How many calories do you burn sleeping?
You burn calories all night just keeping your body running. This calculator shows how many, from your weight and how long you sleep. Sleep burns nothing above your resting rate, so the card’s above-resting figure is zero.
Example: 175 lb, 8 h
667kcal burned
Your body burns about this much in that time to keep itself running.
Enter your own weight and minutes above to replace this example.
Above resting
0 kcal
What the activity adds
Per hour
83 kcal
1.4 kcal a minute, the resting rate for your weight
| Activity | Time | Per hour | kcal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleeping1.0 MET, Compendium 07030 | 8 h | 83 | 667 |
Calories = MET x 3.5 x body weight in kg / 200 x minutes, rounded for each activity. Above resting uses MET minus 1, because 1 MET is what you burn sitting still. METs from the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities. The Compendium counts 3.5 ml/kg/min of oxygen as the resting rate for every body. Real resting rates vary with age, sex, height, weight and body composition, so treat these figures as an estimate for a typical adult, not a measurement of your own burn.
Related calculators
Calories burned with Daily Activities (weight: 175 lbs)
Calories each activity burns in 15 to 60 minutes at a body weight of 175 lb, from the MET in the second column.
| Exercise | MET | 15m | 30m | 45m | 60m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mowing the Lawn | 6.0 | 125 | 250 | 375 | 500 |
| Stairs | 9.3 | 194 | 388 | 581 | 775 |
| Standing | 2.5 | 52 | 104 | 156 | 208 |
| Sleeping | 1.0 | 21 | 42 | 63 | 83 |
| Sitting | 1.0 | 21 | 42 | 63 | 83 |
| Gardening | 3.8 | 79 | 158 | 238 | 317 |
| Raking | 4.0 | 83 | 167 | 250 | 333 |
| Resting | 1.0 | 21 | 42 | 63 | 83 |
| Walking a Dog | 3.0 | 63 | 125 | 188 | 250 |
What is The Calories Burned Sleeping Calculator and How Does It Work?
For those looking to reach a specific weight goal whether that’s losing, maintaining, or gaining pounds, it’s important to have an idea of how many calories you burn throughout the day and this includes sleep. But we’ll talk about this a little later.
How To Use This Calculator
The calories burned sleeping calculator is rather simple and straightforward.
To ensure an easy experience for you, we’ve included step-by-step instructions in detail below.
Step 1: Enter your weight and choose lb or kg.
Step 2: Type in how long you slept, in minutes. The calculator opens on 480 minutes, a night of 8 hours; 6 hours is 360 and 10 hours is 600.
Step 3: Press Calculate!
It’s really that simple!
How Many Calories Do We Burn During Sleep?
Because we’re all unique, the number of calories that we burn while sleeping varies as many things can affect calorie output.
Our calculator works from your weight and how long you sleep to approximate how much energy you expend while snoozing.
But it’s important to understand that while these are key factors, sleep quality, activity levels, temperature/environment, hormones, breathing/heart rate, and body composition play a role too. However, these elements are more difficult to measure.
But that’s the point of this calculator. You punch in the necessary details and it’ll give you a close estimate of calories burned while getting your zzz’s in.
However, we’ve provided a few examples of how our calculator will estimate calories burned.
Example of how the calculator works
According to the calories burned sleeping tool, a person who weighs 145 lbs and sleeps for 6 hours will burn 414 calories, or 69 calories per hour.
The same person will expend about 691 calories sleeping for 10 hours which is a significant increase in calories burned.
But how many calories will a 250 lb person burn sleeping for the same 6 hours? The answer is a lot more… 714 calories, 300 more than the 145 lb person (414 calories), according to the calculator.
Height and age affect energy burned too: a younger person typically burns a little more at rest than an older person of the same size. This calculator leaves them out and works from weight and time only, like our other calories burned calculators.
How many calories you can burn sleeping is dependent on several factors.
While it’s not so easy to precisely estimate calories burned from sleeping, our calculator is designed to provide a reasonable estimate of energy expenditure.
How Does The Calculator Determine Calories Burned Sleeping?
The calculator uses the MET formula, MET x 3.5 x your weight in kg / 200 for each minute you sleep, to give an estimate of calories burned sleeping. Sleeping is rated 1.0 MET in the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities.
How does it do that?
A MET of 1.0 is about the energy an average adult uses resting quietly, so the answer is a resting rate, or metabolism, for your weight over those hours.
What does that mean? Keep reading for a more detailed explanation.
If you take two people, one weighs 150 lbs and the other weighs 210 lbs, the person who weighs less will burn fewer calories compared to the heavier individual doing the same activity for the same duration.
Why Does A Heavier Person Burn More Calories?
A calorie is a unit of energy and a heavier body requires more calories to carry out basic physiological functions. This can mean doing absolutely nothing.
Think of it like how a larger vehicle typically uses up more fuel than a smaller one. Weight affects fuel consumption (the amount of energy used).
But this also means that the heavier person expends more calories in a rested (non-exercising) state.
This is also known as metabolic rate or metabolism.
The calculator approximates the calories you burn while you sleep, which is one part of your total daily energy expenditure. For the whole day, use our TDEE calculator.
Can I Burn Enough Calories Sleeping To Lose Weight?
As you can see, sleeping burns a steady number of calories, but they are the calories your body burns at rest anyway, so sleep on its own does not create a deficit.
But you cannot intentionally burn a specific number of calories during sleep because, well, you’re asleep! So it’s not like one person can sleep harder during the same time in an effort to try and burn more calories.
However, good habits like being active, eating right, staying hydrated, and reducing stress can help to increase energy expenditure.
How much weight you lose though, really and truly depends on your overall lifestyle habits and approach to your goals.
As long as you create a calorie deficit, and do it the healthy and proper way, you can lose weight.
To drop pounds and reach your goal weight, you want to first determine your maintenance calories, and then reduce your calorie intake, exercise more, or do a combination of the two.
Use our weight loss calculator to determine the number of calories you should be consuming.
If you also do resistance training and want to maximize muscle gain and muscle maintenance as you knock off the body fat, our macronutrient calculator is a very useful tool.
It’ll recommend an ideal protein, carbohydrates, and fat intake for you.
How Does Sleeping Burn Calories?
Most people associate exercise with burning a significant number of calories. However, sleeping burns a decent number of calories too.
Just think about it, our bodies are complex systems that function like a machine. Sleep helps us to recover, regenerate, build new tissue and cells, and it’s essential for good health. But these processes come at a cost… you’ve got to burn some calories.
You can’t get a vehicle to run its systems without a fuel or power source and we’re no different.
Stages of Sleep and Calories Burned
According to the Sleep Foundation, the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep uses the most energy (1). It increases heart rate and heightens brain activity which requires more glucose (fuel) and amps up the metabolism.
In comparison, the third stage of sleep (deep sleep) slows down heart rate, metabolism, breathing, and core temperature. As a result, less energy is needed for this sleep cycle.
It’s important to note that the calories burned sleeping calculator does not factor in the different sleep cycles. This may have a slight effect on the accuracy along with the other factors that it also does not take into consideration.
But, in general, if you get decent quality sleep, this should help to give you a fairly good approximation.
Check out this guide to learn more about the importance of sleep for good health and achieving your fitness goals.
Try out our other calories burned calculators below.
Learn How Many Calories You Burn Sleeping!
The calories burned sleeping calculator is a useful tool that anyone can use to help them reach their weight goals or learn something new.
It’s very easy to use and can be used alongside our other calories burned calculators to take your health and fitness to the next level.
