Do You Burn More Calories on Your Period?

You burn slightly more calories in the days before your period than during it, and the gap is small. Resting metabolism runs about 30 to 120 kcal a day higher in the luteal phase than in the follicular phase. The luteal phase is the stretch between ovulation and your next period, and the follicular phase starts with bleeding. That range comes from a 2026 review of seven studies.

Do you burn more calories on your period?

Not much. The rise comes mostly after ovulation, not during bleeding. The studies compare two stretches of the cycle. The follicular phase begins on day 1 of your period and runs to ovulation. The luteal phase runs from ovulation to the next period. The higher resting burn turns up in the luteal phase.

The proposed reason is hormonal. The 2026 review notes that estrogen and progesterone peak together in the mid-luteal phase. It adds that progesterone has a thermogenic effect, meaning it can raise heat production and so energy use. The review treats this as a hypothesis and says the link between phase and resting burn is still incompletely understood.

Older evidence points the same way. A 2020 meta-analysis of 26 studies and 318 women found a small but significant effect. Resting rate was higher in the luteal phase, with an effect size of 0.33 (95% CI 0.17 to 0.49). In studies since 2000 the effect shrank to 0.23 and was no longer significant (95% CI -0.00 to 0.47).

A 2026 review looked at seven newer studies. Five showed a trend toward a higher rate in the luteal phase. Four reached significance. It puts the size at about 3 to 5 percent and warns that this may overlap with ordinary day-to-day variation. Three of its studies are in the table below, picked to show the spread.

Study	Luteal minus follicular resting burn	Significant?
Löfberg et al., 2024	+40 kcal a day	No (p = 0.061)
Malo-Vintimilla et al., 2024	+37 kcal a day	Yes (p = 0.040)
Maury-Sintjago et al., 2022	+121.6 kcal a day	Yes (p = 0.004)

Resting metabolism only. Each study used a different group of women, and Löfberg compared the early follicular with the mid-luteal phase.

You spend the same resting burn asleep too, and how many calories you burn sleeping puts a number on a night.

Why do the studies disagree?

Mostly because the studies are small. The 2020 meta-analysis found that sample sizes ranged from 5 to 32 women, and most of the studies had 10 women or fewer. Its authors say a study needs 64 to detect a medium effect, so adequately powered work might find no effect at all.

Dating the phase is the other problem. In the 2026 review, Gould and colleagues relied on self-reported dates, while Kuikman and colleagues confirmed ovulation with hormone tests. The second study found no significant difference between early follicular and mid-luteal resting burn (p = 0.875).

The sensible conclusion is a modest one. If a source tells you the luteal bump is several hundred kcal, ask which study it came from, because the reviews here don’t support it.

How big is a 30 to 120 kcal difference?

Up to about one banana a day. One ripe banana (115 g) has 101 kcal, from 88 kcal per 100 g × 1.15. The top of the range is a bit over one banana, and the bottom is under a third of one.

The equation that estimates a woman’s daily burn in the 2023 NASEM report has a typical error of 246 kcal a day. The cycle’s effect is roughly two to eight times smaller than that error, so no calculator can see it and no scale will show it on its own. A typical session in how many calories sex burns lands inside that range as well. For how a whole day’s burn adds up, there is how many calories you burn a day.

To see what a walk adds to your day, try the steps to calories calculator and set the result beside the cycle’s 30 to 120 kcal.

Do you eat more before your period?

On average, yes. A meta-analysis of 15 datasets covering 330 women found a higher energy intake in the luteal phase. It was 1,959 kcal a day against 1,791 in the follicular phase, a crude difference of 168 kcal. The studies enrolled women with an average BMI of 18.5 to 25, no history of disordered eating and a mean age of 26.

Put that next to the burn. The extra eating, 168 kcal, is larger than the extra burn of 30 to 120 kcal. On average, eating shifts more than burning. The picture across studies is mixed: 8 of the 15 found a statistically significant difference, and 7 of those 8 found higher intake in the luteal phase. The authors flag inconsistent methods for measuring food and for dating the phases, and an average hides individuals.

Should I change my calorie goal around my period?

I wouldn’t. The burn effect is smaller than the error of the number it would adjust, and the eating effect varies from person to person. Adding a cycle adjustment to your goal adds complexity you can’t verify. There is no daily burn target to hit either, as how many calories you should burn a day explains.

Look at a full cycle instead. Average your logged calories for the seven days before your period, then for the seven days after it starts, and compare the two. Does your weight trend hold steady across the month? Then there’s nothing to fix.

The reviews cover healthy, naturally menstruating women, so their figures say nothing about hormonal contraception, pregnancy or menopause. A cycle that is absent, very irregular, painful or very heavy is a question for a doctor.

Calsa draws your weight as a smoothed trend, so a single weigh-in doesn’t read as a jump, and you can hide the number entirely.