calories and the MET method
MET stands for metabolic equivalent of task, a unit that compares the energy cost of an activity with the cost of the body at rest. It underlies every calories-burned calculator, and understanding the math behind it keeps you from treating the number as an exact measurement of your specific body.
An 8.0 MET sits above the CDC/ACSM 6.0 floor for vigorous intensity, so these 30 minutes count as 60 moderate-equivalent minutes under the WHO guidelines.
A 3.5 MET falls in the moderate band (3 to 6), so each minute counts one-for-one toward the 150-to-300-minute weekly target, without the doubling vigorous activity gets.
In just 10 minutes, a high MET (8.8) already produces a higher per-minute burn than a full hour of moderate walking: about 10.8 gross kcal/min against 4.3 kcal/min for the walk.
MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) is a unit that compares an activity's expenditure with expenditure at rest. 1 MET is the energy you spend sitting still. Running at 6 mph is about 9.8 METs, meaning it burns nearly ten times more energy than rest. Because MET standardizes intensity, it lets you estimate calories for anyone by adjusting only weight and time, and it is also the unit in which physical activity guidelines define light, moderate and vigorous intensity.
It is the metabolic equivalent of task: how many times an activity's oxygen consumption exceeds sitting at rest (3.5 ml of O2 per kg of body weight per minute). An 8 MET activity uses eight times the oxygen of resting, and that multiple is what the calculator uses to convert minutes and weight into kilocalories.
It depends on what you are comparing. Gross is the total expenditure for the period, including the resting metabolism you would have spent anyway; net isolates only the extra cost of the activity, subtracting 1 MET before multiplying. To compare the "real cost" of exercising against staying still, net is the right metric.
Because the MET formula only uses total body weight, not body composition. It is a known limitation of the method: two people of the same weight, one more muscular and one fattier, get the same estimate even though their real expenditure can differ.
If the run is above the 6 MET floor (most are), it counts as vigorous, and each vigorous minute is worth 2 moderate-equivalent minutes under the 2020 guidelines. One hour of vigorous running equals 2 hours of moderate walking in that accounting, even though the real calorie burn per minute differs between the two.
9.8 MET, vigorous intensity
Start with something you did today:
MET estimate, built from population averages: real expenditure varies a lot from person to person.
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