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With weight 75 kg, duration 45 minutes, calories burned comes to 579 kcal — calories burned. It is reached in 3 steps, the last of which is 12.8625 * 45, and each one is printed on the page with its numbers filled in. The formula is the one published by Compendium of Physical Activities, not an approximation fitted to it.

Energy burned by an activity from its MET value, body weight and duration. Net of what you would have burned sitting still, which trackers leave in.

Formula and sources checked · How we check

Weight 75 kg, Duration 45 minutes, Activity Running, 6 mph — 9.8 MET

579 kcal

Calories burned for the example below. Editing a field recomputes the calculator below; this figure holds the answer the page was loaded with.

It is written into the HTML rather than drawn by a script, so a search engine reading this page without running JavaScript still finds an answer.

Calories burned
579 kcal
Calories per minute
9.8 * 3.5 * 75 / 20012.863 kcal/min
Calories burned
12.8625 * 45578.813 kcal
Net of what you would have burned at rest
578.8125 - (1 * 3.5 * 75 / 200) * 45519.75 kcal

Population-level estimate. Individual energy cost varies substantially.

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Worked example

45 minutes of running at 6 mph for a 75 kg person is 579 kcal gross — but 59 of those you would have burned lying on the sofa, so the net cost of the run is 520. Fitness trackers usually report the gross figure, which is why their numbers flatter.

How to work it out yourself

  1. 1.Pick the activity that matches the effort, not the label. A MET value describes intensity, and easy cycling and hard cycling differ by a factor of three.
  2. 2.Enter body mass and duration. The burn scales linearly with both, which is why the same session costs a heavier person proportionally more.
  3. 3.Read the net figure if you are counting a deficit. The gross number includes the resting burn you would have paid anyway just for being alive during that hour.

The formula

  1. Calories per minute9.8 * 3.5 * 75 / 200
  2. Calories burned12.8625 * 45
  3. Net of what you would have burned at rest578.8125 - (1 * 3.5 * 75 / 200) * 45

Source: Compendium of Physical Activities — MET reference values, CDC — physical activity for adults

Questions people actually ask

What is a MET?
A multiple of resting metabolic rate. One MET is sitting quietly, about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kg per minute. A 9.8 MET run costs roughly ten times resting energy, which is what makes the units comparable across activities.
Should I subtract my resting burn?
If you are counting a deficit, yes. Gross calories include the energy you would have spent existing anyway, and that overlap is already inside your TDEE. Double-counting it is why "exercise calories eaten back" so often stalls weight loss.
How accurate are MET values?
They are population averages measured in labs and can be off by 20–30% for an individual — efficiency, terrain and fitness all shift them. Treat the number as a ranking of activities rather than a precise budget.

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