By: Chris Gates

I think I know why you’re here.

You’re working out hard, pushing yourself to the limits, and you want to know exactly how many calories do you burn in a workout?

You might wonder that during your strength training days, cardio days, or both.

You want to fuel your body appropriately, and figure out how you can manipulate your diet to achieve your goals. Whether they be…

• Fat loss
• Muscle gain
• Strength development
• Building stamina and endurance

Well you’re in luck!

In this article, you’re going to learn everything you need to know about how many calories you burn.

We’ll walk through all of the scenarios, and talk about how each form of exercise contributes to your overall energy expenditure.

In fact, we’ll define energy expenditure and talk about how that relates to your fitness goals, as well!

And to cap things off, I’ll map out some strategies you can use to make sure you manage your fitness goals appropriately to see long-term success.

If that sounds good to you, let’s get started!

Energy Expenditure, Explained

Before we dive into the details, let’s make sure you have an understanding of what energy expenditure is.

Energy expenditure is another way to say “calories burned.”

A calorie is a unit of energy. Your body utilizes the calories you eat from food to give you the energy you need to get through each day.

If you’re eating more calories than your body needs, it means you’re in a calorie surplus. That surplus of calories is often stored as body fat (this is typically how weight gain occurs).

And if you’re consuming fewer calories from food than your body needs, it means you’re in a calorie deficit. In this scenario, your body will utilize its own tissue (typically body fat) to generate the energy it needs (this is how fat loss occurs).

Energy expenditure is a simple energy in vs. energy out equation on a daily basis, which leads to changes in your body composition over time.

(If I’m being honest, it’s a bit more complicated than simply calories in vs. calories out. But for the purposes of you accomplishing your fitness goals, this is what you need to understand to see progress!)

How Many Calories Do You Burn in a Workout? How to Track Calories Burned

Virtually everybody nowadays has a way to track calories burned.

• The treadmill estimates it when you walk or run.
• Your Apple Watch tallies it up for the entire day.
• There are calorie burning calculators galore available on the internet.

But how accurate are those numbers?

Is what you’re seeing actually true?

In short… Those numbers are incorrect.

By a lot.

A 2017 study out of Stanford found the most accurate fitness trackers to be off by 27 percent or more. In fact, the most inaccurate devices were off by as much as 93 percent.

A major problem researchers noticed was that, “people are basing life decisions on the data provided by these devices.”

The technology is improving, but the problem sill persists. People make decisions for their health based on incorrect information.

And the thing is, we’re probably very far off from being able to track calories burned with any type of confidence. At least when it comes to our exercise equipment or wearable fitness technology.

To measure calories burned accurately, you’d need to sit in an exercise lab in a room that measures the heat coming off your body.

That’s not practical. And replicating it with a wrist watch is damn near impossible.

How Many Calories Do You Burn Lifting Weights?

So if there’s no way to track calories burned accurately, how can we possibly figure out the answer to this question: how many calories do you burn in a workout?

Great question.

We can turn to the research to give us a general idea.

First off, there are a ton of variables that will make each person’s energy expenditure different.

• Height
• Weight
• Age
• Sex
• Muscle mass
• Fat mass
• Total exercise workload

When all of those things are factored together, this 2019 study found that men and women can realistically expect to burn somewhere in the range of 75-300 calories per strength training session.

Smaller females would typically fall into the lower end of that range. Larger/more muscular men would be towards the top end.

Other research is in the same ballpark:

• This 2001 study saw women burn an average of 155 calories in a high-volume lifting workout.
• A 2004 study observed men burning an average of 135 calories, and women burning an average of 82 calories, in a low-volume lifting session.

All of this is to say… You’re probably not burning nearly as many calories as you think when you lift weights.

Most people tend to really overestimate, or overvalue, the impact of one workout when it comes to burning calories.

It probably amounts to right around the same calorie count as a protein bar and a banana. Maybe even less.

How Many Calories Do You Burn Doing Cardio?

If we’re talking about finding a form of exercise that’s effective for burning calories, it’s most certainly cardio.

But once again, you’re probably vastly overestimating how many calories actually get burned in one workout.

While you can burn calories doing any form of exercise, cardio is going to the most economical from a time and efficiency standpoint.

What may take an hour to burn while lifting weights could be done in as little as 20 minutes with high-intensity cardio.

A general rule of thumb, as pointed out in this MASS Research Review article, is “a 150lb person burns about 100 (calories) jogging one mile over flat ground.” Which means, you could run a couple of miles in ~20 minutes and burn as much as you would in an entire strength training session.

The longer you do cardio for, or the more intense it is, the more calories you’ll burn.

For instance, this 2015 study found calorie expenditure to be significantly higher when men performed high-intensity interval training, as compared to cycling, jogging, and lifting.

And this diagram from Harvard Medical School indicates that most forms of 30-minute cardio will net you in the range of 200-300 calories per workout.

But something to keep in mind is, the more you do cardio, the more efficient your body will become. And that means, if you keep doing the same cardio workout over and over, you’ll actually start to burn less calories each time you do it.

So while these numbers are slightly higher than the energy expenditure of lifting weights, we’re once again not talking about a whole lot.

How Many Calories Do You Burn in a Workout? The Best Strategy You Can Use

OK, so there are some ballpark estimates we can use. But there’s also a ton of grey area and uncertainty around calories burned in a workout.

