A person burns 9.1 calories per minute while walking.

Question

A person burns 9.1 calories per minute while walking. One must burn about 3500 calories in order to lose 1lb. How many pounds would the person lose by walking for 6 hours?

Answer 1

Well, how many minutes are there is 6 hours?

 

There are 60 minutes in an hour, so there are 6*60 minutes = 360 minutes in 6 hours.

 

At 9.1 calories per minute, that's 9.1 * 360 calories in 360 minutes, which is 3276 calories.

 

Since you have to burn 3500 calories to lose 1 pound, you would divide the number of calories burned by 3500 to find out how much weight is lost.  3276 / 3500 = 0.936, so the answer is 0.936 pounds.

 

Answer 2

I like to solve this kind of problem using a simple method that uses conversion factors, like 60 sec/min, 2.2 lb/kg, etc. The problem ultimately wants to find out how many lbs are burned from walking for 6 hours. 

 

We are given that it takes 3500 cal to burn off 1 lb or it can be written in a conversion form as 3500 cals/lb or 1 lb/3500 cals.  Which one you use depends on what you want to solve for.  Below we will use 1 lb/3500 cals so that the cal units cancel out, just leaving lbs, which is what we want!

 

So let us solve this problem. 

 

First we need to figure out how many calories he has burned in 6 hr of walking:

 

9.1 cal   x   60 min  x  6 hr    =  9.1 x 60 x 6   =  3276 cal  (the units for min and hrs cancel each other out.  ie min  = 1)

  min            hr             1                 1                                                                                                          min

 

 So he burned a total of 3276 cals in 6 hrs.

 

Then we know the conversion from lbs to calories is. as stated. 1 lb/3500 cals so:

 

3276 cal  x    1 lb       = 3276  = 0.936 lbs  as again the units, cal/cal cancel out!

   1             3500 cal     3500

 

 ANSWER: 0.936 LBS ARE BURNED OFF!