Exercise Calorie Calculator

It depends heavily on body weight and intensity. For an 80 kg person: walking burns ~280 kcal/hr, moderate cycling ~600 kcal/hr, running at 10 km/h ~780 kcal/hr, HIIT ~640 kcal/hr, weight training ~280–400 kcal/hr. Heavier individuals burn proportionally more calories at the same effort level.

Yes — the MET formula includes body weight directly. A 100 kg person doing the same activity for the same duration burns 25% more calories than a 80 kg person, because moving a larger mass requires more energy. This is why weight loss progressively reduces the caloric benefit of the same exercise — as weight decreases, fewer calories are burned per session, which is one mechanism behind weight loss plateaus.

Only if your calorie target was set without accounting for exercise (e.g. TDEE calculated at sedentary level). If your calorie target was calculated using your actual activity level (including training), it already accounts for exercise burns — eating back exercise calories would put you in surplus. For fat loss, it's safest to eat back 50–75% of estimated exercise calories to account for overestimation by trackers and apps.

Cardio burns more calories per session (typically 400–800 kcal/hr vs 200–400 kcal/hr for weights). However, weight training builds muscle mass which permanently elevates resting metabolic rate (BMR) — each kg of extra muscle burns approximately 13–15 kcal/day at rest. Over months and years, the metabolic benefits of muscle mass outweigh any single-session calorie burn advantage of cardio. The best approach: prioritise weight training and add cardio as supplementary calorie expenditure.

To find net calories (what you burn extra on top of what you'd burn at rest), subtract resting calories for the same period. Resting MET = 1, so: Net calories = (MET - 1) × body weight (kg) × duration (hours). For running at MET 9.8 for 30 min at 80 kg: Net = (9.8 - 1) × 80 × 0.5 = 352 kcal net additional. This more accurately represents what exercise adds beyond your sedentary baseline.