How Many Calories You Burn Walking for an Hour

Walking has seemingly endless benefits for your health and wellness. But when it comes to weight loss, you might wonder exactly how calories you burn walking for an hour.

Short answer: The number of calories you burn walking depends on how strenuous your walk is and how much you weigh.

Walking at a brisk, moderate pace is a great way to get your heart pumping and shed calories. After an hour, you can expect to burn somewhere between 240 and 723 calories walking.

Why so big of a range? Because your caloric burn walking depends on your body weight and walking pace or intensity, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

Here are some examples of how many calories different people burn in an hour of walking:

As you can see, pumping up the intensity of your walk increases the number of calories you expend walking. Here are a few ways to do just that:

Add inclines and declines to your walks. Head to a hill in your neighborhood, or set your treadmill to an incline.

Interval training — alternating between bouts of faster and slower walking — can help you burn more calories and lose weight. Beginners should start with 30 seconds of quick walking followed by 2 minutes and 30 seconds at an intermediate pace. Try to complete 5 intervals each time you work out.

Wear a weight vest or hold a light pair of weight for more resistance. You can also add some body-weight strength exercises to your walking routine. Try squats, lunges or push-ups to increase your caloric output and build muscle. For every 5 minutes of walking, try to stop and do 1 minute of strength exercises.

For a more exact estimate of how many calories you burn walking, the MET formula or an online calorie calculator can help, according to the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.

The MET formula uses so-called metabolic equivalents, numbers that estimate how hard your body's working at any one time, according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

​Here's how to use it:​

1. Find the MET value for your activity online, like in this table from the ACE.
2. Convert your weight into kilograms by dividing the number in pounds by 2.2.
3. Multiply 0.0175 times that MET value times your weight in kilograms.
4. Finally, multiply the result by 60 to get an hour's worth of calorie burn.

Another way to track your calories burned walking is by wearing a fitness watch or using a calorie-tracking app. For either option, you'll input your age, gender, weight and activity level. Usually, the wearable trackers use heart rate, time and distance to find your caloric burn.

Walking apps can also estimate your calories burned, using GPS and the data you report (like total walking time and speed or effort).