Calories Burned
Calories burned by activity using MET values, your weight and workout duration.
Calories burned
556 kcal
12.3 kcal/min · 741 kcal/hour
Per minute
12.3
Per hour
741
MET
9.8
AI Breakdown & Smart Takeaway
Plain-English insight on your numbers
Get a personalized explanation of what these results mean — and how to improve them.
How the Calories Burned works
The Calories Burned Calculator estimates how much energy you expend during any physical activity by combining your body weight, workout duration, and the activity's MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) value into a single, science-backed calculation. It's ideal for athletes, casual exercisers, and anyone tracking energy expenditure for weight management or fitness planning.
At the heart of this calculator is the MET system — a standardized way of expressing how intensively an activity taxes your metabolism relative to complete rest. A MET of 1.0 represents your resting metabolic rate (sitting quietly), while running at a 6-minute-mile pace carries a MET near 12.5, meaning it burns roughly 12.5 times more energy per minute than doing nothing. Researchers at the Compendium of Physical Activities have catalogued hundreds of activities with validated MET values, so the calculator can reliably compare everything from gentle yoga (MET ≈ 2.5) to vigorous cycling (MET ≈ 10) on a common scale.
Your body weight is the second critical input because heavier individuals burn more calories performing the same movement — more mass requires more force to accelerate and support. The standard formula multiplies MET × weight in kilograms × time in hours, producing a calorie (kcal) estimate that accounts for both effort level and the physical cost of moving your specific body. If you enter your weight in pounds, the calculator converts it to kilograms internally (1 lb = 0.4536 kg), so US users don't need to do any manual conversion.
Duration completes the equation in a linear way: doubling your workout time doubles calories burned, all else being equal. This makes duration one of the most controllable variables for someone trying to hit a specific calorie target. A practical insight here is that splitting duration across two shorter sessions produces roughly the same calorie burn as one long session at the same intensity — total work, not session structure, is what drives expenditure. However, higher-intensity activities may trigger a modest post-exercise oxygen-consumption (EPOC) effect that this calculator, like most MET-based tools, does not capture.
One common mistake is treating the output as an exact measurement rather than a well-informed estimate. MET values were derived from population averages, so individual fitness level, age, body composition, and even heat or altitude can shift your actual burn by ±10–20%. For the most actionable results, use this calculator consistently over time to spot trends rather than anchoring to any single session's number. Combining these estimates with food-logging data gives you the clearest picture of your overall energy balance.
Formula
kcal = MET × 3.5 × weight(kg) ÷ 200 × minutes
Pro tips
- Pair with Calorie & BMR to balance intake against what you burn.
Key terms
- MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task)
- — A unit that expresses the energy cost of a physical activity as a multiple of the resting metabolic rate; a MET of 1.0 equals sitting at rest, and higher values indicate proportionally greater calorie burn.
- Calories (kcal)
- — In nutrition and exercise science, 'calories' refers to kilocalories — the amount of energy needed to raise 1 kg of water by 1°C — and is the standard unit for measuring energy expenditure during exercise.
- Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR)
- — The baseline number of calories your body burns at complete rest to maintain essential functions like breathing and circulation, which serves as the '1 MET' reference point for all activity calculations.
- Energy Expenditure
- — The total number of calories your body uses over a given period, encompassing resting metabolism, the thermic effect of food, and physical activity including exercise.
- EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption)
- — The elevated calorie burn that continues after intense exercise as your body restores oxygen levels and repairs muscle tissue, sometimes called the 'afterburn effect,' which is not captured by standard MET calculations.
- Compendium of Physical Activities
- — A research-based database originally developed by Dr. Barbara Ainsworth that assigns standardized MET values to hundreds of physical activities and serves as the reference source for most exercise calorie calculators.
