You often hear that running, walking, or hitting the gym burns calories — but did you know your body also burns calories while you sleep? If you already know the body burns calories, you might be looking for a way to estimate how many calories you burn while sleeping. That's where our Sleeping Calories Calculator steps in.
Whether your purpose is weight loss, fitness, improving metabolism, or you're just curious to know about how many calories you burn while sleeping. In this guide, we cover how it works, the formulas, examples, FAQs, and more.
Sleeping calories burned simply means the amount of energy your body uses while you sleep. We have prepared a free online Sleeping Calorie Calculator that helps you estimate the calories you burn in deep sleep, typical sleep, light sleep, or while lying awake.
The calculator uses a science-backed equation based on the ACSM-style MET formula that ensures high accuracy by using your body weight, sleep duration and sleep state to estimate calories burned.
Let’s assume your weight is 70 kg and sleep 8 hours at typical overnight sleep (0.95 MET), you burn around 558 kcal.
If you are unsure or new to it, MET stands for Metabolic Equivalent of Task — a unit used to estimate how much energy you burn during an activity. In simple words, it tells you how much energy your body uses during an activity.
Each activity demands a specific intensity of energy so the METs come from a standard physiology tables that are used worldwide. Here are the following table showing METs values based on sleeping state:
| Sleep State | MET |
|---|---|
| Quiet deep sleep | 0.9 MET |
| Typical overnight sleep | 0.95 MET |
| Restless/light sleep | 1.1 MET |
| In bed but awake | 1.3 MET |
| Custom | 0.5–5 MET |
You might wonder how sleeping calorie calculation works. We use an ACSM formula, if you don’t know ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) is the world's largest sports medicine and exercise science organization.
Here is the core ACSM-style formula used to compute kcal/minute:
kcal per minute = MET × 3.5 × weight(kg) / 200
Then that equation used to estimate total calories burned:
Total calories = kcal/min × total minutes
So the equation requires your weight, time, and METs value to compute to gives you total calories burned.
Let's consider a real-world example that shows you steps involved in calories calculation:
Firstly, determine your weight e.g., 80 kg, sleeping time e.g., 8 hours, and the sleeping state e.g., typical overnight sleep (0.95 MET) based on the above table.
Next, convert the hours into minutes because the equation uses time in minutes:
Time = 8 hr × 60 = 480 minNow, let's apply the ACSM formula to estimate the calories burned per minute:
kcal per minute = MET × 3.5 × weight(kg) / 200kcal/min = 0.95 × 3.5 × 80 / 200kcal/min = 1.33 kcal/minLastly, multiply the calories per minute by the total time in minutes:
Total calories = 1.33 × 480Total calories = 638 kcalSo an 80 kg person sleeping 8 hours burns around 638 kcal during typical overnight sleep.
Calories burned per hour vary based on body weight, sleep duration and sleep state, but here is the table showing average calories burned per hour:
| Sleep State | MET Value | Calories Burned per Hour (Average) |
|---|---|---|
| Quiet deep sleep | 0.9 | ≈ 66 kcal/hour |
| Typical overnight sleep | 0.95 | ≈ 70 kcal/hour |
| Restless / light sleep | 1.1 | ≈ 81 kcal/hour |
| In bed but awake | 1.3 | ≈ 96 kcal/hour |
Sleeping calories burned depend on factors such as weight and sleep intensity, but on average most adults burn 400 to 600 calories during 8 hours of sleep.