The answer to how many calories does masturbation burn is small: roughly 1 to 4 calories per minute, or about 14 to 36 calories in a 10-minute session. That is closer to a slow walk than a workout. Research that reports calories for solo sessions is thin, so every figure online is an estimate built from nearby studies.
Below, you will see where those estimates come from, why your own number will differ, and what the math means for weight loss. It also covers who should check with a doctor first.
The Short Answer in Numbers
The low end of the range comes from a fitness app database, which lists about 84 calories per hour, or 1.4 per minute. The high end comes from a widely cited study that measured real calorie use during sexual activity, which found an average of 3.6 per minute. Here is the arithmetic for common session lengths.
| Session Length | Low Estimate (1.4 per minute) | High Estimate (3.6 per minute) |
| 5 minutes | 7 calories | 18 calories |
| 10 minutes | 14 calories | 36 calories |
| 20 minutes | 28 calories | 72 calories |
| 30 minutes | 42 calories | 108 calories |
These are totals for the whole session, not extra calories on top of what your body was already spending. That difference gets its own section below.
Where the Calorie Estimates Come From
1. The Montreal Study on Partnered Sex
The best-known measurement is a 2013 PLOS ONE paper from Julie Frappier and colleagues at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Twenty-one healthy, active couples wore SenseWear armbands during sexual activity at home, with sessions averaging about 25 minutes. Men burned an average of 101 calories (4.2 per minute), and women burned 69 (3.1 per minute).
The same participants also exercised on a treadmill for 30 minutes, which burned 276 calories for men and 213 for women. Partnered sex therefore used a little over a third of the calories of the treadmill session, at about 5.8 METs, which the authors classed as moderate intensity.
This study did not measure masturbation. Partnered sex involves more full-body movement and a second person’s weight, so a solo session most likely lands below these averages.
2. Heart Rate Studies on Solo Sessions
A 1984 laboratory study led by Bohlen found that self-stimulation raised heart rate about 37 percent from baseline to orgasm, compared with 51 percent for intercourse with the man on top. A 2012 case report from Souza and colleagues in Brazil followed one 36-year-old man, whose heart rate peaked at 116 beats per minute during masturbation, 142 during partnered sex, 157 while running, and 174 while playing soccer.
Heart rate is a rough proxy for energy use, and one man is a case report, not a trend. Still, both sources point the same way: solo sessions sit below partnered sex and well below running.
3. What App Estimates Actually Tell You
Fitia, a calorie tracking app, lists masturbation at 84 calories per hour. It lists the same 84 for sex at light, moderate, and vigorous effort, which suggests a single default value instead of a measurement. Sigma Guys, a men’s wellness brand, cites 3 to 5 calories per minute from unnamed health experts, so treat both as ballpark figures.
Why Your Number Will Differ
Body weight is the largest factor. Calorie burn scales with the mass you move, so a 200-pound person spends more than a 130-pound person doing the same thing for the same time.
Duration and movement come next. Lying still burns less than changing position or tensing large muscle groups. In the Montreal study, individual sessions for men ranged from 13 to 306 calories, and energy use in the third session was lower than in the first.
Hims makes the same point, noting that a longer, more active session burns more than one where you stay put. Time is the easiest variable to see in the math, since every extra minute adds another 1 to 4 calories.
Age and fitness matter too. The Montreal participants were young, healthy adults who exercised regularly, and the authors said their findings may not apply to other populations.
Do Men and Women Burn Different Amounts?
In the Montreal study, men burned more than women, 4.2 calories per minute against 3.1, and the gap held after the researchers adjusted for body mass index. Men in the study also had a higher average BMI, 24.2 versus 21.6.
Those figures describe partnered sex, so they cannot be applied directly to solo sessions in either sex. For anyone, body weight, duration, and movement are what set the number.
Gross Calories Versus Calories You Would Burn Anyway
Most calorie counts for an activity include the energy your body spends at rest. One MET equals your resting rate, roughly 1 calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour, according to the Compendium of Physical Activities. A 150-pound person (about 68 kilograms) burns around 68 calories an hour sitting still.
So the gain from a 10-minute session is smaller than the table suggests. For that 150-pound person, resting burn covers about 11 of the 36 calories at the high estimate, leaving roughly 25 extra. At the low estimate of 1.4 per minute, the extra is only about 3 calories.
How to Estimate Your Own Number
The standard formula is calories equal METs times body weight in kilograms times hours. The Montreal authors cite a moderate-intensity band of 3 to 6 METs, so a light activity falls below 3.
For a 68-kilogram person, a 10-minute session at an assumed 1.5 METs comes to about 17 calories. At an assumed 3 METs, the top of the light range, it comes to about 34. Both land inside the range from the table, and you can swap in your own weight and time.
Does the Orgasm Itself Burn Extra Calories?
