Running and Food How many calories does running burn?

How many calories does a 30-minute run burn?

In the late 1980s, Stanford researcher William Haskell came up with the idea of one master list that would give every physical activity a standard energy cost, so that studies of exercise and health would all score activity the same way. Barbara Ainsworth, then a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota, built it in 1989. The first Compendium of Physical Activities came out in 1993 with 477 activities. The 2024 edition lists dozens of kinds of running alone, from jogging in place to racing a marathon.

Each entry is a MET value: how many times your resting burn an activity takes. Multiply it by your body weight and the time, and you get a workable estimate of a workout's calories. Here's what that comes to for 30 minutes of running.

Calories in 30 minutes, from the 2024 Compendium values for each pace, rounded to the nearest 10. In kilometers, those paces are about 7:27, 6:13, 5:36, and 4:58.

Run for a set time and pace matters: faster running burns more each minute. A 150-pound runner out for 30 minutes burns roughly 290 calories at 12 minutes a mile and 400 at 8. Weight matters just as much. At any pace, a 210-pound runner burns about 40 percent more than a 150-pound one, because there's more of you to carry down the road.

How many calories does running a mile burn?

In 2012, exercise scientists Linda Wilkin, Antoinette Cheryl, and Bryan Haddock measured the oxygen use of 30 adults of average fitness as they walked 1,600 meters (about a mile) and ran it at roughly a 10-minute-mile pace. The group averaged about 157 pounds. The run burned about 113 calories (471 kilojoules), and the walk about 89.

That lines up with the handy rule of thumb: about 100 calories a mile for a 150-pound runner. For your own number, multiply your weight in pounds by about 0.7. In metric, it's close to 1 calorie per kilogram for every kilometer.

Look across each row of the table below and something surprising shows up. Per mile, pace hardly matters. Run faster and you burn more each minute, but you finish the mile sooner, so the two nearly cancel out. What moves the number is your weight.

Calories per mile, from the same 2024 Compendium values, rounded to the nearest 5. Differences of 5 or 10 between paces are too small to matter in an estimate like this.

So a 5K burns roughly 330 to 360 calories for a 150-pound runner, whether it takes 25 minutes or 37.

Why every calorie number is a rough guide

The MET system rests on one assumption: that everyone at rest burns the same amount of energy for their size. In 2005, Nuala Byrne and her colleagues measured resting burn directly in 769 adults, and the title of their paper sums up what they found: "Metabolic equivalent: one size does not fit all." The standard value, they wrote, "overestimates the actual resting VO2 value on average by 35%."

So treat every calorie number, whether it comes from a chart, a calculator, or a watch, as roughly right. The standard values assume a resting burn that's higher than many people's, so your real number for a run may come in a little under the chart, and estimates get closer when they're scaled to you. That's why I say "roughly" all through this guide. Keep in mind, too, that the chart counts the whole burn, including about 10 calories a mile you'd have burned sitting on the couch anyway.

The good news is that you don't need a perfect number. You need a steady one you can learn from. Keep a record of your runs and your meals for a few weeks and you'll see how your energy, your long runs, and your weight respond. That pattern tells you more than any single estimate.

How much more should you eat on run days?

When Shalane Flanagan was running over 100 miles a week, she told espnW in 2015 that "food and fueling has become a focal point in my training." Her usual training day started with "a big bowl of oatmeal," then a smoothie after the workout, fruit and nuts through the day, a homemade bar before her second session, and often salmon for dinner.

That's what your number is for: it tells you how much more a run day needs. An easy 4 miles adds roughly 400 calories for a 150-pound runner, and a 10-mile long run roughly 1,000. Eating to match your training is what lets those runs turn into fitness.

After each run, eat a meal or snack with carbs to refill what you used and protein to help your muscles repair. Runners need more of both than people who don't train. Spread protein through the day, with some every 3 to 4 hours. On long runs past about 90 minutes, a little carbohydrate along the way helps you go longer.

Should you eat less on rest days?

In 2004, a team led by Vincent Onywera of Kenyatta University tracked what elite Kenyan distance runners ate during a week of hard training. Their diet was about three-quarters carbohydrate (76.5 percent), which is a lot of fuel. Even so, they came up short. They ate about 2,990 calories a day and burned about 3,600, and their weight dipped a little over the 7 days. If elite runners can fall behind in a hard week, the rest of us can too.

So yes, eat a little less on a rest day, because you burn less. But only a little. Your body is still busy recovering from the week, so eat normal meals. A rest day is not a fasting day.

Falling short for weeks shows up in everyday ways: you're tired all the time, your legs never feel fresh, you get sick more often, you sleep badly, and your paces stall. They're signs the International Olympic Committee's experts list for athletes who under-eat. Over months, it also raises the risk of stress fractures and blunts the fitness you're training for.

Does running help you lose weight?

Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke, spent weeks with the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania, collecting urine samples and tracking their activity to measure their energy use. As Duke's magazine put it, "the Hadza burned about the same number of calories per day as people in the United States." His takeaway: "You have to think about diet and exercise as two different tools for two different jobs," he said. "Diet is the tool for managing your weight."

The research on weight loss says much the same thing. The size of your calorie deficit is what drives fat loss, however you create it. Running raises what you burn, but it's easy to eat a run's worth of calories back without noticing, so the running alone rarely moves the scale.

If weight is part of your goal, the number on this page helps you plan, not punish. Keep the deficit moderate, about half a percent to one percent of your weight a week, which keeps more of your muscle. Take it from your food across the week, not from your run days, and keep the carbs around your long and hard runs, so those runs stay strong. My guide to running for weight loss covers the rest.

What to do with your number

Pontzer doesn't stop at weight. "Exercise is the tool for everything else related to health," he said. The calories are only one part of what your runs do for you.

So use your number as a guide, not a scorecard. Roughly 100 calories a mile at 150 pounds, more if you weigh more, less if you weigh less. Eat more on run days, refuel with carbs and protein after each run, and eat normal meals on rest days. Get the food right and the running feels better, and that's what keeps you coming back to it.