Calorie Burn Chart

With this Calorie Burn Chart you can quickly work out and compare how many calories you can burn with over 120 different activities and exercises.

This is a very handy tool for helping you to decide which activities to include in your lifestyle for burning lots of calories.

The Calorie Burn Chart shows the Metabolic Equivalent, or MET value for each listed activity. The MET is also known as “multiples of resting metabolic rate” and is basically a value used to compare the energy cost of different physical activities.

One MET is equivalent to your Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR.

As you may know, your BMR is the number of calories your body burns each day whilst totally at rest – in other words, if you were laying in bed all day doing nothing. You can look at this as being the same as an engine that’s idling.

So what that means then, is that an activity like playing basketball for example, which has a MET of 8, will cause your body to burn 8 times as many calories as it would at rest.

You’ll also see that the Calorie Burn Chart below includes the number of calories the average woman would burn per hour whilst taking part in each activity. Now, unless you happen to be the statistically average woman (73.9kg, 23% body fat) these won’t apply to you. They’re just included for reference.

If you’d like to work out exactly how many calories your body would burn with each of these activities, instead of this Calorie Burn Chart you can use the Calorie Burn Calculator, which you’ll also find in the exercise section of the blog.

Alphabetical Calorie Burn Chart

The Calorie Burn Chart below is the same chart, only the activities have been ordered from highest to lowest in MET value, for your convenience.

Ordered Calorie Burn Chart

Calorie Burn Chart Reference: MET data obtained from Ainsworth BE, Haskell WL, Whitt MC et al.
Compendium of physical activities: an update of activity codes and MET intensities.
Med Sci Sports Exerc 2000; 32(9): S498-S516 (suppl)

Please keep in mind that the MET and calorie values shown in this Calorie Burn Chart are only approximate figures.

A variety of factors, for example the intensity with which you perform any activity, can naturally affect how many calories you burn. Also note that this chart doesn’t take into account any environmental factors for the activities, such as running into the wind or up hills.

Any Calorie Burn Chart should therefore only be used as a guide.