Calories Burned Calculator

Exercise energy expenditure is usually estimated with METs, short for metabolic equivalents. One MET is the energy you use sitting quietly — roughly one calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour. Every activity is then given a number that says how many times harder it is than sitting still: walking at a brisk pace is about 5 METs, jogging at 6 mph about 9.8, jump rope about 12.3.

The formula that turns that into calories is standard: METs multiplied by 3.5, multiplied by your body weight in kilograms, divided by 200, multiplied by the minutes you spent doing it. Because body weight sits in the numerator, the same run burns noticeably more for a heavier person — that is not a bug, just physics. Moving 90 kilograms costs more energy than moving 60 kilograms.

A few practical notes. The values are averages across a whole population, so an efficient runner burns less than the table suggests and a beginner burns more. Intensity also drifts: a "moderate" cycle can mean very different efforts on different days. And the single biggest omission in most people's mental maths is that this figure is the gross cost of the activity, not the net cost above what you would have burned anyway lying on the sofa. For a half-hour session the difference is small, but it explains why gym machine readouts tend to flatter you.

Where these numbers are genuinely useful is comparison and planning, not precise accounting. Knowing that a 30-minute run costs about 350 calories while a slice of cake costs 400 is a healthy dose of perspective. Use the figure to compare activities and to sense-check how much work it takes to offset treats, rather than to earn food or to justify eating back every calorie the machine reports.

This calculator returns estimates for general information only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, and it cannot replace an assessment by a qualified health professional. Individual results vary, and figures such as calorie needs, body-fat percentage and heart-rate zones are approximations based on population averages rather than measurements of you.