Walking is an excellent form of exercise. If your goal is to lose weight walking then it helps to understand the calories burned walking so you can accomplish this easier.
Calculating the calories burned walking will depend on the speed at which you’re walking and the distance that you’ve covered. Added to this is intensity. Intensity is determined by the level of incline, obstacles on the way and so on. If you are walking up a hill for example, you will burn more calories than if you are stepping on a level surface. The difficulty in determining your intensity level makes it difficult to pinpoint the effectiveness of a walk, but the calculations below will give you a good indication of whether you’re getting the most out of your daily walk.
Some simple rules to go by are that for the most calories burned walking, one needs to walk briskly for at least 20 minutes – that is, you need to cover at least one mile every 15 to 20 minutes; or about four miles an hour. Added to that, remember that: on an average, a person burns about four calories a minute walking, and the more you weigh, the more calories you’re likely to burn while walking.
For instance, if you weigh around 160 pounds and you’re walking at 3.5mph for an hour, you will burn around 277 calories, but if you weigh 200 pound, you will burn approximately 346 calories with the same amount of time and speed. This is exactly why some athletes and serious walkers prefer adding additional weights to their bodies while walking. Additional weight increases the intensity. Note that ankle weights can cause stress on the body and should be used with caution.
For those trying to lose weight through walking, it is useful to know that you need about 3,500 calories burned walking to burn 1 pound of your body weight. But at the same time, remember that there is a constant intake of calories into our bodies through food and drink. Therefore, to lose weight, you need to make sure that the body’s output is more than the input. In other words, a combination of the right diet and exercise can help melt the pounds away.
