How many calories does weight lifting burn, and what about fat?

How many calories does weight lifting burn? Take an hour of squats, rows and presses for someone who weighs 70 kg (154 lb). By the adult reference values, that hour costs about 245 kcal in total. The catch: about 70 of them would have gone anyway, on the sofa. What the hour adds is about 175 kcal. The real question gets a less flattering answer. In trials of people with overweight or obesity, lifting alone took off about 1 kg of fat in programs averaging roughly 15 weeks, compared with no training, and body weight did not measurably move.

Key takeaways

1. How many calories does weight lifting burn? About 245 kcal an hour at 70 kg, about 175 of them extra.

2. Afterburn: about 7 kcal after one session in trained young men; about 96 a day in the 72-hour study.

3. Muscle: about 13 kcal per kilogram a day at rest, so trial-sized gains add about 10.

4. Fat: with overweight or obesity, lifting alone took off about 1 kg against no training in programs averaging 15 weeks, weight not measurably changed; aerobic training took off more.

5. With eating less: about 5 kg of fat off, and lean mass did not measurably fall.

How many calories does weight lifting burn? Gross and net

An hour of ordinary weight training costs about 3.5 times a standard resting rate. As an estimate, at 70 kg that is about 245 kcal, of which about 70 would have been spent sitting, so about 175 extra. Heavy lifting comes to about 300 to 600 kcal gross across 60 to 100 kg. Over whole sessions with their rests, trained young men of about 84 kg used about 5.3 to 6.5 kcal a minute.

The unit is the MET, an activity's cost as a multiple of a standard resting rate, about 1 kcal per kilogram of body weight an hour. The 2024 Adult Compendium, the reference table for adults aged 19 to 59, puts ordinary multi-exercise lifting at 3.5 METs. Squats and deadlifts get 5.0, vigorous power lifting 6.0, and body-weight moves like lunges and push-ups 3.0 to 6.5 by effort. Because the sum is METs times kilograms, the estimate follows body weight, for women and men alike.

For shorter sessions at 70 kg, 30 minutes of ordinary lifting costs about 122 kcal gross and 45 minutes about 184; gross means everything spent, net only the part above rest.

In a lab, 15 trained young men did a light workout of 15-repetition sets and a heavy one of 5-repetition sets, rests included. The heavy one took 116 minutes against 44 and cost less per minute, roughly 316 against 389 kcal an hour. Heavy lifting means long pauses, and pauses are cheap.

Nobody aged 60 or over is in the adult table; a separate compendium for that age group uses a lower standard resting rate, so these estimates are less exact there. The TDEE calculator adds up a whole day.

The afterburn, counted in calories

After a typical session the extra is small. In 8 trained young men, the 45 minutes after a whole-body workout ran about 10 percent above a rest day, about 7 kcal. After a 100-minute session, 7 young women woke to a resting rate about 60 kcal a day higher. The 72 hours people quote come from one study of 8 overweight young men: about 96 kcal a day above their own baseline, at most about 290 over three days.

Physiologists call it EPOC: extra oxygen used in recovery. A review found it small and short after light sessions, longer and larger after hard resistance work. In one strenuous study, two hours after 90 minutes of lifting, trained men aged 20 to 40 still used 11 to 12 percent more oxygen, and the next morning their resting rate was up 4.7 to 9.4 percent.

Then the famous one. Eight overweight young men, average age 21, did one session, in one version just 15 minutes, and came back on three mornings. Each time their resting expenditure sat about 5 percent above their own baseline. The 290 kcal assume the morning rise lasted all day, which the study did not measure, with no rest day for comparison. Four small groups of young adults carry all these numbers.

Does muscle burn more calories than fat? About 13 kcal a kilo

Yes, by less than gym talk suggests. At rest, a kilogram of muscle uses about 13 kcal a day and a kilogram of fat about 4.5. As an estimate, the 0.8 kg of lean mass gained with lifting in trials is worth about 10 kcal a day. Pooled studies found a resting rate about 96 kcal higher than in controls, at high risk of bias; a trial measuring total daily expenditure found no significant change.

The rates are reference values, checked against MRI scans and measured resting expenditure in 131 healthy adults without obesity. Next to liver and brain, muscle is cheap tissue, about 12.6 above age 50. The 10 kcal are an order of magnitude only, since lean mass is not all muscle.

The bigger number stands on weaker ground. A review pooling 18 exercise studies found resting metabolic rate about 96 kcal higher after lifting than in controls, but the studies were at high risk of bias and left out anyone 65 or older and women after menopause. In a cleaner test, 6 months of lifting gave young women 1.3 kg of fat-free mass; resting rate rose only as far as that tissue explains, and total daily expenditure did not significantly change.

