MET Minutes Per Week Calculator — Track Weekly MET Minutes

The MET minutes per week calculator totals the energy cost of everything you do in a week and expresses it as a single MET-minute score. A MET, or metabolic equivalent, is the rate at which you burn energy at rest; multiplying that by the time and frequency of an activity gives its contribution in MET minutes. This calculator answers the practical question of whether your week of movement adds up to the World Health Organization's recommended 600 MET minutes.

• • Check weekly activity at a glance: Add your main workouts and see if you reach the 600 MET-minute guideline without logging every rep.
• • Compare activities fairly: See why a short run can outscore a long walk by comparing MET values instead of clock time.
• • Plan to close a gap: If you fall short, the calculator shows exactly how many more MET minutes you need and what mix of sessions gets there.
• • Track progress over time: Re-run it each week to watch your total rise as you add sessions or pick higher-MET activities.

MET minutes are useful because they put very different activities on one scale. A 30-minute jog and an hour of gardening can land close together once their MET values are accounted for, which helps you make realistic choices about how to spend your exercise time.

This tool focuses on a single activity at a time so the math stays transparent, then tells you the weekly total and how it sits against the 600 MET-minute benchmark that public-health guidelines use.

Most people reach for the score to settle a recurring worry: am I active enough? A gym session here and a walk there do not add up in your head, but once each is converted to MET minutes the week becomes legible. The guideline is also a weekly average rather than a daily quota, so it suits uneven routines such as a heavy training block followed by travel weeks.

Because MET values track aerobic capacity, the VO2 max calculator gives the endurance context behind them.

The calculator multiplies three numbers you already know about one activity: its MET value, how many minutes each session lasts, and how many sessions you do per week. Those three factors give that activity's weekly MET-minute contribution.

• MET value: The energy cost of the activity as a multiple of rest (1 MET). Brisk walking is about 4.3 MET; running about 11 MET.
• Minutes per session: How long one bout of the activity lasts. Longer sessions scale the total up linearly.
• Sessions per week: How often you repeat the activity. Two sessions doubles the weekly contribution of one.

The MET-minute method comes straight from how physical-activity guidelines are written. The World Health Organization frames its adult recommendation as 600 MET minutes per week, which is another way of stating 150 minutes of moderate activity. Older advice split that into a daily target, but the weekly version is what most bodies of guidance now publish, which is why this calculator reports a full-week total instead of a per-day figure.

Because the formula is linear, you can reason about trade-offs: swapping a 3.5 MET walk for an 8 MET bike ride more than doubles the MET minutes for the same time spent.

The same linearity means a missed session costs a predictable amount. Dropping one of your five weekly walks removes 215 MET minutes from the total, so a bad week becomes a number you can recover rather than a vague sense of falling behind. Treat the result as a weekly running tally, since the guideline is written for the full week and not for any single day.

According to World Health Organization, the World Health Organization recommends at least 600 MET-minutes of physical activity each week, which can be met with 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity.

The fat-burning zone calculator shows the intensity band where moderate MET-level work usually lands.

A few definitions make the MET-minute score easier to read and act on.

MET values are standardized in the Compendium of Physical Activities, which lets you look up a specific movement and drop its number straight into the calculator.

Reading the four ideas together explains why two people can log the same minutes yet earn different health signals. Intensity sets the per-minute rate, frequency and duration set how often that rate applies, and the 600 benchmark tells you what counts as enough across a whole week rather than in a single workout. When the score surprises you, it is usually one of these levers shifting: a faster pace, one extra session, or a longer block, each of which the calculator isolates on its own line.

If you want to see how a treadmill test estimates MET capacity directly, try the Bruce protocol METs calculator.

Work one activity at a time with the MET minutes per week calculator, then add the results across your week.

1. 1 Find the MET value: Look up your activity in a MET table (brisk walk ~4.3, cycling ~8, running ~11) or estimate its intensity.
2. 2 Enter minutes per session: Type how long a typical session lasts. Use a realistic average rather than your best day.
3. 3 Enter sessions per week: Add how many times you do it each week, from 1 to 14.
4. 4 Read the weekly total: The calculator shows your MET minutes and what share of the 600 guideline that represents.
5. 5 Add your other activities: Repeat for each workout or chore and sum the totals to see your true weekly score.
6. 6 Act on the gap: If you are under 600, add a session or pick a higher-MET activity to close it.

Say you walk briskly 30 minutes, five days a week: 4.3 x 30 x 5 = 645 MET minutes, already past the guideline. Add two 45-minute gardening sessions at 3.8 MET and you contribute another 342, for a weekly total near 987.

A useful habit is to log the activities you forget rather than the ones you plan. Commutes on foot, playing with children, and carrying groceries all carry MET values above rest, and they are the movements most likely to push a borderline week over the line without a single trip to the gym.

Use the heart rate calculator to confirm the intensity of each session you log here.

A MET-minute total from the MET minutes per week calculator is more honest than counting workouts or minutes alone.

• • One comparable score: It merges walks, rides, and chores into a single number, so you stop wondering whether a short hard session 'counts' as much as a long easy one.
• • Clear goal post: The 600 MET-minute line gives you a concrete target instead of vague advice to 'move more'.
• • Smarter trade-offs: Seeing MET values helps you choose activities that fit your schedule yet still hit the guideline.
• • Motivation from progress: Watching the weekly total climb makes consistency visible, which is often what keeps a routine going.
• • Pairs with other metrics: MET minutes sit naturally beside heart-rate and calorie data, giving context to how hard your week actually was.

Because the output is a weekly figure, it also smooths out the uneven days that make daily step counts feel discouraging.

The score is most useful as a planning tool, not a verdict. If you train for a sport, MET minutes help you balance hard sessions with the easy volume that keeps you healthy off the field; if you are rebuilding after time off, the 600 benchmark is a gentle, evidence-linked floor rather than a performance test.

Once you know your weekly MET minutes, the calories burned by heart rate calculator turns that effort into an energy estimate.

Three inputs drive the number, and small changes to any one of them move the total a lot.

• • MET values are population averages and ignore personal fitness, terrain, and effort within an activity, so treat the total as an estimate.
• • The calculator scores one activity at a time; sum several manually, and it does not capture unplanned movement like taking stairs.
• • Reaching 600 MET minutes supports general activity guidelines but is not a substitute for medical or training advice tailored to your health.
• • Illness, sleep, and stress change how hard a given session feels, so a fixed MET value cannot capture the day-to-day load your body actually carries.

According to CDC - Physical Activity Guidelines, the CDC notes that 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, meets adult guidelines.

According to Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al., 2011), the Compendium of Physical Activities lists MET values for specific activities so each can be expressed as a multiple of resting metabolism (1 MET).

For higher-MET vigorous work, the anaerobic threshold calculator marks where moderate effort turns hard.