In a commercial building or apartment situation, floor to floor height might typically be 3.4 meters. Splitting the stair into two flights of 10 steps is common. By taking the stairs to reach the next floor and return, you will burn approximately 4.4 calories (20 * 1.7 + 20 * 0.05).

Use the table below to see how many calories you can burn by taking the stairs instead of the elevator (up and down). For the calculation we use 20 steps per floor and a 160 lbs weighing person. Is your body weight higher, you burn even more calories.

Can climbing stairs help me to lose weight?

Taking the stairs instead of the lift is an easy way of burning some extra calories on a daily basis. It’s a quick workout that doesn’t require equipment or additional time investment. In fact, taking the stairs can even save you time! Up until the fifth floor, the stairs are on average the quickest way to go.

Let’s make a calculation to see if taking the stairs can really help you to lose weight. Let’s say you work on the third floor and have to go up and down four times a day. In the above table, we see that this results in burning 52.8 calories. If you work 20 days a month, you will therefore burn 20 * 52.8 = 1056 calories.

You need to burn approximately 7,500 calories in order to lose 1 kilo of body weight. So in our example, this would take almost 8 months. That’s a long time, but there are ways of easily speeding up the process. How about using the toilet on a different floor? Off to a meeting on another floor? Take the stairs! The good thing is that stairs are everywhere.

Once taking the stairs becomes a habit, the number of calories you burn every day by taking them will increase dramatically. No extra time or training needed!