So how should you use this information moving forward?

If I were your coach, my advice would be pretty simple…

Don’t use any of it.

I know that may seem confusing, so let me explain.

I’ve been coaching people around the world for years, and this topic comes up with my clients all of the time.

There’s a very common belief that’s been baked into our brains when it comes to fitness: “You need to burn as many calories as possible in your workouts.”

And that mindset is great to keep people in this hamster wheel where you…

• Work out insanely hard
• Make some quick progress
• Eventually burn out
• And quit

Only to try the entire process over again a few months down the road.

I’ve never found tracking calories burned to be a successful approach for managing your bodyweight and body composition.

Instead, here’s what you should do…

Track The Calories You Eat, Not The Calories You Burn

There is a form of calorie counting that can be damn near 100 percent accurate.

Counting the calories you eat.

While you can estimate calories burned in a workout (with a high degree of error), you’d be better off channeling all of that energy into tracking your food.

Because at the end of the day, if you’re able to control the calories going into your mouth, you’ll be able to set and achieve any fitness goal that you have.

If you’re not familiar with how to track your calories, I’ve got an entire article that breaks down the process in simple terms. Give that a read.

By setting up a simple calorie deficit, or calorie surplus, you can focus on fueling your body appropriately in alignment with your goals.

How Many Calories Do You Burn In A Workout? Do This if You Want to Lose Weight

Research actually shows that manipulating your calorie intake is far more impactful for weight loss than adding in more and more exercise.

A 2017 paper analyzed the role of physical activity for weight loss and weight maintenance, and concluded there’s no evidence to show that exercise contributes significantly to weight loss (unless you do an absolutely absurd amount).

The researchers explained that instead of focusing on weight loss as the sole outcome of exercise, we should also recognize the “myriad of other health-related benefits.” And that you should be focused on the calories you eat to see optimal results.

In short, adding more and more and more exercise will NOT result in more and more and more weight loss progress (unless you’re committed to doing hours and hours of it every day, consistently, for months).

There’s not a linear relationship between the two.

So instead, you should get in a moderate calorie deficit and track your calories coming in. Make sure that you’re consistently eating in a deficit.

And if you can do that, you’ll make a ton of progress (regardless of how many calories you end up burning in your workouts).

How Many Calories Do You Burn In A Workout? Do This if You Want to Build Muscle

A common misconception for building muscle is…

“If some is good, more must be better!”

In other words, the more you lift weights, the more you’ll build muscle.

And that’s not entirely true.

At a certain point, you can do too much. Your body can only recover from a certain amount of lifting, so you need to manage your training volume appropriately.

Here are a couple of articles that can help you learn more about how much you should lift, and how to manage your recovery:

• How much should you lift to build muscle?
• How often should you rest from weight training?

People also seem to miss the mark on how much to eat for building muscle. Eating everything in sight will certainly allow your body to build muscle, but you’ll also pack on a ton of excess body fat in the process.

And calculating calories burned to make sure you’re eating more than you burn is a complicated mess.

Instead, get yourself in a moderate calorie surplus, and once again track your calories consistently. Make sure you’re consistently in a surplus.

Track Other Forms of Progress, Too

While you’re tracking your calories, there are a few additional things you can track that are super simple and will help ensure you continue to make progress.

For starters, weigh yourself regularly.

That’s right, hop on the scale every morning and monitor your bodyweight over time. Don’t overreact to one individual weigh-in. Instead, compare your weekly averages over weeks and months to determine if you need to make a change with your diet.

Take progress pictures, too.

Sometimes you won’t see progress on the scale, but you’ll be able to see visual changes in your body composition.

It’s not uncommon to build muscle and burn fat at the same time — especially if you’re a beginner or if you have a lot of weight to lose — and photos will show you if that’s happening.

And finally, take regular waist measurements.

Seeing your waistline shrink is one of, if not the best way to confirm that you’re losing body fat.

You can take this a step further and measure other body parts as well, like your biceps, thighs, and calves if you’re trying to build muscle.

These are all tangible and accurate, and they’ll assist you in your journey to a much greater degree than trying to use calories burned as a guiding factor.

I Hope This Helps!

As you can hopefully see at this point, counting calories burned is a habit that’s most likely going to complicate the process of achieving your fitness goals.

As a quick summary, here’s how we can answer the question of the day: how many calories do you burn in a workout?

• Most people will burn somewhere in the range of 75-300 calories per workout.
• Smaller individuals, or less intense workouts, will be on the lower end of that calorie range.
• Bigger individuals, or more intense workouts, will be on the higher end of that calorie range.
• The longer your workout is, the more calories you’ll burn.
• Cardio is more time efficient for burning calories, but you need to do a lot of it to really make an impact.

So one final time, I’d like to encourage you to NOT track the calories you burn. Instead, track the calories you eat.

It’s accurate, and if you combine it with tracking your body composition, you’ll be able to see TONS of progress. The entire process will make way more sense, too.

And if you’d like help on your fitness journey, I’d love to be your coach! Check out my coaching page to learn more about what 1-on-1 online fitness coaching is like.

If everything there sounds good, submit an application and I’ll reach out to you so we can talk more about your goals.

Thanks for reading!

~ Chris