Walking/calories?

Question
Hello, I am 31 years old and currently weigh 183 lbs.  I am trying to reach my goal weight of 145 lbs this year.  I am 5 foot 5 3/4 inches tall.  I am trying to eat healthier and watch my calories.  I have started walking which leads to my question:  How many calories do I burn when I walk a 20 minute mile while pushing a double stroller?  My kids combined weights are 65 lbs. When I bought my stroller it had a shipping weight of 37.5 pounds. Any information would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

Answer
This is virtually impossible to calculate exactly, but you can do a fairly simple procedure to estimate the calories burned per hour.

First, when you are pushing the stroller at 20 minutes per mile (3 miles per hour), you perceive a certain effort you put into it. You feel this in your legs and how hard you have to breathe. Try the following:

Walk without the stroller and try to go fast enough to simulate the same effort you feel while pushing the stroller. Time yourself over a known distance and covert it to miles per hour (divide distance in miles by minutes, then multiply by 60). Because the stroller weight slows you down, walking without the stroller at the same effort should work out to greater than 3 miles per hour.

What does this tell you? Each mile walked without the stroller burns a little more than 100 calories at your body weight. So let's say you can walk at a rate of 3.5 miles per hour as calculated above. That comes out to 3.5 times 100 = about 350 calories, plus about 50 calories for the extra body weight = 400 calories. So your calorie burn rate is about 400 calories per hour. Walking at 3 miles per hour without the stroller = about 340 calories per hour, so in this example, pushing the stroller would be burning an additional 60 calories per hour (400 - 340). Again, this is just an example calculation, so your real numbers will be different from this.

Your plan to lose 38 pounds by the end of the year sounds like a good one. That gives you plenty of time. You never want to try to lose more than 1.5 pounds per week, because it is harder to avoid gaining it back if it is lost too quickly. And after all, you do want to take it off and keep it off.

I hope the above method is not too difficult for you. I can think of no other way to answer your question.