EAT: Exercise Activity Thermogenesis

What is Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT)?

EAT stands for Exercise Activity Thermogenesis and covers all energy used during exercise.

Depending on the amount of exercise, this accounts for approximately 5 to 30% of your total energy needs.

How do you calculate your EAT?

There are different ways to calculate your EAT. For instance, you can often read your calorie expenditure from your device, smartwatch or app. Bear in mind that in most cases that number of calories is greatly overestimated. You have therefore often burned fewer calories than you think.

Another, better way is to use the MET score. Each sports activity has a specific MET score, which indicates how much energy that activity costs relative to your basal metabolic rate. Using the MET score of that activity you can measure your calorie expenditure for that activity:

Number of calories burned = (MET score x body weight in kg x 3.5) / 200 x number of minutes