Part of having a healthy lifestyle is balancing calories in and calories out. Part of determining the calories used is to try one of our calories burned calculators, like this one for swimming. By finding out how many calories your swimming workout burns, you can make adjustments to your diet to lose weight, gain weight, or remain at the same weight.

Formulas to calculate calories burned can be complex and different based on the activity. Our calories burned while swimming calculator makes it easy. You need to know these three factors to use the calculator:

• Duration in minutes of swimming
• Your weight in pounds
• Whether you swam at a leisurely, general, or competitive pace

The information you put into this calculator is put into the following formula to determine how many calories you burned: Total Calories Burned = Duration (in minutes) x (MET x 3.5 x weight in kg) / 200

MET is the metabolic equivalent, and it is based upon the pace you used while swimming. The faster you swam, the more force you exerted, and the higher the MET, which means that you burned more calories compared to a more leisurely pace. The MET is a standard number based on your pace that has alreadybeen calculated by physiologists.

Look closely at the formula and it requires the MET to be multiplied by 3.5 and your weight in kilograms, but you put your weight into the calculator in pounds. That is because before it uses your weight in the calories burned formula, our calculator converts your weight to kilograms. This saves you a step in the process.

Our swimming calories burned calculator is just the beginning of having a healthy lifestyle. You need to take the information and make proper use of it for it to influence your life.

If swimming is your exercise of choice and you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in. Everyone needs a base level of calories each day just to stay alive. This is the basal metabolic rate (BMR), and you can find your BMR using our BMR calculator on this site. If your BMR plus the calories you burn from daily activities, like swimming, is more than what you eat you will lose weight.

Some people want to gain weight. If the calories burned and the BMR together is less than the total intake of calories, you will gain weight.

Maintaining weight is simply balancing the calories taken in with the calories that go out. Your body works on an average, so if you overindudge one day, just have an extra long swim the next to compensate.

Our calories burned while swimming calculator is just one of the tools you can add to your fitness and healthy living lifestyle.