Calories Burned by Exercise: Chart for 30 Minutes (60–90 kg)

A 30-minute session burns roughly 70 to 500 kcal depending on the activity and your weight: about 144 to 216 kcal for a brisk walk, 279 to 419 kcal for running at 10 km/h, and 330 to 495 kcal for skipping, for people weighing 60 to 90 kg. The formula is simple: kcal = MET × weight (kg) × hours, using MET values from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. Treat every number as an estimate, and don't plan your meals around it.

For your exact weight and time, use the calories burned calculator.

What is a MET?

A MET (metabolic equivalent) compares an activity's energy cost to sitting quietly. The Compendium defines 1 MET as 3.5 mL of oxygen per kg of body weight per minute, which works out to roughly 1 kcal per kg per hour.

So a 5 MET activity costs about five times what sitting does. That makes the maths easy:

• kcal = MET × weight in kg × time in hours
• 30 minutes is 0.5 hours, so kcal in 30 min = MET × weight × 0.5

Example: a 70 kg person doing Zumba (6.5 METs) for 30 minutes burns about 6.5 × 70 × 0.5 = 227.5, call it 228 kcal.

Where the MET values come from

The 2024 update by Herrmann and colleagues, published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science, lists 1,114 activities, each with a five-digit code, drawn from 701 studies of adults aged 19 to 59. The full list is free on the official Compendium website.

Calories burned in 30 minutes: the chart

Every number below is MET × weight × 0.5, rounded to the nearest kcal. These are gross calories, meaning they include the roughly 1 MET you'd burn sitting on the sofa anyway (more on that below).

Running speeds in the Compendium are in miles per hour, so the km/h figures are conversions (5.0–5.2 mph, 6.0–6.3 mph and 7 mph).

Notice that normal weight training sits below brisk walking, because much of a session is rest between sets. Its value is muscle, not calories.

What does "gross calories" mean, and why does it matter?

Gross calories are the total burned during the activity. Net calories are only the extra, above what you'd have burned resting in the same 30 minutes.

To get net, subtract 1 MET: net kcal = (MET − 1) × weight × hours.

Take a 75 kg person on a 30-minute brisk walk:

• Gross: 4.8 × 75 × 0.5 = 180 kcal
• Resting (1 MET): 1 × 75 × 0.5 = 37.5 kcal
• Net: 3.8 × 75 × 0.5 = 142.5 kcal

So about a fifth of that walk's "burn" would have happened anyway. For low-MET activities like yoga (2.3), more than 40% of the gross figure is just being alive. Any readout that reports the gross figure will look generous for the same reason.

How accurate are these numbers for you?

Reasonable for an average person, rough for any one person. The Compendium notes that resting metabolism differs by age, sex, height, body weight and body composition, so a standard MET won't fit everyone. Effort matters too: social and competitive badminton differ by about 25% in the chart. Be honest about which row you're in.

Why do fitness watches and gym machines often show more?

Three reasons.

1. Wrist devices are poor at calories. In a 2017 Stanford study by Shcherbina and colleagues, 60 volunteers wore seven popular wrist devices while their energy use was measured in the lab. Heart rate was mostly accurate, but no device got energy expenditure within 20%. The best device was off by an average of 27%, the worst by 93%. Error was higher during walking and for people with a higher BMI.

A 2020 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine of 60 studies found accuracy varied widely by activity type; adding heart rate to motion sensing helped.

2. A gross number includes your resting burn. As above, part of any gross figure is calories you'd burn anyway, so it overstates what the session added.

3. Machines may not know you. If a treadmill or cross-trainer doesn't ask your weight, it is using a default. A heavier or lighter person gets the wrong number.

Any one reading can be high or low. Add gross counting and generous effort ratings, and totals tend to drift high. Use readouts to compare your own sessions, not to plan food.

Why does "exercise to earn food" backfire?