Does lifting weights get rid of fat? What the trials measured

Yes, a little, and mostly out of sight of the scale. In trials of people with overweight or obesity, lifting alone took off about 1 kg of fat and added about 0.8 kg of lean mass over programs averaging roughly 15 weeks, against no training, while body weight did not measurably change. Deep belly fat fell by a small amount; exercises for the belly alone did not reliably slim it.

The count comes from a meta-analysis of trials in people with overweight or obesity of all ages, whose programs ran 14.6 weeks on average. Where people lifted and did nothing else, they lost, against groups that did not train, about 1.0 kg of fat mass and 1.6 percentage points of body fat, and gained 0.8 kg of lean mass: everything that is not fat, mostly muscle, organs, bone and water. Their weight shifted by 0.1 kg, too little to tell from chance.

So trousers can loosen while the scale stands still; a jump of several kilograms has other usual suspects. In 54 trials of healthy adults, lifting cut body fat by about 1.5 points and 0.55 kg against no exercise, with no measurable difference by sex. Over about 6 years in 11,938 adults, people who lifted 60 to 119 minutes a week also had a 30 percent lower risk of obesity, an association in mostly white men.

And the belly? In 60 trials in adults with overweight or obesity, visceral fat, the fat around the organs, fell with all four exercise types, and resistance training ranked last. In six trials of the review above, lifting alone had a small effect (standardized difference about 0.4). Another pooling saw it in men but not measurably in women. In a six-week trial with 24 sedentary adults, seven abdominal exercises five days a week brought no measurable belly fat loss against controls. One trial of 16 overweight men, energy use matched, found 0.7 kg more trunk fat off when abdominal work replaced part of the running: a single, contested result.

Cardio or weights for fat loss: the head-to-head trials

Pitted against each other in healthy adults over 10 weeks or more, aerobic and combined training each took off about 1.1 kg more fat than lifting, while lifting kept about 0.9 kg more fat-free mass than aerobic training. With workloads matched, no type was clearly ahead.

The review pooled 31 head-to-head trials, the kilograms above from those of 10 weeks or more; body fat percentage was not clearly different. One trial shows the trade: for 8 months, 119 sedentary adults with overweight or obesity did aerobic training, lifting or both. Aerobic and combined training took off more fat and weight; lifting and the combination added more lean mass. The combination took twice the time and did not take off significantly more fat than aerobic training.

A one-year trial randomized 406 adults aged 35 to 70 with overweight or obesity and high blood pressure; the three exercise groups trained an hour three times a week. Body fat percentage fell with all three, though only aerobic and combined training improved heart risk scores. In 38 trials of middle-aged and older adults, aerobic training lowered weight 1.2 kg more than lifting, lean mass favoring lifting; in 101 studies of women after menopause, aerobic and combined training did more for fat, lifting and combined more for muscle.

Skipping cardio costs some fat loss, then. Add less food, and the bars change scale.

Where lifting earns its place: keeping muscle while you eat less

With a calorie deficit, the same pooled trials found about 5.1 kg of fat off with lifting and 5.3 with combined training, against controls, instead of about 1 kg, and lean mass did not measurably fall. Adding exercise to eating less kept about 0.9 kg more fat-free mass than dieting alone, strength training alone about 0.8 kg. Older adults with obesity lost 2 percent of lean mass with lifting against 5 percent with aerobic training alone.

Only a few trials fed the diet numbers. The lean-mass figures come from 34 trials of dieting people with overweight or obesity, where exercise prevented nearly half the loss, and from a 6-month trial of 160 older adults with obesity in which every exercise group, all on a weight-loss program, lost about 9 percent of its weight.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition calls resistance training and enough protein indispensable for holding on to lean mass in a lasting deficit, with protein at 1.2 to 1.6 g per kg of body weight daily for the general population. The WHO wants muscle work on 2 or more days a week, plus 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity.

As an example, a week built on these trials: two or three full-body sessions on non-consecutive days, about 150 minutes of brisk walking or cycling, a modest cut in food with that protein, and a check after 3 to 4 months on the waist, the clothes and the weights lifted, not the scale alone. Strength training after 40 covers how to start, the calorie deficit calculator sizes the cut, and body recomposition plans both goals together.

So the verdict comes with conditions. The session, the afterburn and the new muscle add up to little, and alone, lifting takes off about a kilogram of fat in a few months. With eating less, it keeps more of the muscle. Keep the weights, and let the deficit take the fat. Your huuman Coach plans every session into your week.

More health topics to explore

• Metabolism guides
• TDEE calculator
• Calorie deficit calculator

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About this article · Written by the huuman Team. Our content is based on peer-reviewed research and clinical guidelines. We follow editorial standards grounded in scientific evidence.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Health and training decisions should be discussed with qualified professionals.