What I learned today

So today I am at the gym and doing my typical exercise on the elliptical machine, and there are all these numbers and lights on the machines that show how far you've gone and how many calories you've burned but there is also this category entitled "mets" and assuming it had nothing to do with baseball, I asked a personal trainer what a met was. What I found out was two fold. First, 2 personal trainers and a physical therapist at my gym have no idea what a met is, and second, according to http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/mets.htm, The energy cost of an activity can be measured in units called METS, which are multiples of your basal metabolic rate.

which begs the question, what is a basal metabolic rate, and the same site states, Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is "the energy required for essential physiological functioning after 8 hours sleep and 12 hours fasting" - the number of calories to keep your body functioning whilst at rest. Your BMR (calories/day) can be estimated by multiplying your weight in pounds by ten for women and eleven for men e.g. a 150lb man has a BMR of 69 calories/hour (150 × 11 ÷ 24).


therefore a met is your BMR times x. Thank you and good night.