Steps and walking

How many calories does walking burn?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 15, 20267 sources

About 100 to 250 calories in 30 minutes, counting everything your body burns in that time. Your weight sets most of it, and your pace sets the rest. At 160 pounds, an easy 30-minute walk at 2.5 mph is about 110 calories and a fast one at 3.5 to 3.9 mph about 175. Any walk from 2.5 mph up also counts toward the 150 minutes a week the US guideline asks for.

Walking gets written off as too easy to burn much, and a lot of people switch to running or a class because of it. The numbers per walk are modest. But walking is the exercise most people can do every day for decades, and a daily walk adds up to more over a month than a hard class you go to twice and then drop.

Walking is like a savings account with a low rate that you pay into every day. No single deposit is big, but nothing else you do gets paid into as often.

Thirty minutes, by your weight and pace

Calories in all for 30 minutes, from the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities. Take off about 35 at 160 pounds for what you’d have burned sitting.

An hour doubles each number. An hour at 3.5 mph and 190 pounds is about 410 calories, about 330 of them above sitting.

Why a faster walk burns more

The Compendium rates each activity by how many times your resting burn it takes, in METs. Sitting quietly is 1. Walking at 2.5 mph is 3, at about 3 mph 3.8, at 3.5 to 3.9 mph 4.8 and at 4 mph 5.5. Above sitting, a 3.5 to 3.9 mph walk costs 3.8 METs against 2.8 at 3 mph, about a third more each minute. A faster walk also covers more ground, so per mile the gap shrinks, and tdee.guide’s mile walk page has the mile by weight.

CDC counts walking at 2.5 mph or faster as moderate, the kind that adds to the 150 minutes. How fast is a brisk walk? shows how to check yours in 15 seconds.

Hills and stairs

A hill is the cheapest way to make a walk cost more without running. Walking uphill on a 6 to 10% grade at a moderate to brisk pace is 7 METs, which CDC counts as vigorous, so each minute counts as two toward the 150. Climbing stairs is 6.8. At 160 pounds, 30 minutes of uphill walking is about 250 calories, close to a slow run.

Walking and weight

A daily 30-minute walk at 3.5 mph and 190 pounds is about 165 calories above sitting, or about 1,150 a week. The body claws some of that back. In 1,754 adults, it made up about 28% of the calories that extra activity burned. What exercise can do for your weight explains why walking does its best work keeping weight off.

The bigger payoff is your health. In a 2025 review of 57 studies, 7,000 steps a day went with 47% lower risk of death than 2,000, and a 30-minute walk is about 3,000 steps. How many steps do you need? has the curve by age.