How this instrument works
MET-minutes is a standard unit for combining exercise intensity and duration into a single weekly volume number: multiply an activity's MET value by the minutes spent doing it, then add up every activity across the week. Thirty minutes of an 8-MET activity and eighty minutes of a 3-MET activity contribute roughly the same MET-minutes total, even though one session is shorter and harder while the other is longer and easier — the unit treats those as comparable exercise 'doses.'
This total number is the backbone of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), a widely used research tool for self-reported activity level. Its published scoring protocol, validated across 12 countries by Craig and colleagues in 2003, classifies weekly totals into bands: below roughly 600 MET-minutes/week counts as a low-activity category, 600 to 3,000 as moderate, and above 3,000 as a high-activity category — bands this calculator's total can be compared against directly.
Those categories sit alongside, but are a different measurement from, the World Health Organization's 2020 physical activity guidelines, which recommend adults get 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, per week (or an equivalent mix of both). A MET-minutes total is a convenient single number for tracking progress toward that kind of weekly volume target, even though the two frameworks measure activity slightly differently.
- For each activity, enter its MET value and how many minutes per week you do it — up to three activities at once.
- Leave any unused activity slot at its default of 0 MET and 0 minutes; it simply won't add anything to the total.
- Read Total MET-minutes per week — the sum of MET x minutes across all three activity slots.
- For a fourth or fifth activity, calculate its MET x minutes by hand and add it to this total yourself.
Worked example — 30 min at MET 8 plus 60 min at MET 3
Enter Activity 1 as MET 8 for 30 minutes and Activity 2 as MET 3 for 60 minutes, leaving Activity 3 at its default 0 MET, 0 minutes. Total MET-minutes is (8 x 30) + (3 x 60) + (0 x 0) = 240 + 180 + 0 = 420 MET-minutes per week.
That 420 total falls just under the roughly 600 MET-minutes/week line the IPAQ scoring protocol uses to separate its low-activity and moderate-activity categories, landing this particular week in the low-activity band by a modest margin — a useful illustration of how close two similarly modest sessions can come to a published benchmark without quite reaching it.
Questions
What do the 'low,' 'moderate' and 'high' activity categories mean?
These come from the IPAQ scoring protocol, a widely used research standard: roughly below 600 MET-minutes per week is classified as a low-activity category, 600 to 3,000 as moderate, and above 3,000 as high. They're research classification bands rather than strict medical thresholds, but they give a useful sense of where a given weekly total sits relative to a broadly used public-health scale.
Where do I find the MET value for a specific activity?
The Compendium of Physical Activities is the standard reference, listing MET values for hundreds of named activities. This site's calories-burned calculator uses the same MET-value concept if you also want to estimate energy expenditure for a single activity, rather than a weekly volume total like this calculator produces.
How is this different from the calories-burned calculator?
Different purpose entirely, despite sharing MET values. This calculator sums MET x minutes across up to three weekly activities to produce a MET-minutes total for comparing against activity-volume guidelines, and never converts to calories. The calories-burned calculator instead estimates kcal for a single activity from its MET value, your body weight, and duration.
Can I track more than three activities in one week?
This instrument handles three slots directly, but the underlying math is simple to extend by hand: calculate MET x minutes for each additional activity yourself and add it to the total this calculator produces. There's nothing special about the number three besides keeping the input form manageable.
Does a short, intense session count the same as a longer, easier one?
In MET-minutes terms, yes, if the products are equal — a 20-minute session at MET 10 (200 MET-minutes) contributes the same total as a 40-minute session at MET 5. The unit deliberately treats intensity and duration as interchangeable multipliers, which is exactly why it's used to combine very different types of activity into one comparable weekly figure.