Calories Burned Calculator

A 70 kg person walking briskly for 30 minutes burns about 176 kcal. Run the same half hour at 10 minutes per mile and it is 342. Both figures come from one formula and one published table of MET values, and that is all this calculator does: pick the activity, enter your weight and the minutes, and it prints the kcal alongside the MET value and the Compendium code it used, so the sum is yours to check.

Calories burned calculator: the formula

One MET is the energy cost of sitting still, taken as 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. Every activity in the Compendium of Physical Activities carries a multiple of that. Brisk walking is 4.8, so it costs 4.8 times sitting, and turning the multiple into food energy takes one line:

kcal per minute = MET x 3.5 x body weight in kg / 200

For the walker above: 4.8 x 3.5 x 70 / 200 = 5.88 kcal per minute, times 30 minutes, 176 kcal. The 200 folds two conversions into one number, millilitres of oxygen to litres and litres to kilocalories at roughly 5 kcal per litre. Multiply the per-minute figure by 60 for the hourly rate, which is how most tables print it.

Calories per hour by activity and body weight

Same formula, common session lengths, a 70 kg athlete:

Heavier people burn more at the same activity because the formula scales with body weight in a straight line. A 90 kg walker gets 454 kcal an hour where a 60 kg walker gets 302, same pace, same road. The full list of all 46 activities with their Compendium codes sits below the calculator.

The table describes an average person, and you are not one

Read this section before you write the number down anywhere. A MET value is the average oxygen cost measured in a group of people doing that activity, and the 3.5 ml/kg/min baseline it is multiplied by is itself an average from a small sample. When researchers measure resting oxygen use in larger and more varied groups, the figure comes out lower for many people, often by 10 to 20 percent in heavier and older adults, which means the table tends to over-count for exactly the people most likely to be using it.

Then there is you. Two runners holding 10 minutes per mile can differ by 10 to 15 percent in oxygen cost because one of them is more economical. Terrain, wind, heat, surface and how much muscle you carry all move it further. Cold matters less than people think. A headwind matters more.

And the alternative sources are estimates too. A gym machine reads watts or belt speed and applies a formula much like this one, often without knowing your weight. A wrist tracker reads heart rate and applies a model; in independent lab tests, wrist devices have measured energy expenditure with errors of 25 percent and more, even where their heart rate reading was decent. None of that makes the numbers useless. It makes them a band, roughly plus or minus 20 percent, and a band is enough to compare two sessions or to size a deficit as long as you let the scale correct it over a few weeks.

Gross or net

The formula gives gross calories, which include the roughly 1 MET you would have burned sitting on the sofa for the same minutes. If you want the extra cost of the exercise on its own, subtract 1 from the MET before you run the sum. For the brisk walker that is 3.8 x 3.5 x 70 / 200 x 30, or 140 kcal net instead of 176 gross. Use net when you are deciding how much to eat back, because the gross figure double counts the resting burn your TDEE already contains.

Pick the page that matches the session

This is the general tool, and the arithmetic is the same on every page in the set, but the activity-specific pages carry the tables and the caveats for their sport. Walking has its own walking calorie calculator, the belt version lives at the treadmill calorie calculator, and trail days with a pack are covered by the hiking calorie calculator. Indoors, the stationary bike calorie calculator works from watts and the rowing calorie calculator works from erg wattage. The MET calculator prints the widest table of MET values if you would rather look the number up than type.

Distance-based sessions are better served by cost per kilometre than by minutes: the running calories, cycling calories and swimming calories pages work that way. To put a burn figure next to the rest of your day, the TDEE calculator gives the daily total, the BMR calculator gives the resting floor, and the calorie deficit calculator sizes the gap for a target rate of loss.

How Movement Rebels fits

A calculator knows your weight and a table. Your watch knows what you did. When you connect Garmin Connect or Apple Health, the coach in Movement Rebels reads each activity as it lands, with duration, distance, average heart rate, power and TSS on rides and pace and splits on runs, and Concept2 sessions come in from the erg. That is the session as it happened, not an average person's version of it.

What the coach does not do is count your food. Rebel Fuel is your own log and nothing from it reaches the coach, so it cannot compare what you ate with what you burned. If you are cutting, write it in the notes for your coach, and it will read a rising resting heart rate or a falling HRV as a fuelling signal rather than a fitness problem. For the plan that decides where the deficit comes from in the first place, read How to Create a Calorie Deficit.

MET values used here

Every value below is quoted from the Compendium of Physical Activities with its activity code, so you can look up the entry yourself. One MET is the oxygen cost of sitting quietly, about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kg per minute.

Walking and hiking

Treadmill walking

Running

Curved (non-motorised) treadmill running

Cycling

Stationary cycling

Rowing machine

Swimming

Strength and gym

Source: Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.), pacompendium.com. Codes are the Compendium's own.

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