How to calculate the calorie expenditure of physical exercise?

Have you ever wondered how many calories you actually burn during a workout? Calculating the calorie expenditure of physical exercise can be the missing step to achieving your goals, whether it is to lose weight, maintain your weight or gain muscle mass more efficiently.

Understanding how energy expenditure works during physical activity helps you to create a more strategic and personalized routine, combining exercises that are appropriate for your body and lifestyle.

What is physical exercise?

Physical exercise is any planned, structured and repetitive body movement with the aim of improving or maintaining health and physical fitness. It can be a light walk, an intense weight training session, a dance class or even activities such as swimming and cycling.

Regular exercise strengthens muscles, improves mood, regulates sleep and, of course, contributes to controlling body weight through calorie expenditure.

What is calorie expenditure?

Calorie expenditure is the amount of energy, measured in calories, that your body uses to function. Even at rest, your body consumes calories to maintain vital functions such as breathing, circulation and digestion. But it is during physical exercise that this consumption increases significantly.

In general, daily calorie expenditure is divided into three parts:

• Basal metabolic rate (BMR): around 60 to 75% of the daily total.

• Physical activity: between 15 and 30%.

• Thermic effect of food: around 10%.

In other words, moving your body can make all the difference in the total calories you burn per day.

What influences calorie expenditure?

How much you burn during physical activity depends on several factors. Here are the main ones:

• Body weight: the heavier you are, the greater your expenditure, as it takes more energy to move your body.

• Type of exercise: more intense activities, such as running, crossfit or swimming, burn more than light exercises, such as walking.

• Duration and intensity: long, high-intensity workouts require more energy.

• Body composition: People with more muscle mass burn more calories, even at rest.

• Age and sex: Men generally have a faster metabolism, and metabolism tends to slow down with age.

• Physical conditioning: The more you train, the more efficient your body will be – and this can reduce calorie expenditure for equivalent effort.

How to burn more calories to lose weight?

If your goal is to lose weight, the math is simple: you need to burn more calories than you consume. This calorie deficit can be achieved by combining a healthy diet and increased physical activity.

Here are some tips to increase calorie expenditure:

• Include aerobic and strength exercises: running, cycling and swimming help burn calories, while weight training increases your lean mass, accelerating your metabolism.

• Do interval training (HIIT): alternating peaks of effort with periods of rest increases calorie consumption even after training.

• Move more in your daily life: climb stairs, walk more, sweep the house — all of these things count.

• Get a good night's sleep: poor sleep slows down your metabolism and increases your appetite.

• Drink plenty of water: staying hydrated helps your body function better and can even slightly increase your energy expenditure.

Formula for calculating exercise calorie expenditure

One of the simplest ways to estimate calorie expenditure is to use the MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task), a measurement that represents the energy expenditure of an activity in relation to resting metabolism.

The formula is:

Calorie expenditure (kcal) = MET x Weight (kg) x Time (hours)

• 1 MET = resting energy expenditure (approximately 1 kcal/kg/h)

• Activities such as light walking = 3 METs

• Moderate running = 8 METs

• Intense weight training = 6 METs

• Vigorous swimming = 9.8 METs

Source: Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al., 2011)

Practical example

Let's imagine that you weigh 70 kg and take a spinning class (approximately 8 METs) for 1 hour:

Calorie expenditure = 8 x 70 x 1 = 560 kcal

If you do this exercise 3 times a week, you will be burning around 1,680 kcal per week with this activity alone. This can be a great help in weight loss — remember that 1 kg of body fat is equivalent to around 7,700 kcal.

Useful tool: calorie expenditure calculator

To make things even easier, you can use YAZIO's calorie expenditure calculator. Simply enter your personal data, such as weight, height, age and level of physical activity, to get an accurate estimate of the calories burned during different exercises.

🔗 Access the calculator here: Calorie Expenditure Calculator - YAZIO

Why does this matter?

Knowing how much you burn in each workout allows you to adjust your diet and routine more intelligently. For example, if your goal is to lose half a kilo per week, you need to generate a deficit of around 550 to 770 kcal per day. And this can be achieved by combining the calorie reduction in your diet with the increase in physical activity.

Having this control helps you avoid frustration and even overdoing it — both in your workout and in your diet.

Conclusion

Calculating the calorie expenditure of physical exercise is a practical and intelligent way to transform your effort into real results. Now that you know the formula, the factors that influence expenditure and the best strategies for burning calories, you can use this information to train with more purpose and achieve your goal with health and motivation.

If you want to lose weight, get in shape or just feel better about your body, start right now with what you have. Every step counts — and the more you move, the closer you get.