How Many Calories Does Running Burn?

Running is one of the best ways to burn calories, offering significant boosts to health and wellbeing.

Luckily, running is also one of the most accessible forms of exercise! Think about it: you can run anywhere, it doesn’t require any specialist equipment, and it costs nothing.

The benefits of incorporating running into your daily routine are clear, especially if you’re someone who is less interested in sports or spending time at the gym.

However, if you’re wondering how many calories you burn when running, the answer is a little less obvious. The short answer is: it depends!

This article will highlight the key things to consider when calculating the calories burned when running, as well as laying some age-old myths of calorie expenditure to rest.

How many calories does running a mile burn?

It’s often said that running burns approximately 100 calories per mile. If you’re only looking for a rough idea of how many calories you’re burning, this works fine as a general rule of thumb.

However, if you’re after more than a rough estimate, it’s advisable to take this figure with a pinch of salt.

For a more accurate picture, you’ll need to consider factors such as body weight, distance, and duration, all of which affect the number of calories you’ll burn on a run.

What factors affect how many calories are burned when running?

Does weight affect calorie burn?

Yes! Body weight is the most significant factor when it comes to calorie expenditure.

The American Council on Exercise suggests that someone who weighs 120lb will burn around 11.4 calories per minute when running. If this person ran a ten-minute mile, they’d burn approximately 114 calories. For an individual weighing 180lb, this figure increases to 17 calories per minute. This means that they’d burn around 170 calories running a 10-minute mile.

The logic behind this is simple: the more you weigh, the harder your body has to work to cover ground when running.

Do the speed, distance, and duration of a run affect calorie burn?

If you want to burn extra calories, it isn’t necessarily the case that you should increase your speed to run the same distances as normal but at a faster pace.

Instead, a more effective way to increase calorie expenditure is to increase the distance of your runs.  

The idea that speed isn’t the most important factor can feel counterintuitive, but it’s helpful to think of it in the following terms. If you always set the treadmill to 5k or follow the same three-mile route every time you run, the number of calories will remain roughly the same regardless of how quickly you complete your run.

Running for 40 minutes at a leisurely pace of 14 minutes per mile will burn a similar number of calories to running for 20 mins at a lively 7 minutes per mile, because the distance covered will be the same in both cases.

So, if you’re running to burn calories, try running further and for longer and forget about speed — great news for the slow runners among us!

What is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), and does EPOC burn calories?

Another factor to consider when calculating calorie expenditure is EPOC, or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

You may be familiar with the idea that your body continues to burn calories after you’ve completed exercise.

This is EPOC, which is the process where your body cools down and restores itself to a normal resting state after exercise. Because EPOC requires energy, your body continues to burn calories even after you’ve finished your run.

However, the extent of this afterburn effect is determined by the intensity rather than the duration of your run. This is because a faster, more difficult run will deplete your muscles’ energy more than a longer, slower run, forcing your body to consume more oxygen in order to recover.

Overall, the idea of EPOC is an appealing one. Who doesn’t love the idea of their calorie burn continuing even after they’ve finished exercising? However, the number of calories burned by EPOC is negligible compared to what you’d burn during exercise itself, so it’s not necessarily something to bank on when it comes to calculating the effects of your run.

How to track how many calories you’re burning on a run

If this article has piqued your interest, there are several great ways to track your calorie expenditure while running.

Apps like Runkeeper, Map My Run, and Runtastic all calculate calorie burn using your height, weight, and data from your run itself, while wearable trackers such as a Fitbit offer similar functionality.

If you’re running on a treadmill, newer models can usually estimate calorie burn as long as you’ve inputted the required variables such as height and weight.

SUMMARY: RUNNING TO BURN CALORIES

If you’re looking to burn calories, running is an accessible, beginner-friendly exercise that can quickly produce results.

However, for the more serious runners, it’s worth noting that body weight, distance, and duration are by no means the only factors when it comes to calculating your calorie expenditure while running. Variables such as age, conditioning, the incline of your run, and even gender have all been cited as things that have the potential to influence calorie burn. Nevertheless, their influence is sometimes difficult to measure compared to the core metrics of weight, distance, and duration.

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