Calculating your mileage

I’m a new member of a walking club. I stopped smoking a year ago and gained 30 pounds. I started walking to meet my goals and the walking club helps me. I can walk for 30 minutes to an hour, depending how my day goes. But how do I calculate the time I walk into miles? Thanks for all your help!

Congratulations – you stopped smoking and that was a huge step towards better health! Then you started walking, another great step. You’ve gained weight, but you can work on it. Be sure to keep a diary of your food intake so you can target when perhaps you are eating when you’re not hungry or when you tend to eat high fat, high calorie, and non-nourishing foods.

To calculate your mileage you can do a couple of things. You can purchase a pedometer, and wear it. Be sure to set it to your personal stride length. It counts your steps times your stride length to calculate mileage. Or, you can find a one-mile walking path, or measure a route with your car, and walk that path at your usual, comfortably brisk pace. If you walk it in say, 15 minutes, then whenever you maintain that sense of pacing, you can guess that you’ve walked a mile after 15 minutes. You’ll be surprised at how well you can gauge it after a while. Keep going back to your route and checking yourself. Speed up and slow down, so you can know what a faster and slower pace feels like. I know when I’m walking a 17 minute mile, a 20 minute mile, a 15 minute mile and a 13 minute mile, by the feel of it and by how the feel of how fast my legs are going.

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