Orgasm brings the sharpest spike in heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen use, according to Bohlen’s 1984 findings. But the peak lasts seconds, so any extra energy is tiny compared with the minutes of activity before it.
A 1970 study by Hellerstein and Friedman recorded a mean heart rate of 117 beats per minute at orgasm in middle-aged men, which was lower than the 120 average peak they logged during ordinary daily activities. None of the research reviewed here isolates the calorie cost of orgasm alone.
How the Burn Compares With Everyday Activity
The Montreal authors placed partnered sex above walking at about 3 miles per hour and below jogging at about 5 miles per hour. Solo sessions probably sit closer to the walking end. The table below puts the available numbers side by side.
| Activity | Calories per Minute | Source |
| Masturbation, app estimate | 1.4 | Fitia |
| Masturbation, upper estimate | 3.6 | Montreal study average |
| Partnered sex, men | 4.2 | Montreal study |
| Partnered sex, women | 3.1 | Montreal study |
| Treadmill, 30 minutes | 8.2 | Montreal study |
For perspective, the same study’s treadmill session averaged 245 calories across all participants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bases the Daily Value on a 2,000-calorie diet, so 36 calories is under 2 percent of that.
A Realistic Week in Calories
Say someone has three 15-minute sessions in a week. At the high estimate of 3.6 per minute, that totals 162 calories. That is less than the 245 the Montreal participants averaged in a single 30-minute treadmill session. At the low estimate of 1.4, the total is about 63.
Seen this way, the calories are a footnote to the other reasons people do or skip it.
Can Masturbation Help You Lose Weight?
Not meaningfully on its own. At the high estimate, a daily 10-minute session burns about 250 calories over a week and about 1,080 over 30 days. At the low estimate, the total is a fraction of that.
The Montreal Gazette also notes a popular claim that sex burns 100 to 300 calories per session, and says no scientific data has documented it. Its own measured average for men, over sessions averaging about 25 minutes, was 101.
Weight change depends on the gap between what you eat and what you burn over weeks. The CDC says adults need at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week for health, and that losing weight and keeping it off may take more.
Hims and Sigma Guys both cover benefits beyond calories, such as stress relief and sleep. Neither ties those to meaningful calorie burn, so they do not change the arithmetic above.
Common Myths Worth Dropping
The first myth is that frequent sessions work like cardio. The heart rate data say otherwise: 116 beats per minute during masturbation in the Brazilian case report, versus 157 during running.
The second myth is that more vigorous effort turns it into a workout. Extra movement does raise the burn, and the highest male session in the Montreal study reached 306 calories, but that was a partnered outlier, not a typical solo session.
The third is that burning calories means burning fat. Your body draws on both carbohydrate and fat during light activity, and the amounts here are too small to matter for body composition.
Can a Fitness Tracker Measure It?
Not reliably. The Montreal team used a multi-sensor armband that its authors describe as about 92 percent accurate against doubly labeled water, the gold standard method. Most wrist trackers lean on motion and heart rate, and low-movement activity is hard for them to read.
Treat any number your watch reports for a solo session as a rough guess.
What the Research Cannot Tell Us
The closest solo data is Bohlen’s 1984 work, which tracked heart rate and oxygen use during self-stimulation but did not report calories.
Everything else is indirect. The Montreal sample was 42 adults aged 18 to 35 in committed relationships, and the Brazilian heart rate report followed a single man. Older adults and people who rarely exercise are missing from the calorie data.
How to Judge Calorie Claims You See Online
Check four things before trusting any answer to how many calories does masturbation burn. Does it name a study, or only unnamed experts? Does it measure solo sessions or partnered sex? Is it a total or the extra above rest? And does the session length match yours?
By those tests, the Montreal paper is the strongest source available, and it still describes a different activity. The app and brand figures fail at least one test each.
Who Should Check With a Doctor First
A 2012 American Heart Association scientific statement led by Glenn Levine addresses sexual activity in people with cardiovascular disease, and a 2018 review by Jelavić and colleagues describes the exertion as similar to mild or moderate physical activity.
People with heart disease, uncontrolled high blood pressure, or a recent cardiac event should ask their doctor how much exertion is safe. Chest pain, dizziness, or unusual shortness of breath during any physical activity is a reason to stop and get medical advice. This article is general information and not medical advice.
What to Do With These Numbers
If you track calories, there is no reason to log a solo session as exercise. The error in app databases is larger than the burn itself, and counting it can lead you to eat back calories you never spent.
Put effort into the habits that add up: daily walking, strength training, sleep, and what you eat. A 30-minute walk at a brisk pace burns more than most solo sessions and can be repeated without any guesswork.
The honest answer to how many calories masturbation burns is a few to a few dozen per session, which is not enough for any diet or workout plan to depend on.
