What a MET is
The metabolic equivalent of task sets sitting quietly at 1 and expresses every other activity as a multiple. One MET was defined as an oxygen consumption of 3.5 millilitres per kilogram of body mass per minute, which corresponds to roughly one kilocalorie per kilogram per hour. Running at 6 mph is listed at 9.8 MET, meaning it costs about 9.8 times resting.
The conversion to kilocalories per minute is MET times 3.5 times body mass in kilograms divided by 200. For a 165 lb person — 74.8 kg — one MET is about 1.31 kcal per minute, so 30 minutes at 9.8 MET gives roughly 385 kcal. The values come from the 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities, compiled by Ainsworth and colleagues, which catalogues over 800 activities and is the standard reference behind most published exercise calorie tables including the ones inside fitness apps.
The definition has a known flaw worth stating: the 3.5 ml/kg/min figure was derived from a single reference subject, a 40-year-old 70 kg man, and measured resting metabolic rate in most adults is lower than that — commonly closer to 2.6 to 3.0 ml/kg/min, and lower still in women, in older adults, and in people carrying more fat mass. This means the standard MET calculation modestly overestimates for a large share of the population, before any of the other error sources are considered.
Heavier bodies burn more for the same activity
Body mass enters the formula linearly, so a 220 lb person burns about a third more than a 165 lb person doing the identical thing for the identical time. This is straightforward physics for weight-bearing activities — walking, running, stairs, hiking — where you are moving your mass against gravity, and it is one of the reasons early weight loss is faster than later weight loss: as you get lighter, the same walk costs less.
It transfers less cleanly to non-weight-bearing activity. In cycling the bike carries most of the mass on the flat and the dominant resistance is aerodynamic; in swimming a larger body has more drag but also more buoyancy and a different body position. The linear-in-mass assumption is a simplification everywhere and a worse one in the water.
Rankings are trustworthy, individual numbers are not
The order in the table is robust. Jump rope beats yoga by a factor of nearly five and that conclusion survives any plausible individual correction. The absolute figures are much softer, and the softness is not evenly distributed.
| Activity | Listed MET | Realistic range | What drives the spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weight training | 5.0 | 3.0 to 6.0 | Rest between sets; circuit versus heavy singles |
| Swimming freestyle | 5.8 | 5.0 to 10.0 | Stroke efficiency and speed; drag varies enormously by skill |
| Cycling | 6.8 | 4.0 to 16.0 | Speed, gradient, wind; the compendium lists many separate entries |
| Hiking | 6.0 | 5.3 to 9.0+ | Gradient and pack weight, neither of which is in the number |
| Running 6 mph | 9.8 | 9.0 to 10.5 | Fairly tight — pace pins it down |
Running and walking are the reliable entries because pace determines the work almost completely. Everything with a rest ratio or a technique component is not really a single number at all.
Gross, net, and the reason food offsets disappoint
Every MET figure is gross expenditure. It includes the roughly 1 MET of resting metabolism running whether or not you exercise, which you would have spent on the sofa. The energy the exercise actually added is the gross figure minus that baseline — the fraction removed is 1 divided by the MET value, so vigorous running loses about ten percent and hatha yoga loses forty.
This matters specifically when converting exercise into food. If a session shows 300 kcal gross and you eat 300 kcal on the strength of it, you have overshot by whatever your resting metabolism contributed during that time. The food table on this page gives both columns for that reason. It is also why exercise-based offsetting tends to underdeliver in practice, alongside the better-documented compensation effects: activity increases appetite in many people, and non-exercise movement across the rest of the day often falls after a hard session.
What the table is genuinely good for
Choosing between two options for the same slot in your week, and calibrating expectations. If you have forty minutes and want the largest cardiovascular stimulus, the ranking answers that. If you assumed an hour of yoga cancels a large lunch, the table corrects you cheaply.
What it is not good for is nutrition arithmetic at the resolution people attempt. Between the reference-subject problem in the MET definition, population-average values with wide within-activity spread, individual metabolic variation, and the gross-versus-net gap, an error of twenty percent in either direction is entirely ordinary and larger errors are common. Treat any single number here as an estimate that is probably in the right neighbourhood, and treat the differences between rows as more reliable than the rows themselves.
Questions people ask
Which exercise burns the most calories per minute?
Among the twenty-two listed, jump rope and running at 7.5 mph are level at 11.8 MET, with stair climbing at 8.8 close behind. That is the answer to the question as asked, and it is not the answer to the question people mean. Per-minute burn is only useful multiplied by minutes sustained, and jump rope at a moderate rate for a continuous hour is not something most people will do, while a run or a hike for the same hour is. The activity that produces the most energy expenditure across a week is usually the one you will actually repeat, not the one at the top of a per-minute table.
Why does my smartwatch give a different number?
Because it uses a different method. Wrist devices estimate from heart rate, motion and personal data, and heart rate responds to caffeine, ambient heat, dehydration, sleep debt and stress as well as to mechanical work — so the same session on two days can score differently. The MET method has the opposite failure: it is a population average that cannot see you at all. Neither is a gold standard, both routinely miss by twenty percent or more in individuals, and validation studies of consumer devices generally find step counting accurate and energy expenditure not. Pick one and watch the trend.
Does weight training burn fewer calories than cardio?
During the session, generally yes, and the MET value for weight training is unusually unreliable because it depends almost entirely on how long you rest between sets — a circuit with short rests and a heavy strength session with three-minute rests are different activities sharing one label. The during-session comparison also misses the point of resistance training, which is preserving lean mass while losing weight. That matters for what the weight loss consists of and for maintaining resting metabolic rate, neither of which appears anywhere in a calorie-per-minute table. The post-exercise oxygen consumption effect is real but modest, typically a small percentage of session cost rather than the large bonus it is sometimes claimed to be.
Can I use this to plan how much to eat?
Not at the resolution the numbers imply. Use it to compare activities and to calibrate expectations — knowing that a doughnut costs half an hour of running is genuinely useful context. Do not use it to add calories back into a daily target, because the figures are gross, the MET reference value overestimates for many people, and exercise energy expenditure is partly compensated by increased intake and reduced incidental movement. If you are tracking a deficit, track intake carefully and treat exercise as improving health and preserving muscle rather than as a budget line you can spend.