It doesn’t always have to be a time-consuming and sweaty workout if you want to burn calories. There are many opportunities to do this in everyday life.

For example, one is just walking. It can be a walk or just a walk from A to B. So it’s worth leaving your car behind and walking every now and then.

Exactly how many calories you burn while walking depends on a number of factors, such as your weight and how long you walk.

For example, if you weigh 70 kg, you will burn 109 calories on a leisurely 30-minute walk. Anyone who weighs 80 kg burns 124 calories in the same period of time while walking.

With an easy-to-use calorie calculator, you can determine how long you need to walk to burn enough calories to maintain your weight – or even lose some weight.

Know your basal metabolic rate and calorie needs

If you want to burn calories by walking in everyday life and lose weight, you should know how high your calorie requirement is. This differs from person to person.

Your body constantly uses calories to maintain vital functions in the body. This amount of energy required by the body is called the basal metabolic rate.

Some of the functions that need to be maintained include body temperature regulation and digestion. But the other organs that are constantly working also need energy. How high the basal metabolic rate is depends on gender, age, height and weight.

In order to know your calorie requirement, you have to add the so-called performance turnover to the basal turnover. The demand for calories that the body burns through normal everyday activities is referred to as performance turnover. This does not mean the energy that the body needs for sporting activities.

In order to maintain your weight, you can only supply your body with as much energy in the form of calories as it needs for the basal metabolic rate and the performance turnover combined – or burn additional calories if you supply the body with more energy than necessary.

You can get an overview of your individual calorie requirements with an energy requirement calculator.

Good news: If you walk more distances in everyday life, you not only burn calories while walking. The more you walk, the more muscles you build over time.

More muscle mass means a higher basal metabolic rate in the long term – and thus higher calorie consumption.