Walking is an excellent form of exercise to build strong legs and healthy joints while also burning calories. Many people who start a walking program like to track their progress as they build mileage and increase their fitness levels.
Understanding your distance and calories burned while walking can help you achieve your goals. Read on to learn how to best track your efforts with calorie guides and calculators at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
How to Track Calories Burned While Walking
You can measure calories burned while walking using different types of data. For example, you might use your distance, workout duration, or pace to determine how many calories you burned and how hard you worked. Here are some ways you can track your walking calories at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
Calories Per Mile While Walking
Use a calculator to determine calories burned while walking by entering your weight, approximate pace, and distance walked.
Calories Per Minute While Walking
You’ll see that the number varies depending on your weight and walking pace, so you can comprehend how many calories you burn dependent on time. For instance, jogging three miles per hour burns roughly four calories every minute for a 140-pound person. This means that this person would burn about 112 calories in 30 minutes. However, at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking, a 200-pound person burns roughly 5 calories every minute, or roughly 159 calories every 30-minute interval.
You can also use a pace calculator to enter your weight, pace, and minutes to calculate the distance walked and walking calories burned. Remember that these numbers are estimates and do not consider gender, incline, or wind resistance factors.
Calories Based on Step Count
View how many calories you burn based on your step count using a fitness tracker on your walking workouts. This calculation considers your weight and height to get an estimate of stride length at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
For example, a 160-pound person who is 5′ 4″ tall would burn about 181 calories walking 5,000 steps. But a taller person (5′ 10 tall) who weighs the same amount would burn 198 calories walking the same number of steps.
Using Pace to Determine Calories Burned Walking
Many exercise experts recommend walking at a moderate pace.1 You might wonder whether your walking pace is fast, moderate, or easy. There are different ways to measure your pace based on miles or kilometers traveled at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
You may calculate how long it will take you to walk different distances based on your walking effort. You can use this information to schedule walks and workouts.
There are a variety of charts available that help you determine how long it will take to walk that distance at three different paces. You can see conversions from miles to kilometers and kilometers to miles at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
How to Use a Fitness Tracker
Many fitness trackers will estimate your calories burned by exercise and total calories burned. For instance, if you wear a Fitbit, you will see its reading of your total calorie burn, including your basic metabolic rate and exercise calories. This enables you to balance the calories you eat against the calories burned.
Diet-friendly fitness trackers such as Fitbit and Garmin include or link to a food log app where you can track what you eat to balance those calories with what you burn at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
One common app that links to many fitness trackers is MyFitnessPal. The best apps allow you to save common foods and meals and analyze recipes for calories and nutrition per serving. Many allow you to scan barcodes on the food you eat and include items from fast food and chain restaurants.
However, accuracy is always an issue with any calorie figure from fitness trackers. Calories shown on treadmills and other exercise machines may also overestimate or underestimate calories burned while walking. Be sure to input your correct weight as they often base the burn on that figure at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.
A Word From Verywell
Remember that the best exercise plan is the one that works for you. If you are just starting, you may want to choose one simple metric to track, such as the amount of time you walk each day and week. As you see changes and progress toward your goal, you can consider other metrics and track calories burned while walking at How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking.