Updated September 2026 Find out how many calories you burn during exercise and daily activities using MET (metabolic equivalent) values.
What are MET values?
MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) is a way to express the energy cost of activities. One MET equals the energy expended at rest (1 kcal/kg/hour). An activity with a MET of 6 burns 6 times more energy per unit time than resting.
MET values come from the Compendium of Physical Activities, a database of hundreds of activities compiled by researchers Ainsworth et al. The formula Calories = MET × weight(kg) × time(hours) gives an estimate of gross calorie burn, including the calories you’d burn just sitting still.
How MET-based calorie burn is calculated
One MET — one metabolic equivalent of task — is defined as the energy cost of sitting quietly, conventionally taken as 3.5 millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of bodyweight per minute. Every activity is then rated as a multiple of that baseline. An activity at 8 METs costs eight times what sitting still does.
which simplifies to roughly:
kcal/hour ≈ MET × weight in kg
That simplification is worth committing to memory. An 80 kg person doing anything rated at 8 METs burns approximately 640 calories an hour. For a 20-minute session, take a third. Our MET values table lists the rating for more than 180 activities alongside the hourly burn at five bodyweights.
A worked example
A 72 kg person running at 6 mph (a 10-minute mile) for 35 minutes. Running at that pace is rated 9.8 METs.
Total = 12.35 × 35 = 432 kcal
But that is the gross figure, and it contains a trap.
Gross versus net — the double-counting problem
The calories you spend during an hour include the calories you would have spent anyway just being alive. Roughly one MET-hour of any activity is your baseline metabolism, which is already inside the TDEE figure your diet is built on. When an app adds the full gross burn to your daily budget, it counts that baseline twice.
| Figure | 72 kg person, 35 min at 9.8 METs | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Gross expenditure | 432 kcal | Total energy spent during the session |
| Resting baseline | 44 kcal | Already counted inside your TDEE |
| Net exercise burn | 388 kcal | What the workout actually added |
Subtract one MET from any activity value before crediting yourself for it: net kcal/hour is roughly (MET minus 1) times your weight in kilograms. On a single session the correction is small; across a training week it is the difference between a deficit that works and one that quietly does not.
How accurate are MET values?
MET ratings come from the Compendium of Physical Activities, compiled by Barbara Ainsworth and colleagues and used throughout exercise epidemiology. It assembles measured oxygen-consumption data across hundreds of activities; where no direct measurement existed, values were assigned by analogy to similar work.
Three limits are worth knowing:
- They are group averages. Expect your true cost to sit within roughly 15 percent of the listed value, further off if you are very fit, very heavy or very light.
- Fitness lowers the cost. A trained runner is more economical — better mechanics, less wasted motion — so two people of identical weight at the same pace can differ by 5 to 10 percent.
- Effort matters more than the label. “Weight training” spans 3.5 to 6.0 METs depending on rest periods. Pick the description that matches how you actually train, not the one with the largest number.
Even with those caveats, MET-based estimates are more trustworthy than a wrist-worn tracker’s figure. A 2017 Stanford validation of seven devices found that six measured heart rate within five percent while none estimated energy expenditure acceptably, with errors ranging from roughly 27 to over 90 percent. The reasons are covered in why your fitness tracker overestimates calories burned.
What to do with the number
The most reliable use of an exercise calorie figure is comparison, not accounting. Use it to decide whether a 45-minute swim or a 30-minute run better fits your week, and to understand why a heavier person finds the same session harder — bodyweight is the dominant variable, which is also why the same run gets cheaper as you lose weight.
The least reliable use is eating it back. Your TDEE already includes an activity multiplier covering your typical training, so adding exercise calories on top double-counts it. If you want more movement to show up somewhere, let it show up on the scale — or better, build it into your daily step count, which is both larger and far easier to measure.
| Intensity | MET range | Talk test |
|---|---|---|
| Light | 1.6–2.9 | You can sing |
| Moderate | 3.0–5.9 | You can talk but not sing |
| Vigorous | 6.0+ | A few words at a time |
Public health guidance asks for 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, and the two trade at roughly two to one. The MET rating is how you tell which bucket an activity falls into.
Calories burned — FAQ
Fitness trackers use proprietary algorithms that incorporate heart rate, movement patterns, and personal data like age and sex. Heart-rate-based estimates tend to be more accurate than MET-based formulas for cardio activities. However, all estimates — including from devices — have significant error margins (±15–30%). Use calorie burns as rough guidance rather than precise measurements.
It depends on how you set your calorie target. If you used TDEE with an activity multiplier, your exercise is already factored in — don’t eat back those calories. If you used a sedentary TDEE as a base, you can add back a portion (50–75%) of exercise calories to account for the extra burn. Most people overestimate burn and underestimate eating, so be conservative.
Within about 15 percent for most people, which is considerably better than a wrist-worn tracker. MET values are group averages, so fitness, mechanics, terrain and temperature all shift your true cost — and a trained athlete is more economical than the average the value was drawn from.
Yes, if you are using the figure to adjust your food intake. Roughly one MET-hour of any activity is the resting energy already counted inside your TDEE. Net burn per hour is approximately (MET minus 1) times your bodyweight in kilograms.
Wrist devices infer energy expenditure from heart rate, which is an individual and unstable proxy, and they tend to run high — especially during resistance training, where heart rate spikes without corresponding aerobic work. Validation research has found errors from roughly 27 to over 90 percent.
Because the calculation scales directly with bodyweight — moving more mass costs more energy. A 100 kg person running at a given pace burns roughly 67 percent more than a 60 kg person, which is also why the same workout burns less as you lose weight.