Calories by activity

How it’s calculated

The MET (metabolic equivalent) measures how much an activity burns compared with rest. 1 MET is what you burn sitting still doing nothing: about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilo and minute, roughly 1 kcal per kilo and hour. Swimming at a moderate pace is 8 METs: about 8 times your resting burn.

For net kcal, that 1 MET is subtracted, since it’s already in your maintenance, as in the Evzia app:

Net calories = (MET − 1) × 3.5 × weight (kg) ÷ 200 × minutes

3.5 × weight ÷ 200 is the kcal in each MET in one minute: 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilo and minute, and about 5 kcal for every liter of oxygen.

The METs come from the 2024 Compendium of Physical Activities for adults (Herrmann et al.): more than a thousand activities, most with their burn measured in studies that analyze the air you breathe. For each activity on the list, the app uses three: light, moderate and vigorous.

Which intensity to pick

With the talk test, while you’re doing the activity:

• Light: you can talk and even sing.
• Moderate: you can talk, but not sing.
• Vigorous: you can only say a few words.

The moderate and vigorous ones are those of the U.S. CDC talk test, a way to know the intensity without a heart rate monitor.

Its limits

• A MET is an average: two people doing the same thing can burn different amounts, depending on their fitness, their technique or how hard they push.
• The Compendium METs are for adults aged 19 to 59. For 60 and over there’s a separate Compendium (Willis et al., 2024), and the calculator doesn’t tell them apart: take it as an approximation.
• Padel isn’t in the Compendium: the tennis values are used (for light, the doubles one). The elliptical has no light level: the value for a stationary bike at 50 watts is used. And for vigorous Pilates, the value for floor exercises at moderate effort. Rowing is the rowing machine.
• “Other activity” uses generic values for each intensity: 2.5 MET in light, 4.5 in moderate and 7.5 in vigorous.
• Walking and running outdoors aren’t here: they go with your steps. The treadmill has its own calculator, with the speed and the incline.

The activities and their METs

The METs the calculator and the app use, with the code of each one in the 2024 Compendium. For example, 01016 is “bicycling at a moderate, self-selected pace”, and 02048, “elliptical, moderate effort”.

A worked example

Half an hour of each activity at 70 kg

Net calories in 30 minutes for a person who weighs 70 kg, with the same math as the calculator.

To get it right

• Pick the intensity with the talk test, not by how tired you end up.
• Enter only the minutes you’re moving: not the locker room or long breaks.
• If a session has different parts (an easy warm-up and then pushing harder), work out each part separately and add them up.
• If your watch or the machine gives you its calories, compare with the active ones, not the total.
• Enter your weight today.

Frequently asked questions

What is a MET?

A way to measure how much an activity burns compared with rest. 1 MET is what you burn sitting still doing nothing: about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kilo and minute, roughly 1 kcal per kilo and hour. An activity of 6 METs burns about 6 times that while you’re doing it.

Why are these net calories?

Because what you’d burn without moving in those minutes is already in your maintenance: if you added it again, you’d count it twice. That’s why 1 MET, the resting one, is subtracted. The Evzia app does the same, with the treadmill and with steps.

How many calories do I burn in an hour of cycling, swimming or padel?

At 70 kg and moderate intensity, about 441 net kcal cycling, 515 swimming and 426 playing padel (a racket sport played in doubles on a small walled court). With a different weight it changes in proportion: see the half-hour table or work out your own.

Why aren’t walking and running here?

Because outdoors they already count with your steps: if you added them here too, you’d count them twice. To work them out, use steps to calories, and for the treadmill, its own calculator, which takes the speed and the incline into account.

My watch gives a different number: which one do I use?

Watches use their own formulas, often with your heart rate, and no calculation is exact. What matters is comparing like with like: if your watch separates active and total calories, the ones that compare with these are the active ones. In the app you can type in your watch’s numbers instead of calculating them.