question about the timing...i'm new at this!

Yup! Even if you wanted to enter the 2 walks separately MFP would add them together as 30 minutes.

From a caloric point of view there's no discernible difference.

All of the walking you do adds up through out the day. You can enter that as 30 mins.

Walk as much as possible, it's a great way to burn extra calories. And your body actually burns a good ratio of fat calories compared to carb calories while walking.

wut?

Yes it counts if it's broken up. If you have a smart phone, you can even get an app that will tell you how fast you walked so you can more accurately enter it into MFP. Just go to the app store and search "pedometer". There are lots to choose from.

hello, i have a question and hope you can help: i walk (briskly) to and from my pilates class, it's about 15 minutes each way. do i enter that as 30 minutes of walking, even if it's not 30 minutes in a row? does it count if it's broken up? thanks!

The short response is YES. It's 30 minutes of walking. You can even enter 15min twice to show you did it twice if you want. When keeping track of your burns throughout the day just make sure it's an "Added value" type of exercise. What I mean by that is: Let's say you have a certain activity level built in to MFP - er...for example "I sit on a log all day and don't move". Well then you would want to enter this because it's above your typical REE/ resting energy expenditure.

If you normally walk around work all day - but took the day off and didn't walk at all but sat on the sofa - then this walk to your pilates would sort of replace your normal walking around at work - and although you can add it you might not want to.....so in most cases..yes, just add 30 min walk to your MFP. On the occasion you're not doing much on a day you normally would, you might not add that bit if it replaces stuff you normally do on a regular day.

At lower intensity exercise, your body is not forced to bring energy into the cells at a very fast pace. Therefore, it gives your body time to potentially oxidize fat stores for use as energy.

Example:
HIIT Sprinting: increase metabolic rate significantly for 3+ hours afterwards
60 minute walking over hilly terrain: burns calories, and potentially burns more calories from fat DURING walking.

Walking is just a great way to burn extra calories throughout the day.

If you have a source on this I would love to read it

At lower intensity exercise, your body is not forced to bring energy into the cells at a very fast pace. Therefore, it gives your body time to potentially oxidize fat stores for use as energy.

Example:
HIIT Sprinting: increase metabolic rate significantly for 3+ hours afterwards
60 minute walking over hilly terrain: burns calories, and potentially burns more calories from fat DURING walking.

Walking is just a great way to burn extra calories throughout the day.

Nope. While you technically burn a higher percentage of fat while walking than you do performing higher intensity exercises, you burn so many less total calories that the higher intensity exercise still burns more fat calories. This is the kind of information that perpetuates the "fat burning zone" myth. Look at it mathematically.

Walking burns around 300 calories an hour. If you burn 60% of those calories from fat, you're looking at 180 calories burned from fat.

Running burns around 900 calories per hour. If you only burn 25% of the calories from fat, that's 225 calories of fat burned. So even though its a lower percentage, you still burn more calories overall.

Trying to burn a certain percentage of fat calories during exercise is completely missing the big picture.