Calories Burned Calculator

Through MET values. One MET is your resting metabolic rate, defined as 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilogram per minute. An activity rated 8 METs costs eight times that. The arithmetic is: calories per minute = MET × 3.5 × weight in kg ÷ 200. A 70 kg adult running at 10 km/h (9.8 MET) burns about 12 calories a minute, so 360 over half an hour.

Gross calories are everything you burned during the activity, including the resting energy you would have spent sitting on the sofa. Net calories are the extra cost of the activity alone. For a 30 minute run the difference is around 10%, but for low-intensity activity it is much larger: half an hour of walking might show 129 gross and only 92 net. If you are logging exercise against a calorie budget, net is the honest number, because your TDEE already counted the resting portion.

Within roughly 10 to 15% for most people, which is about as good as anything short of a metabolic cart. MET values are population averages, so they cannot see your efficiency, fitness level, or body composition. A trained runner burns less than an untrained one at the same pace because their movement is more economical. Treat the output as a good estimate, not a measurement.

Most wrist trackers estimate from heart rate rather than MET values, and heart rate responds to heat, caffeine, stress and dehydration as well as to effort. Trackers also frequently report gross calories while your calorie app expects net. Gym machines are worse still: they typically assume a default body weight and overstate burn by 15 to 25%.

Substantially, and proportionally. Calorie cost scales linearly with body mass, so a 90 kg person burns about 29% more than a 70 kg person doing exactly the same activity for the same time. This is why heavier people often see faster early weight loss from the same routine, and why the burn shrinks as they get lighter.

Per minute, running fast, jump rope and martial arts sit at the top, around 11 to 14.5 METs. But total burn is intensity multiplied by duration, and that is where the ranking changes. Most people cannot sustain 14 METs for more than a few minutes, while a 5 MET walk can run for an hour without difficulty. An hour of brisk walking beats ten minutes of sprinting.

Running roughly doubles the per-minute rate. For a 70 kg adult, moderate walking (3.5 MET) burns about 4.3 calories a minute and running at 10 km/h (9.8 MET) about 12. But the gap narrows on any realistic comparison: 60 minutes of walking burns 258 calories, while the 20 minutes of running most beginners can actually manage burns 240.