Calories Per Minute

Observations on The Environmental Factors When Walking

Photo by Ross Kohl on Unsplash

In a prior article, I pointed out, when walking, how it comes down to calories per minute. In that article, the bottom line was

Summary of Last Article

• If your goal is to maximize calorie burn, watch your calories per minute and walk at a “normal” pace of about 2.5 mph.
• If your goal is Cardio, walk more vigorously. But if you also want to burn more calories, you will have to do it for a longer period of time.

The reason is, for a 3 mile walk at 2.5 mph, you may burn 6 calories per minute, or about 430 calories. (72 minutes at 6 calories per minute.)

But to get in to Cardio, you’ll have to increase your pace to 3.5 mph (this varies by fitness level.) For the same 3 mile walk, you have completed it in less time. I’ve noticed the typical additional calorie burn is about 1–2 calories additional per minute when doing this (7–8 calories per minute), or about 360–400 calories.

Environmental Factors

In this article, I’d like to discuss how environmental factors, cold weather in this case, appears to affect calories burned per minute as well. I’ll have to wait until Spring to test heat.