You walked briskly for 45 minutes this morning, or finished an hour of yoga, and now you want a straight answer: how many calories did that actually burn? One small number called the MET, your body weight and a stopwatch are enough to get a solid estimate in under a minute.
What a MET actually measures
MET stands for metabolic equivalent of task. It is a simple way of rating how hard an activity is compared with sitting still. By convention, 1 MET is the energy you use while sitting quietly, which works out to roughly 1 kilocalorie per kilogram of body weight per hour.
Every other activity is expressed as a multiple of that resting level. As the standard definition puts it, “A 4 MET activity expends 4 times the energy used by the body at rest.”
MET values for common morning routines
- Walking slowly (around 3 km/h): 2.0 MET
- Walking at about 4.8 km/h (3 mph): 3.0 MET
- A yoga session with asanas and pranayama: 3.3 MET
- Vigorous Surya Namaskar with jumping transitions: 7.4 MET
- Jogging at about 9 km/h (5.6 mph): 8.8 MET
Anything under 3 MET counts as light activity, 3 to 6 as moderate and 6 or more as vigorous.
The formula: three numbers, one multiplication
Because 1 MET is about 1 kcal per kilogram per hour, the calculation is a single line:
Calories burned ≈ MET × your weight in kg × time in hours
Convert minutes to hours first: 45 minutes is 0.75 hours, 30 minutes is 0.5 and 15 minutes is 0.25.
A real example: the 45 minute morning walk
Say you weigh 70 kg and walk at about 4.8 km/h for 45 minutes. That walk is rated 3.0 MET:
3.0 × 70 × 0.75 = about 157 kcal
If you strolled at a slow pace instead (2.0 MET), the same 45 minutes would come to 2.0 × 70 × 0.75 = 105 kcal. Weight matters too: the brisk walk comes to roughly 124 kcal at 55 kg and 203 kcal at 90 kg.
Two more quick checks for a 60 kg person:
- One hour of yoga: 3.3 × 60 × 1 = 198 kcal
- 15 minutes of vigorous Surya Namaskar: 7.4 × 60 × 0.25 = 111 kcal
Using MET-minutes to track your week
Health guidelines often count activity in MET-minutes: MET × minutes. Thirty minutes at 4 MET equals 120 MET-minutes, exactly the same as 15 minutes at 8 MET.
The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association recommend that healthy adults aged 18 to 65 do 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week, or 20 minutes of vigorous exercise three days a week. Walk at 3 MET for 30 minutes five times and you collect 450 MET-minutes, or 7.5 MET-hours a week.
One review of the research found that adding 11.25 MET-hours a week of activity was linked with a 23% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 26% lower risk of type 2 diabetes. At 3 MET, that is 225 minutes a week, or 45 minute walks on five days.
Common mistakes and nuances
The result is an estimate, and often a generous one
The 1 MET baseline was originally measured on a single healthy 40-year-old man weighing 70 kg, so it is a convention rather than your personal number. Lab measurements have found that it overestimates actual resting energy use by about 20% to 30% on average, mostly because of differences in body fat versus lean mass. Your 157 kcal walk could realistically be somewhere around 110 to 126 kcal.
Not all of it is extra
The formula counts the energy you would have burned anyway by sitting on the sofa. Subtract 1 from the MET value to see the extra effort: (3.0 − 1) × 70 × 0.75 is about 105 kcal on top of resting. If you want to understand what your body burns at rest, our guide to BMR and daily calorie needs explains the other half of the picture.
Speed decides the MET value
A “walk” or a “jog” is not one fixed number: jogging at about 9 km/h is 8.8 MET, while running at about 13 km/h (8.1 mph) is 12.9 MET. If your app shows your pace in minutes per kilometre, our pace calculator and our guide on pace versus speed will help you convert it to km/h and pick the right row.
This guide is for general information, not medical advice. If you have a heart condition or are starting exercise after a long break, check with a doctor first.
