Exercise Calorie Calculator

Find out how many calories you burn walking, running, cycling, lifting weights, swimming, playing tennis, shoveling snow, and nearly 70 activities in all. Enter your sex, age, height and weight, choose an activity, and the calculator estimates the energy you burn from the activity's MET value in the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities and your own resting metabolism. It also shows the net calories burned, the part that actually adds to a calorie deficit, and how long a fat-loss goal would take at the pace you set.

To use the calculator, enter your sex, age, height and weight, choose an activity, then click "Calculate." The results page shows the calories the activity burns, starting from a typical effort level, or speed, and session length for that activity. Choose a different effort level there, and use the arrows to change the speed for walking, running, cycling and rollerblading, the duration, how many times a week you do it, and how much fat you want to burn. Every figure updates as you go, and for the speed-based activities the duration line also shows the distance covered.

Gross vs. Net Calories Burned

The usual "calories burned" figure is the gross burn: all the energy your body uses during the activity. Part of that you would have burned anyway, just sitting on the couch, because your body keeps breathing, circulating blood and maintaining its temperature at rest. The net burn is what is left after taking that resting energy out, and it is the part that adds to your calorie deficit.

The difference matters most for light activities. An hour of Hatha yoga, at 2.3 METs, burns 2.3 times your resting rate, but more than 40% of that you would have burned resting anyway. For an hour of jumping rope at 11 METs, the resting share is less than 10%. This calculator shows both figures, and uses the net burn to work out how long a fat-loss goal will take.

How the Calculation Works

A Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) is the ratio of the energy you burn during an activity to the energy you burn at rest. An activity rated at 8 METs, such as singles tennis, burns energy 8 times as fast as sitting quietly. The MET values here come from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the standard reference that lists measured or estimated MET values for over 1,000 activities. Most activities on this page offer the Compendium entries that match them, at one to three effort levels, and the results page shows the Compendium's code and description for the one you choose.

Walking, running, cycling and rollerblading follow your speed instead. The Compendium lists each of them at a series of speeds, such as running at 6 to 6.3 mph and at 6.7 mph. This calculator places each entry at the middle of the speed range it covers and, for speeds in between, takes a MET value the same proportion of the way between the two entries either side. The results page names the entries it used.

By convention, 1 MET is defined as 3.5 mL of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute, about 1 Calorie per kilogram per hour. That figure comes from a single 70 kg man, and it overstates the resting rate of most people. A study of 769 adults measured an average resting rate of 2.6 mL/kg/min, so the standard 1 MET overestimated it by about 35% on average. To avoid that error, this calculator does what the study's authors suggest: it estimates your Resting Energy Expenditure (REE) from your sex, age, height and weight with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and uses that as your 1 MET.

For example, a 40-year-old man who is 180 cm tall and weighs 80 kg has an REE of about 1,730 Calories a day, or 1.2 Calories a minute. An hour of singles tennis at 8 METs burns 1.2 × 8 × 60, or about 577 Calories. The net burn takes away the 1 MET he would have used resting: 1.2 × 7 × 60, or about 505 Calories.

The 2024 Adult Compendium covers adults aged 19 to 59, and a separate Older Adult Compendium lists values for people 60 and over. This calculator uses the adult values at every age, so if you are over 60, treat the result as a rougher estimate.

Why Heavier People Burn More

The same activity at the same MET burns more Calories for a larger body, because a larger body has a higher resting rate and the MET multiplies it. Moving more weight takes more energy, which is why a 100 kg person swimming laps burns noticeably more than a 60 kg person swimming beside them at the same pace. It also means your burn for a given workout falls a little as you lose weight, which the time-to-goal estimate on the results page takes into account.

Why Your Fitness Tracker Shows a Different Number

Fitness trackers and gym machines estimate energy burn too, and their figures can be far from the truth. When researchers at Stanford tested seven wrist-worn devices on 60 volunteers against laboratory measurements, the heart rate readings were mostly good, but no device estimated energy expenditure with an error below 20%. Many devices and machines also report the gross burn, so treat any single number, including this one, as an estimate, and judge your progress by how your weight changes over several weeks.

Exercise and Weight Loss

A pound of body fat stores roughly 3,500 Calories, or about 7,700 Calories per kilogram. Exercise helps you reach a deficit, but it is easy to undo by eating a little more, so it works best alongside a planned calorie intake. Use the TDEE Calculator for All Ages to find how many Calories you burn in a typical day, and the Calorie Deficit Calculator for Realistic Weight Loss Goals to plan a realistic deficit.

MET Values Used

The table below lists every activity and effort level this calculator uses, with its MET value from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. For walking, running, cycling and rollerblading, it lists the MET value at each speed the Compendium gives, in mph.