Walking calories for 30 minutes by pace and body weight

This is the table the page exists for. Read down to a pace, across to a body weight, and the cell is thirty minutes of gross energy cost from the same formula the walking calculator uses: MET times 3.5 times kilograms, divided by 200, times minutes.

Gross means the whole session, including resting metabolism. If your daily calorie target already came from a TDEE that includes an activity factor, adding this column on top counts the walk twice. Use the table to compare paces and body sizes, not to invent a second budget.

A MET is a multiple of sitting quietly. The convention sets one MET at 3.5 millilitres of oxygen per kilogram per minute. Multiply the activity MET by 3.5 and by body mass in kilograms, divide by 200 to convert oxygen to kilocalories per minute, then multiply by 30. The division by 200 embeds the usual assumption that one litre of oxygen yields about five kilocalories.

Worked through for a 80 kilogram adult at the moderate 3.5 MET walk: 3.5 times 3.5 times 80 divided by 200 is 4.9 kilocalories a minute, and over 30 minutes that is 147 kilocalories gross. The same walk at 60 kilograms is 110. At 100 kilograms it is 184. The pace did not change. The mass did.

The MET values themselves come from the Compendium of Physical Activities, first published by Ainsworth and colleagues and updated in the 2024 Adult Compendium. They are group averages, some measured and some estimated by analogy. Your walk can sit well above or below the row.

Net cost subtracts one MET of resting burn for the same minutes. The formula is (MET minus 1) times 3.5 times kilograms times minutes, divided by 200. For the 80 kilogram moderate walk, net is 105 kilocalories against 147 gross. The 42 kilocalorie difference is the energy you would have spent on the sofa.

Use net when you are asking what the walk added on top of a day that already includes resting metabolism. Use gross when you are comparing to a machine that prints the higher number. Do not add gross to a TDEE that already has an activity factor, and do not treat either figure as precise to the kilocalorie.

Kilometres come from pace times time. Steps use this site's labelled convention of 1,312 steps per kilometre, not a measured stride. A taller person takes fewer steps for the same kilometre. Treat the step column as a sketch.

MET-minutes are MET times minutes. WHO's 2020 adult guideline describes 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, which is about 500 to 1,000 MET-minutes. A 30-minute moderate walk is 105 MET-minutes, about 21 per cent of the 500 floor. Five of those walks in a week meet the floor if the pace really is moderate.

The 3.5 millilitre convention overstates average resting oxygen use. Byrne and colleagues measured about 2.6 millilitres per kilogram per minute in 769 adults. Gross calorie tables built on 3.5 therefore sit a little high on average. Heavier bodies also carry more fat mass per kilogram, which is cheaper to run than lean mass, so the linear scale by weight is generous to larger people.

Terrain, load, stop-start traffic, arm swing and fitness move the real cost. An 'uphill 5 per cent' row is a specific treadmill grade, not your local hill. A slow walk with a backpack can cost more than a brisk walk on the flat. The table is a lookup for named paces, not a map of your street.

The MET guide on this site is the longer account of those limits. This page exists so you do not have to run the calculator five times to see how weight and pace interact.

If you already set a calorie target from TDEE, the walk is inside that target whenever the activity factor described your real week. Adding the 147 kilocalories on top is double counting. The calories-should-I-eat guide covers that trap.

If you are sedentary in the TDEE dropdown and then start walking 30 minutes most days, the honest move is to raise the activity factor or to add a modest, once-weekly adjustment after the seven-day weight average has spoken. Do not eat back every cell in this table every evening.

A 30-minute walk is still worth doing. WHO's activity guideline is about health, not about earning food. The cell is a cost estimate. It is not a voucher.