Last updated July 2026.
This question comes up more than you’d expect, usually from someone comparing notes with a partner or gym buddy after the same workout produced two different calorie numbers. The honest answer: gender itself isn’t really the variable. What’s actually driving the difference is body composition, and that’s worth unpacking properly instead of hand-waving with “men just burn more.”
What the MET Formula Actually Uses
The core calculation used on this site, and in exercise science generally, is Calories = MET × weight (kg) × duration (hours). Notice what’s not in that formula: sex isn’t an input at all. Weight is. So two people of different sexes but identical body weight, doing the identical workout, get the identical calorie estimate from this formula.
So Where Does the Real-World Difference Come From?
Muscle Mass
On average, men carry a higher percentage of lean muscle mass than women at the same body weight, and muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue, both at rest and during activity. This means that for two people at an identical weight but different body composition, the one with more muscle mass will typically burn somewhat more energy doing the same activity. This is a body composition effect, not a direct sex effect, it’s just that body composition differences correlate with sex on average.
Body Weight Differences
Since weight is a direct multiplier in the calorie formula, and men are on average heavier than women, average calorie burn for a given speed and incline will typically be higher for men as a population. But this is just the formula responding to weight, the same way it would for any two people of different weights regardless of sex. A 150 lb woman and a 150 lb man doing the identical treadmill session get the identical MET-based estimate.
Resting Metabolic Rate
Resting metabolic rate tends to run somewhat higher in men on average, again largely attributable to typically higher lean muscle mass. This affects total daily energy expenditure more than it affects the specific calorie cost of a single treadmill session, but it’s part of why two people can eat identically and see different results over time.
The Practical Answer
If you and a workout partner of a different sex get different calorie numbers for what looks like the same session, check whether you actually entered the same weight, speed, incline, and time first, that alone typically explains most of the gap. Whatever difference remains after controlling for those inputs is coming from body composition and individual metabolic factors, not from a “gender adjustment” baked into the math. No standard MET-based formula, including the one used on this calculator, applies a direct sex-based multiplier.