Burning Calories with Exercise: Calculating Estimated Energy Expenditure

Estimate How Many Calories You are Burning With Exercise

HSS has an Energy Expenditure Calculator for estimating how many calories are burned during exercise.  You'll need to know your weight, the activity, and duration of activity. It uses the following formula to calculate how many calories per minute you will burn during the activity and then multiply that number by your total exercise minutes.

Energy expenditure (calories/minute) = .0175 x MET (from table) x weight (in kilograms)

(To get your weight in kilograms, simply divide your weight in pounds by 2.2.)

If you want a more accurate idea of how fast you’ll burn calories to lose weight, you must figure out what you would have burned if you were just sitting around, instead of exercising, for the same time period. Then subtract these calories from your exercise calories. This is your energy deficit, or the amount of calories you can count on for fat loss. You will notice that vigorous intensity exercise gives faster results.

MET levels of different activities

Updated: 10/2/2009

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