How Many Calories Does Weight Lifting Burn?

How many calories weight lifting burns depends on your weight and your effort. At 70 kg (154 lb), the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities gives about 123 kcal for 30 minutes of ordinary weight training, about 175 kcal for a squat and deadlift session and about 210 kcal for vigorous lifting. These are rough estimates for the minutes you spend training, not a measurement of your body.

How many calories does weight lifting burn in 30 minutes?

The Compendium rates three kinds of lifting by METs, and the MET value is where effort enters. A MET is the energy you use sitting still, about 1 kcal per kg of body weight per hour, so calories equal METs × kg × hours. The Compendium’s own conversion page gives that rule.

• Multiple exercises, 8–15 reps at varied resistance: 3.5 METs (code 02054).
• Squats and deadlifts, slow or explosive effort: 5.0 METs (code 02052).
• Free weights, power lifting or body building, vigorous effort: 6.0 METs (code 02050).

I ran the numbers for three body weights over 30 minutes and rounded to whole kcal.

Body weight	Ordinary session (3.5 METs)	Squats and deadlifts (5.0 METs)	Vigorous (6.0 METs)
55 kg (121 lb)	96 kcal	138 kcal	165 kcal
70 kg (154 lb)	123 kcal	175 kcal	210 kcal
90 kg (198 lb)	158 kcal	225 kcal	270 kcal

For 70 kg at 3.5 METs the sum is 3.5 × 70 kg × 0.5 h = 122.5 kcal. Double it for an hour and you get 245 kcal.

These numbers are totals. They include what your body would have used sitting on the couch, which is 1 MET, and how many calories you burn a day shows how big that resting part is. For the extra the session adds, take one MET off first: at 70 kg that is 2.5 × 70 × 0.5 = 88 kcal, not 123.

Pick the row closest to how your last session felt. Then count the minutes from your first warm-up set to your last working set, rests included, because the table has no separate row for rest between sets.

Does lifting beat a brisk walk for calories?

Per minute, ordinary lifting burns less than a brisk walk, and vigorous lifting burns more. Harvard Health’s chart for a 155 lb person over 30 minutes lists 108 kcal for general weight lifting, 216 kcal for vigorous lifting and 133 kcal for walking at 3.5 mph.

That chart was last reviewed in March 2021 and doesn’t name its MET edition. Its 108 kcal works out to about 3.1 METs (108 ÷ 0.5 h ÷ 70.3 kg), a little under the Compendium’s 3.5. I take the 108 and the 123 together as a range for the same session.

If you walk as well, the steps to calories calculator uses the same Compendium METs for walking.

Do you keep burning calories after you lift?

A little, and nobody has a number for your session. A review in Sports Medicine found a more prolonged and substantial afterburn, known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), after hard resistance exercise than after moderate resistance exercise. The same review says how lifting intensity and duration set the size and length of that effect hasn’t been determined.

One small study backs the direction. Ten young men did resistance training, steady aerobic exercise and interval aerobic exercise, each matched for energy cost. Twelve hours later, resting metabolic rate was higher after resistance training than after the steady session, and it still was at 21 hours. Ten men is a small sample. I read it as “the effect exists”, not “it adds up to a meal”.

Muscle itself has a running cost. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition tested published resting rates against MRI and calorimetry in 131 adults and found them valid below age 50: 13 kcal per kg per day for skeletal muscle and 4.5 for fat tissue. One extra kilogram of muscle therefore uses about 13 kcal a day, which is small. Lifting builds it slowly, so don’t plan a day around it. That running cost carries on through the night too, as how many calories you burn sleeping shows.

My habit is to add nothing for afterburn. The effect is real but unmeasured for ordinary sessions, and a number I made up would be worse than none. Resting burn also moves a little with your cycle, and whether you burn more calories on your period shows how little.

How accurate is the calorie number on a watch or gym machine?

Not very. Treat it as a guess. Wrist devices were tested against a lab method in a Stanford study of seven devices. No device kept its error in energy expenditure below 20%, and median errors ran from 27.4% to 92.6% across devices. A systematic review of 158 publications reached the same verdict for energy: no brand was accurate.

The Compendium’s authors are just as plain about their own table. In the 2024 update they write that it can serve as a starting point but does not reflect precise individual values. One study they cite found women with obesity used about 8% to 15% more energy across treadmill speeds than women without. Your own burn may sit above or below the table.

Use the table to compare sessions with each other. It can’t settle the last 50 kcal of your day.

What should I do with the number I just calculated?

Log the session at the row you picked, and don’t treat it as a food allowance. The estimates are loose, so I count at most half of any exercise number when I plan my food, and on many days none. The half is my own rule of thumb, and I haven’t found a published guideline behind it. How many calories you should burn a day explains why there is no daily target to chase.

Two cautions. These METs come from adults aged 19 to 59, so they don’t fit teenagers or older adults. And if you have a heart condition or you’re pregnant, ask your doctor how hard to train.

For a week, write down the minutes, the row you picked and the table’s calories after each session. One bad day proves nothing. The minutes and the weight on the bar are numbers you can compare from one session to the next, and the calorie estimate beside them will keep wobbling.