How many calories does walking a mile burn?
About 86 calories for a 150-pound person at an ordinary pace, or roughly 0.57 calories per pound of body weight. But only about 64 of those are extra. The rest you would have burned sitting on the sofa, and Apple Health leaves them out of Active Energy, which is why your watch shows less than every calorie chart.
Calories per mile, by weight and pace
“Total” is what calorie charts quote. “Active” is the part your body burned because you walked, which is the number Apple Health records.
| Weight | 3 mph total | 3 mph active | 3.5 mph total | 3.5 mph active |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 120 lb | 69 | 51 | 75 | 59 |
| 150 lb | 86 | 64 | 93 | 74 |
| 180 lb | 103 | 76 | 112 | 89 |
| 210 lb | 121 | 89 | 131 | 103 |
| 240 lb | 138 | 102 | 149 | 118 |
From the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the reference table researchers use for the energy cost of activities: walking at 2.8 to 3.4 mph is 3.8 METs, and at 3.5 to 3.9 mph it is 4.8. One MET is roughly one calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour, which is all the arithmetic there is.
Why your Apple Watch shows less
Your body burns about one MET doing nothing at all. Calorie charts include it; Apple Health deliberately does not. Apple’s developer documentation says Active Energy should not include the resting energy burned during the same period, and it records that separately as Resting Energy. So a 150-pound walker sees about 64 in Active Energy for a mile that a chart calls 86. Neither is wrong. Add the two Health numbers together and you are back near the chart’s figure.
More miles, more time, 10,000 steps
For a 150-pound person at 3 mph, it scales in a straight line: 2 miles is about 172 total or 127 active, 3 miles 259 or 191, 5 miles 431 or 318. Thirty minutes at that pace is about 129 total or 95 active, and an hour 259 or 191.
Ten thousand steps is about 4¼ miles on a typical step, so roughly 367 calories total or 271 active at 150 pounds, and 441 or 325 at 180.
Walking faster barely changes the cost of a mile
It changes the cost of an hour a great deal, because you cover more ground. Per mile, going from 3 to 3.5 mph adds only about 8% to the total and 16% to the active calories. If the goal is calories, distance matters far more than speed; if the goal is time, speed wins.
What 86 calories equals
Each one links to where the number came from.