The benefits of Walking have been shown to alleviate illness or improve prognosis in a number of conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Now, researchers say varying speeds can help you burn more calories and lose weight while walking.

Varying speeds while walking can shed up to 20% more calories than walking at a constant speed, reported Consultant360.com. Earlier studies have been done on subjects keeping constant speeds.

"Measuring the metabolic cost of changing speeds is very important, because people don't live their lives on treadmills and do not walk at constant speeds." said Srinivasan in report by medicine.net . "We found that changing speeds can increase the [caloric] cost of walking substantially."

People may also be underestimating the number of calories they burn while walking in daily life, the authors said.

Taking into account the starting and stopping points during walking can add up to as much as much as 8 percent of energy utilized during a lose weight by walking regimen. These kind of measurements are often overlooked while taking an inventory of calorie expenditure while walking.

"Most of the existing literature has been on constant-speed walking. This study is a big missing piece," study co-author Manoj Srinivasan, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was quoted as saying in a news release.

"Walking at any speed costs some energy, but when you're changing the speed, you're pressing on the gas pedal," said lead author in the study, Nidhi Seethapathi.

Seethapathi is working her on her Doctorate in mechanical engineering. The researchers in the study measured metabolic cost, or the number of calories people burned when they changed their walking speeds. In order to do this they had volunteers change their pace while walking on a treadmill.

The researchers measured the metabolic cost, equivalent to the or the number of calories spent for each person.

"Just do weird things," said Srinivasan. "Walk with a backpack, walk with weights on your legs. Walk for a while, then stop and repeat that. Walk in a curve as opposed to a straight line." These are all variations to changing your pace to lose weight by walking.

The study was published in the "Journal Biology Letters.