Calories Used While Swimming for 30 Minutes Type of Stroke 56-kg woman 77-kg man Backstroke 95 130 Breaststroke 91 125 Fast Crawl 87 120 Slow Crawl 95 130 Sidestroke 68 90 Treading Water 35 48 Table 2-1 A 77-kg male looking to burn 120 calories for 30 minutes of swimming should choose the fast crawl stroke.

In a nutritional context, the kilojoule (kJ) is the SI unit of food energy, although the kilocalorie is still in common use. The word calorie is popularly used with the number of kilocalories of nutritional energy measured. As if to avoid confusion, it is sometimes written Calorie (with a capital "C") in an attempt to make the distinction, although this is not widely understood. Capitalization contravenes the rule that the initial letter of a unit name or its derivative shall be lower case in English.