Because the maths on the screen is bigger than the maths in your body. In the Midwest Exercise Trial 2, overweight young adults did supervised exercise 5 days a week for 10 months, burning either 400 or 600 kcal per session, with no diet change. Those who completed the sessions lost 3.9 kg and 5.2 kg on average, while controls gained 0.5 kg. That's a real, useful result.

A rough check (simple arithmetic, not a study finding): for the 400 kcal group, 5 sessions a week for about 43 weeks is about 86,000 kcal. At the common rule of thumb of about 7,700 kcal per kg of fat, that's roughly 11 kg on paper, against 3.9 kg lost.

Part of the gap is the body pushing back. A 2021 analysis of 1,754 adults in Current Biology found that, on average, about 28% of the calories burned through extra activity were offset by a drop in basal energy use, so only about 72% showed up as extra calories burned. Compensation was larger in people with more body fat.

So if your watch says 400 and you eat 400 "earned" calories, device error, gross counting and compensation can easily mean you ate more than you burned. Exercise works for fat loss. Using it as a food voucher usually doesn't.

How much does exercise contribute compared with diet?

Less than most people hope, and more than nothing. Here's a hypothetical 75 kg person, using the chart and net calories:

Compare that with eating 500 kcal a day less than your maintenance: 3,500 kcal a week. The daily brisk walk gives you about a fifth of that. Even five runs a week give less than half, before any compensation.

That's why fat loss is mostly decided in the kitchen. Exercise still earns its place: it helps you keep muscle while dieting, improves fitness and health markers, and the WHO counts at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week as the baseline adults should reach. For the eating side, start with calorie deficit and maintenance calories and get your number from the calorie calculator. If you're unsure what maintenance means, BMR vs TDEE explains it.

What is NEAT, and why can it matter more than the gym?

NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) is the energy you burn on everything that isn't sleeping, eating or planned exercise: walking to the market, climbing stairs, standing while cooking, sweeping, even fidgeting. James Levine's 2002 review describes it as explaining the vast majority of a person's non-resting energy needs, and notes that manual and agricultural workers have high NEAT while desk-bound lifestyles push it down.

It also reacts to eating. In Levine's 1999 study in Science, 16 people were overfed by 1,000 kcal a day for 8 weeks. Changes in NEAT explained a 10-fold difference in how much fat they stored. The review adds that NEAT tends to fall when people eat less, which is one quiet reason diets slow down.

Thirty minutes of sweeping or mopping is close to a slow walk in the chart. An hour at the gym is 1 of roughly 16 waking hours; the other 15 add up. The steps to calories calculator shows what your daily step count is worth. If you want structured cardio that's easy to repeat, zone 2 cardio is a good place to start.

The short version

• kcal = MET × weight (kg) × hours; for 30 minutes, multiply by 0.5
• Use 2024 Compendium MET values, and pick the row that matches your real effort
• Chart numbers are gross; subtract 1 MET for the extra calories
• Watch and machine calorie numbers can be off by 20% or more; use them to compare sessions, not to set your food
• Don't eat back exercise calories one-for-one; the body compensates for part of them
• For fat loss, diet sets the pace; exercise protects muscle and health
• Move more outside the gym: steps, stairs and housework count

See a doctor before starting vigorous exercise if you have heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, joint problems, are pregnant, or haven't been active for a long time. This is general information, not medical advice.

Useful links

• Herrmann et al. (2024), 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities (full text)
• Adult Compendium of Physical Activities: official activity list and codes
• Shcherbina et al. (2017), Accuracy in wrist-worn measurements of heart rate and energy expenditure
• O'Driscoll et al. (2020), How well do activity monitors estimate energy expenditure?
• Donnelly et al. (2013), Midwest Exercise Trial 2
• Careau et al. (2021), Energy compensation and adiposity in humans
• Levine (2002), Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)
• Levine et al. (1999), Role of NEAT in resistance to fat gain
• WHO, Physical activity fact sheet

Cover photo: Woman Workout by Bruce Mars, CC0, via stocksnap.