Calories Burned Calculator

What's the key thing to understand about MET Values Explained?

MET stands for 'Metabolic Equivalent of Task' — a standardised number that expresses the energy cost of an activity relative to resting metabolism. A MET of 1.0 = resting metabolic rate, roughly 1 kcal per kg of body weight per hour. Any activity is rated by how many times that resting rate it costs. A MET of 3 = sitting and reading triples to walking briskly (5 km/h). A MET of 8 = running at 10 km/h, eight times resting. The standard formula: calories burned per minute = (METs × weight in kg × 3.5) ÷ 200, or equivalently kcal/hour ≈ MET × weight in kg. Common MET values: sleeping 0.95, sitting quietly 1.3, light office work 1.5, walking slowly (3 km/h) 2.5, walking briskly (5 km/h) 3.8, light gardening 3.5, vigorous gardening 5, light cycling (15 km/h) 6, moderate swimming 6, running at 8 km/h 8, running at 10 km/h 10, fast running (16 km/h) 16. The MET concept lets you compare wildly different activities on a single scale: an hour of intense cycling at MET 12 burns the same as 90 minutes of brisk walking at MET 4.5 (for the same person). MET values come from large research databases (the Compendium of Physical Activities), but they're population averages — your personal energy cost varies with fitness level (fitter people are more efficient and burn slightly less), age, body composition (more muscle increases burn), and individual metabolism. Treat MET-based calorie figures as ballpark estimates accurate to within 15–25%, not precise measurements.

Why Your Weight Matters?

Calorie burn scales linearly with body weight for most activities — heavier people burn more calories doing the same activity because more energy is needed to move more mass. A 90 kg person doing the same 30-minute jog as a 70 kg person burns roughly 29% more calories (in proportion to the weight difference). The relationship is close to linear for weight-bearing activities (walking, running, climbing stairs, hiking with a pack) because most of the energy goes into moving body mass against gravity and inertia. For non-weight-bearing activities (cycling on flat ground, swimming, rowing) the relationship is weaker — a heavier cyclist burns somewhat more on flats due to higher rolling resistance and air drag, but the difference is smaller than for running. On hill climbing it's strongly weight-dependent again (gravity work scales with mass). The implication: a heavier person trying to lose weight has a 'metabolic advantage' for cardio in that they burn more calories per session, but they also generally have lower aerobic fitness, so they can't sustain high MET intensities as long. As you lose weight, your calorie burn at the same effort decreases — which is part of why weight loss tends to plateau without further adjustments. Calorie burn formulas should use current weight, not a goal weight, for accuracy. This calculator uses weight as a key input — if you're tracking burn over time as you lose weight, update the weight value as you go.

What do I need to know about Don't Eat Back Exercise Calories?

Calorie burn estimates — whether from this calculator, a fitness watch, gym machine, or app — are routinely off by 25–50%, almost always overestimating. Fitness trackers in particular have been independently tested and found to overestimate cycling and walking calories by 30–50%, sometimes more. Gym cardio machines exaggerate even more (treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes can be 20–40% high on their calorie displays). The reasons: machines use generic body assumptions; trackers can't accurately distinguish activity types; movement-based estimates miss the variation in efficiency between fit and unfit people; and there's no incentive for manufacturers to lowball the numbers. The practical implication for weight management: if you're in a calorie deficit and 'eat back' all the exercise calories you've supposedly burned, you'll likely cancel most of your deficit and wonder why progress has stalled. A common-sense rule: don't eat back more than about 50% of estimated exercise calories when trying to lose weight, and rely on actual scale and measurement trends over weeks, not daily calorie maths. Many successful dieters find it easier to set a daily intake target that already accounts for typical activity, without 'earning' extra food through exercise — this removes the unreliable estimation step entirely. For maintenance and athletic performance, fuelling exercise more generously is reasonable and often necessary; for fat loss, treat estimated burn figures with healthy scepticism. This calculator gives a reasonable ballpark — believe the trend over weeks rather than the precision of any single session's number. As with any calorie discussion, this is general information rather than advice for any specific medical or dietary situation.

What's the key thing to understand about Exercise and Weight Management?

Exercise is essential for health but less effective for weight loss in isolation than most people expect. The compensation effect: increased exercise often increases appetite and reduces spontaneous activity (NEAT), partially offsetting the calorie deficit created. Research shows combining exercise with calorie tracking is approximately 3 times more effective than exercise alone for weight loss. The most important role of exercise in weight management is preservation of muscle mass during a calorie deficit, which cardio alone does less effectively than resistance training.

Worked Example: MET Calculation for a Jog

Jogging at roughly 8km/h (5mph) has a MET value of about 8.3. For a 70kg person exercising for 30 minutes, the standard formula — calories = MET × 3.5 × bodyweight (kg) ÷ 200 × minutes — gives 8.3 × 3.5 × 70 ÷ 200 × 30 ≈ 305 calories. A 90kg person doing the identical 30-minute jog at the same pace would burn around 392 calories, because the formula scales directly with bodyweight: moving more mass over the same distance and speed costs proportionally more energy, which is why this calculator always asks for weight rather than giving one fixed number per activity.

What Is EPOC and Does It Change These Numbers?

Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), sometimes called the 'afterburn effect', refers to the elevated calorie burn that continues for a period after a workout ends while the body restores oxygen stores, clears metabolic by-products and returns muscle temperature to baseline. Higher-intensity efforts, particularly interval training and heavy resistance work, produce a larger and longer-lasting EPOC than steady, moderate-intensity exercise. However, the effect is modest in absolute terms for most recreational exercisers — typically adding somewhere in the range of 6–15% on top of the calories burned during the session itself, rather than doubling it, despite how it's sometimes marketed. MET-based calculators like this one estimate only the calories burned during the activity itself, so the true total calorie cost of a hard interval session is slightly higher than the figure shown here, while a steady walk or easy swim will have very little additional afterburn to add.

What should I know about Why Fitness Trackers Often Disagree With MET-Based Calculators?

Wrist-worn fitness trackers estimate calorie burn using heart rate and movement data combined with a built-in formula, rather than the standard MET tables used by this calculator, which is one reason the two methods can give noticeably different numbers for the same workout. Heart-rate-based estimates can be thrown off by factors unrelated to actual calorie burn, such as caffeine, heat, dehydration, or emotional stress, all of which raise heart rate without necessarily raising energy expenditure to the same degree. MET-based estimates, by contrast, are drawn from decades of lab-measured oxygen consumption data for standard activities, but they assume an 'average' body and don't account for individual differences in fitness level or efficiency. Neither method is perfectly precise — both are best treated as a reasonable estimate for tracking trends over time rather than an exact calorie count. This is also why the same activity can show different MET-based and tracker-based numbers for two people of identical weight — individual differences in movement efficiency, fitness level and even how a device is worn on the wrist all introduce variation that a simple formula cannot capture.