How to Count and Track Calories Burned Walking

Walking is an excellent form of exercise—not only to build strong legs and promote healthy joints but also to burn calories. Many people who start a walking program like to track their progress as they build mileage and increase their fitness level.

In doing so, knowing how far you have walked and how many calories you have burned can be helpful. Get your answers with these walking calorie guides and calculators.

How to Track Walking Calories

You can measure your walking calories using different types of data. For example, you might use your distance, workout duration, or pace to figure out how many calories you burned and how hard you worked. Here are some ways you can track your walking calories.

Calories Per Mile

If you know how far you have walked and want to find the calories burned, you can use a calculator or reference a chart. To use the calculator below, enter your weight, approximate pace, and distance walked to calculate how many walking calories you have burned.

Calories Per Minute

To understand how many calories you burn based on time, you'll see the number varies based on factors including your weight and the pace at which you walk. For example, a 140-pound person burns about 4 calories per minute while walking 3 miles per hour. So, in about 30 minutes, this person would burn roughly 112 calories. But a 200-pound person burns about 5 calories per minute or about 159 calories per 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

Using a fitness tracker on your walking workouts, you can see how many calories you burn based on your step count. This calculation considers your weight and height (to get an estimate of stride length).

For example, a 160-pound person who is 5' 4" tall would burn about 181 calories walking 5000 steps. But a taller person (5' 10 tall) who weighs the same amount would burn 198 calories walking the same number of steps.

Walking Pace

Many exercise experts recommend walking at a moderate pace. 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.

Based on your walking intensity, you can estimate how long it will take for you to walk different distances. This information can help you to plan routes and walking workouts.

There are a variety of charts available that help you determine how long it will take you to walk that distance at three different paces. You can see conversions from miles to kilometers and kilometers to miles.

How to Use a Fitness Tracker

Many fitness trackers will estimate your calories burned by exercise and the total calories burned. For instance, if you wear a Fitbit, you will see its reading of your total calorie burn, which includes 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 burned.

One common app that links to many fitness trackers is MyFitnessPal.com. The best apps allow you to save common foods and meals and analyze recipes for the 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 be overestimated or underestimated. Be sure to input your correct weight as they often base the burn on that figure.

A Word From Verywell

Remember that the best exercise plan is the one that works for you. If you are just starting out, you may want to choose one simple metric to track, such as the amount of time you walk each day and week. As you get used to that and see changes and progress toward your goal, you can consider other metrics to track based on what makes sense to you.