How many calories are burned walking?

With over 40% of American adults classed as obese due to their poor eating habits and extreme lack of exercise, it is no surprise that more and more people are looking online to find out ways to break the mould and burn excess calories. Walking is something that the vast majority of the population are able to do, even those who are obese, and this form of light exercise is a simple and positive solution.

If you are trying to find out how many calories are burned walking then you have come to the right place. This page is going to discuss the benefits of walking to burn off calories, and provide you with some examples to show the calories burned by walking, which will hopefully encourage you to get up and get active.

Walking at a moderate pace for half an hour to an hour, will burn stored fat and can build muscle to speed up your metabolism. Walking for an hour each day is also associated with cutting the risk of heart disease, breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes and having a stroke. These are all huge reasons to make the effort to include an hours walking into your daily routine, or at least start to work towards that length of time each day.

Calories burned walking - Discreet

One of the key reasons that many obese people do not exercise in the USA today is because they feel embarrassed to. There is the common misconception that when you go to a gym, that everybody there has the body of Meghan Fox or Cristiano Ronaldo, and that anybody who doesn't gets stared at and mocked. This is not the case at all, in fact it is more the people with those sort of physiques at the regular gym who get looked at, because it is obvious they can't gain that sort of body without some sort of medicinal help. But if you don't want to exercise in public for any one of a number of reasons, you don't have to. When it comes to burning calories by walking, you can do this as discreetly as you like. You don't even have to get dressed up as though you are exercising, so nobody even need know what you are doing.

Before we go on to give you some information on how many calories burned walking, here are just a few examples of how you can discreetly exercise by walking any time of day:

• Walk to work or school
• Take the dog for a walk, don't have a dog? Get one!
• Stop taking the car short journeys and walk
• Take a stroll in the evening just for the hell of it
• Need something from the local store, walk there and back
• Take a quick walk around the block each morning before work or school
• Walk up and down the stairs for 5 minutes
• Look on eBay or in the local ads for a cheap treadmill and walk on it at home, you can even do this one in front of the tv

There is no way that you could not fit at least one of the above examples of walking into your daily routine. They are quick, they are simple, they are discreet, and they are going to considerably increase your walking calories burned, the more that you take part in them.

Walking gets easier

Much like any form of exercise, walking gets easier the more that you do it. You will find that at first you will ache and be tired, but the next time you can walk that little bit further, or feel that little bit better at the end. The difference is that the impact on your body, and the possible pain that you feel, is going to be nowhere near as bad as if you were flat out running, or doing any other form of hard exercise. This is not to say that walking is not good for you, the point is that it is a way of getting fit and burning calories, with a fraction of the pain you will feel if you were to take part in other forms of exercise such as tearing around a track, a football pitch, or basketball court. You don't have to go crazy and be Derrick Rose or Dwayne Wade in order to burn calories and get fit. You have to start with what you are comfortable with, find your level, and then move onwards and upwards. It may be that right now you are thinking about how many calories are burned walking a mile, but this time next year you could be onto how many calories can you burn running ten?

How many calories can be burned by walking?

So this is the real question, how many calories are actually burned walking? If you are going to make an effort to get up on your feet and carry out this basic, yet effective form of exercise, then you are going to want to know the figures.

Naturally the amount of calories burned walking is going to depend on the individual doing the walking, I mean we are all different shapes and sizes, and we all walk at different speeds. What determines the number of calories burned walking is the distance that you walk and also your weight, as well as the speed that you are walking at.

You don't have to try and walk as fast as possible, especially when you are starting out as this is only going to increase the possibility of injury, something that will end up setting you back. Go slow and time your walk if you don't manage a whole hour, alongside measuring your distance. You can then work out how fast you were walking. For instance if you walk for 15 minutes and cover a half a mile, then you are walking at 2 miles per hour.

How many calories burned walking a mile?

A common question is how many calories are burned walking a mile? The table below shows how many calories are burned per mile by weight and speed. So somebody weighing in at 160 lb and walking at 3 miles per hour is going to burn off 85 calories per mile. Sorry for the non US readers who don't deal in miles, but one mile is equivalent to 1.61 kilometers.

Ref for how many calories walking 1 mile: http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm

More than walking calories burned

There is much more to our website that just information on calories burned walking. We have free and detailed information on the calories found in everyday foods, as well as information on high energy foods that are always good to eat ahead of any exercise. If you want to know how many calories you should be eating each day to lose weight, we also have a page dedicated to giving you an answer specific to you as an individual, click here to find out a quick calculation method.

If you are serious about losing weight and burning off calories by walking then we really hope that you will make the effort and take up the advice that we have provided on this page. The first step is finding out how many calories are burned walking, the second is getting up and out to do it!