

Jan

How much exercise you do and how many stairs you climb is really a personal thing depending on what your body is capable of, so I can’t provide personal advice like that. If you have any medical condition, or even potential medical condition, it is worth asking your doctor for advice.

Jan

like every exercise you can do it well or do it poorly so it depends how you hold your body, what your body is capable of etc. There is no right and wrong exercise just right and wrong ways to carry out a particular exercise and right and wrong exercises for your particular circumstances.

Jan

I don’t actually see fitness and exercise as the best means of losing weight – of course you use up calories and it helps but you have to do too much of it to lose anything major. For instance you have to run more than a marathon to lose a pound of actual fat (3500 calories worth of running). You’ll lose water weight too potentially but the fat is not going to disappear easily with a bit of stair climbing. You need to change what you eat for that. Sorry about that. That is not to say that you should not do it. Exercise is great for keeping you alive, it WILL use up calories, which all helps, as I said and it can make you feel more positive about your body which helps you get motivated to eat less. If you want to see how much stair climbing you would have to do to lose 1lb you have to compute how much you would have to do to burn 3500 calories. It’s a lot. Using a stair climber machine (which is probably the equivalent of going upstairs all the time) you use 3.7 calories per hour per pound of your body weight or about 9 calories a minute for a 67kg person – you would burn less. So you can see how much work is involved in losing a pound. Just remember though that every ounce of fat you lose through activity counts when you trying to lose weight.

Jan