Calories burned calculator

The calories you burn come from how hard the activity is, how heavy you are and how long you do it. FitCalcs uses the MET method: it multiplies the activity MET value by your body weight in kilograms and the time in hours to give a calorie estimate. This is general information, not medical advice.

A MET, or metabolic equivalent, is how many times harder an activity is than sitting still. Sitting quietly is 1 MET, so an activity rated at 8 METs burns about eight times the energy of resting. The MET values FitCalcs uses come from the Compendium of Physical Activities that researchers rely on.

Because both are estimates and they use different inputs. A MET value is an average for the activity, while your watch adds heart rate and its own model, so the two often disagree by a fair margin. Real burn also varies with your fitness, technique and effort on the day. Treat any single number as a good estimate rather than an exact count.

Yes. MET-based figures describe the total energy used during the activity, which already includes the small amount you would have burned sitting still over that time. If you want only the extra calories from exercising, you would subtract your resting burn for those minutes, but for everyday planning the total is what most people mean.