This treadmill calculator estimates the calories you burn from the speed, the incline, your weight and how long you are on the belt, and shows the distance you covered and your pace per mile and per kilometer. Enter the speed in miles or kilometers per hour and the incline in percent, as the treadmill shows them.
It uses the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) metabolic equations, which estimate oxygen use from speed and grade. With speed in meters per minute and grade as a fraction, walking uses 0.1 × speed + 1.8 × speed × grade + 3.5 ml of oxygen per kg per minute, and running uses 0.2 × speed + 0.9 × speed × grade + 3.5. Each litre of oxygen is about 5 calories. For a 70 kg (154 lb) person, 30 minutes of running at 6 mph on a flat belt is about 375 calories and 10.2 METs, covering 3 miles at 10:00 per mile.
The walking equation applies to speeds of roughly 1.9 to 3.7 mph, and the running equation to speeds above 5 mph, or from 3 mph if you are actually jogging. The calculator uses walking below 4 mph and running from 4 mph until you choose one yourself.
Incline raises the cost much more for walking than for running: at the same speed, the walking equation's incline term is twice the running one. A 30-minute walk at 3 mph is about 121 calories on a flat belt and 273 at a 10% incline. One percent of incline adds about 15 calories to both a 30-minute walk at 3 mph and a 30-minute run at 6 mph, but that is on top of 121 calories for the walk and 375 for the run.
The result is gross calories: it includes the energy you would use at rest anyway, about 37 calories in 30 minutes for a 70 kg person. Net calories, the extra burned by the exercise alone, are lower: about 338 for the 6 mph run and 84 for the 3 mph walk. All of these are estimates; individual results vary with fitness, and holding the handrails lowers the real cost, so the estimate will be high. To convert a treadmill speed into pace, see the treadmill pace chart.