Running 30 Minutes A Day (Burn Calories + 6 Other Benefits)

Running is one of the best exercises for your body to engage with. It provides a superb cardiovascular workout. It trains different muscles depending on the gradient and terrain.

On top of being a great physical exercise, running can also be really great for the MIND.

There are so many benefits of running beyond just exercise or losing weight, and you don’t necessarily need to push it to the limit to get this return.

Some doctors suggest that just 30 minutes of running could be ideal to reap the most benefits from running.

In the article below we listed seven of the best advantages and benefits you could adopt from running for only 30 minutes a day.

Keep reading to learn how you can improve your life with this one small change.

1. Burn Calories With 30 Minutes of Running

Running is an excellent way to LOSE weight, especially when done consistently.

But is running 30 minutes a day enough to lose weight?

The number of calories you can BURN by running for 30 minutes depends on various factors. Among these are your weight, body composition, speed, and terrain.

When you run for at least 30 minutes you can lose between 300 to 400 calories in a mere 30 minutes.

• According to a chart from the American Council on Exercise, a 140-pound man running will burn about 13 calories per minute, which means 390 calories during a 30-minute run.

• An article on WebMD says that exercise for 30 minutes works as well as exercise for an hour in helping overweight people lose weight. So, 30 minutes of exercise a day could be your sweet spot if you try to lose weight.

If you want to shed pounds then this is helpful for sure, in addition to a balanced diet. The key to losing weight is balancing eating FEWER calories and exercising to BURN excess calories.

How do we interpret this? Well, for most of us, 30 minutes of exercise per DAY, such as running, will help us lose weight and live a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

So whether you are trying to lose weight, or just want an excuse to go out and eat some indulgent food, go for a quick run.

But what about if you are running every day but not losing weight anymore? Why doesn’t running always burn fat? There are many factors, but one is that your progress might have reached a plateau. You probably need to increase the intensity of your workouts or have more variety in your workouts to burn more calories.

Even if you are seeking to gain muscle and are lifting weights, a quick 30-minute run can help out other muscle groups and help your body cool down.

The weight you lose will be the weight you want to lose rather than muscle weight.

Running will kick-start your metabolism in a great way.

2. Running Can Improve Sleep

There’s a scientific reason for this, and just an obvious logistical reason too.

But many scientists agree that vigorous aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling, and weight lifting, can reduce the time it takes you to fall asleep.

Scientists concur that a simple 30-minute session can help you sleep. It can increase sleeping QUALITY with a continued and regular exercise program.

The obvious reason for this is that it tires you out. Biologically speaking your body needs to recover so is more ready to sleep.

But in a general sense, you will just feel more tired from having done vigorous exercise, even after 30 minutes.

Go for a run before you get into bed with Netflix and you will find you fall asleep much quicker.

3. Running Can Improve Your Mood

Sleep and depression or anxiety all go hand in hand. Running helps sleep and can in turn help your mood as a result. There are, of course, more scientific reasons why running can actually help with your mood.

Exercise generally can release endorphins. These endorphins interact with your brain and reduce feelings of pain, both mentally and physically quite similar to how morphine works.

While exercise is not a clinical treatment for a clinical mental health problem, running for merely 30 minutes a day could significantly improve your mood.

Even if you don’t suffer from mental health, we all suffer from bad moods and some vigorous exercise can help with this.

Running can help untangle our thoughts and ‘runner’s high’ provides a euphoric rush that can help you decompress and unpack your day in a healthy way.

4. Running Makes You Heart Healthy

Running of course has so many health benefits. One that is specifically worth pointing out is how running can impact your heart health in a positive way.

One study which looked at 55,000 adults over 15 years shows that running for 30 minutes can reduce your chance of dying from heart-related conditions by 45% for those who didn’t run.

Running can help reduce blood pressure, increase lung capacity and help with general hematological issues.

Even those who ran slowly or walked, or only ran for 30 minutes still showed fewer cardiovascular issues than those who didn’t run at all.

5. Injure Yourself Less

This is a two-pronged benefit. When you run for LESS time generally, such as only 30 minutes the chance of injuring yourself is pretty low.

If you did an ultramarathon, for example, studies show this can actually negatively impact your health when done excessively.

So running for only 30 minutes does have the benefit of being less likely to be injured.

Moreover, exercising vigorously in a short period of time like this, in opposition to long-distance running, can actually fortify your joints, muscles, and bones quite well.

Running in this short way for exercise will mean you are less injury-prone in general, and less prone to sprains and other annoying muscle aches that come from inactivity.

6. Feel Good, Look Good

Runner’s high is certainly a beneficial phenomenon, but the GLOW your skin gets from running is invaluable.

Honestly, a quick 30 minutes run can do so much for your skin, pores, and much more. Not to mention how much extra BEAUTY sleep this gets you.

No one is running for merely 30 minutes to lose loads and loads of weight, and this isn’t the point of running.

But those pounds you do lose can really help tighten your body shape up in a mild way. And that can really boost your confidence with little effort on your part.

7. Live Longer

It goes without saying that running can benefit your health in ways we can’t even fathom.

But can running actually make you live LONGER? Well, technically.

Suppose running benefits your heart, sleep, mental health, and mind. In merely 30 minutes a day, you can help lower all the health ailments that could lead to premature death!

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that a mere 30 minutes of running can really benefit our health, mind, and soul. There are many other benefits beyond the physical.

While running can feel and sound demanding, 30 minutes of running isn’t too enduring.

If you are starting out, you can mix walking and running. Your next step is to run 30 minutes without stopping, which is practically identical to running 3 miles without stopping.