Calories Burned Calculator

The MET method

A MET value tells you how many times harder an activity is than sitting still. Running at ten kilometres an hour is a shade under ten METs, so it costs roughly ten times your resting energy for as long as you keep it up. Because the equation is scaled by body weight, a heavier person burns more for the same session — moving more mass costs more energy.

Read the number with healthy scepticism

Published MET values are population averages and your own efficiency, terrain, temperature and technique can shift the real figure by twenty percent either way. Wearables are no better and often worse. The practical takeaway is that exercise calories are a bonus, not a licence: a forty-five minute run does not reliably offset a large meal, and body composition is won mostly in the kitchen.