I am not going to dig into the science behind this because I would imagine that if you look at the stats there is probably a good case for both short and intense exercise as well as long light exercise depending on how someone crunches the numbers.
Instead I am just going to speak from my own experience and how it applies to my own life. I feel as though weight maintenance or weight loss are both quite difficult but exercise is of course an important part of it. The trick for me was to not hate the exercise though and just generally speaking, I am not a fan of cardio that is done just for the sake of fitness rather than fun. I hate running, cycling, and swimming when it is done just for health but it is an important part of life.
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The question arises a lot and there are tons of articles and studies that have been done about it.
Is walking for cardio good enough?
Unfortunately, this is a tough question to answer because what does someone mean by "enough?" If you mean is it better than doing nothing at all the answer is a profound "absolutely." I started out my weight loss journey by just walking on the beach and I was focused on the amount of time i was spending doing my walks rather than how fast I was going. This, combined with my change in diet was "enough" at first but then the desire to throw some jogging in there started to happen on its own.
Even to this day I really don't focus so much on how fast I can run but rather I focus on doing some level of heart rate increasing cardio for 30-40 minutes or I will focus on a certain distance traveled. It can work a number of ways sometimes I want to get it over with so I will pick up the pace and other days I just switch on a podcast and walk somewhat heavily for 40 minutes and don't even run at all.
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I see the above charts a lot and since they aren't trying to sell you anything I am going to go ahead and believe them. I think that for most people that are normies like me, we aren't really trying to make the olympic team anytime soon, we are just trying to not be fat-asses or return to being a fat ass in my situation.
It actually isn't that difficult to achieve a heart rate in the "weight loss" category using the above chart and I have found that I can keep myself there quite easily by doing some jogging for a couple minutes followed by a lot of minutes of walking fast. I also don't hate doing this because it isn't really that difficult.
I feel like far too many people out there focus on trying to run before they can walk and this simply leads to giving up and total failure.
In my opinion and based upon the results that I have seen in my own life it is much more beneficial and easier to stick to walking fast for a long amount of time than it is to kick your own ass with cardio for a short amount of time. I think that the HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is for people who have much different fitness goals than I do and there is nothing wrong with it. But for your average normie this is going to be too much work and it will be so hard on you that you are unlikely to return to it.
So get your heart rate up for a long time if you have the time and stop trying to sprint on treadmills. The idea is for this to be a lifelong change and if you hate it, that isn't going to happen. To this day I wouldn't say that I enjoy cardio, I honestly don't.... but I also don't mind doing it... and i think this is the key element of overall fitness.
I gained a ton of weight in my 30's and then in my 40's I lost it all and am stronger than I have ever been in my life. I really feel that other people can do the same. There is no magic formula... you gotta put in the work... but it is easier than you think!