Burn 200 Calories with These Short Exercises

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Expert-backed tips to help you burn calories and feel good

Co-authored by Julian Arana, M.S.eD., NCSF-CPT and Dev Murphy, MA

Last Updated: September 2, 2024 Fact Checked

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• Exercises
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• How long will it take to burn 200 calories?
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Burning 200 calories is a great daily goal: it can help you stay in shape, and it’s an achievable goal for people who can't always dedicate time to a long workout. You can easily burn 200 (or more!) calories in 15-30 minutes, and best of all, you can do most of these exercises at home with little to no equipment! Keep reading to learn what workouts will help you torch unwanted calories, including an estimate of how long you’ll have to do each of them to burn 200 calories. Plus, stick around for a deep dive into the science of calorie burning!

Steps

Section 1 of 2:

Exercises

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1. 1
   Walk for 30 minutes. A vigorous walk is a perfect and low-impact way to help you get in shape. You can burn around 200 calories by walking briskly for about 30 minutes.

   • To engage your abs more while walking, try marching: lift your knees up with each step.
2. 2
   Jog for 20 minutes. Running is a simple and effective way to shed pounds. Best of all, you don’t need anything but a pair of sneakers and the open road (or treadmill). Carving time out of your morning for a nice jog is a great way to burn calories and bring positive energy into the rest of your day. For most people, a 20-minute jog will burn about 200 calories.

   • If you're just starting out jogging, keep it simple: aim to jog 2 days a week, or start with brisk walking and work your way up to walking and jogging in intervals. Over time, you'll be able to jog for longer and longer periods.
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3. 3
   Bike for 30 minutes. Hit the open road, enjoy a nice breeze and beautiful scenery, and burn some major calories at the same time. A short bike ride is a great way to help you stay fit—and that includes stationary biking.

   • How many calories you burn depends on how fast you go and the incline of the trail, but expect to burn a minimum of 200 calories for a 30-minute bike ride.
4. 4
   Jump-rope for 15-20 minutes. Jump-rope your way to better health! Jump-roping is a great way to burn calories and stay in shape—and it’s fun, too. Start your morning with an energizing jump-rope workout, or take your jump-rope to the office and break up your workday with a quick afternoon jump sesh.

   • Short on time? You can burn a lot of calories just jump-roping for a few minutes: jump-roping burns an average of 11 calories per minute, meaning you can expect to burn about 200 calories in only 15-20 minutes.
5. 5
   Swim for 40 minutes. A little pool time can save you a lot of calories as well as soothe achy joints. About 40 minutes of water aerobics can burn roughly 200 calories, so jump in the pool and go for a swim!

   • A simple water exercise to start off with is just walking. Walk for 5-10 minutes in shoulder-high water while standing tall and engaging your core.
   • Swim laps for a full-body workout. Do whatever type of swim feels good to you, whether it's a breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly stroke, or side stroke.
   • Try some leg kicks to work your leg and core muscles: hold onto the poolside or a kickboard, and alternate between flutter kicks, scissor-kicks, and dolphin kicks, doing each for 1-3 minutes.
   • Work your arm muscles with some underwater arm lifts. Stand in shoulder-high water, hands at your sides. Raise your arms to the surface with your palms face-up. Rotate your palms face-down and lower them again. Do 1-3 sets of 10-15 repetitions.
   • Stand in the water at waist-level for some jumping jacks to get a full-body workout. Do 1-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions.
6. 6
   Dance for 30-60 minutes. Dancing is a fun way to let loose and get fit. Whether you take a class or have dance parties in your living room, you can dance your way to better health while burning some major calories. Most people burn 200 calories dancing for a half-hour to an hour.

   • How many calories you’ll burn depends on what type of dancing you’re doing:
     • Slower dances, like the foxtrot or a waltz, will burn about 200 calories in about an hour.
     • Faster dances, like disco, ballroom, square, ballet, or the twist, may burn 200 calories or more in about a half hour.
7. 7
   Row for 30 minutes. Rowing is a terrific workout for your upper body, and it’s another exercise that can help you burn some unwanted calories. In just a half-hour of moderate rowing, you can burn roughly 250 calories; vigorous rowing may burn more than 350 calories in a half-hour.

   • You can row on a river, or use a rowing machine at home or at the gym.
8. 8
   Do a 20-minute HIIT workout. HIIT stands for High-Intensity Interval Training. In a HIIT workout, you alternate short bursts of intense anaerobic exercise with short recovery periods. The exercises in a HIIT workout vary, but they often include planking, jumping jacks, squats, and push-ups. Best of all, doing a vigorous HIIT workout can burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time.

   • How many calories you’ll burn depends on what exercises you do, but most people burn around 200 calories during a 20-minute HIIT workout, including warmup and cooldown.
9. 9
   Circuit train for 30 minutes. Circuit training is a workout in which you alternate brief bouts of different exercises with brief periods of recovery—sound familiar? Circuit training is a bit like HIIT, except that while a HIIT workout is designed to be performed at maximum effort, circuit training allows for more flexibility. So if you’re looking for a workout that you can take at your own pace, circuit training may be a winner.

   • As with HIIT, the exercises involved in circuit training vary, but many allow for a full-body workout—think squat jumps, stationary bike, or battle rope.
   • How many calories you burn depends on which exercises you do and how intense your workout is, but you can generally expect to burn about 200 calories in a little less than a half hour.
10. 10
    Play tennis for 30 minutes. Grab your rackets and tennis balls and take ’em down to the court for a calorie-burning game! A vigorous half-hour game can burn a little more than 200 calories, and the best part is, with all the excitement and competition, you might not even notice you're working out.

    • Tennis won’t just give you a great full-body workout: exercising with a buddy (or multiple buddies!) may help you stick with your exercise routine for the long haul.
11. 11
    Bowl for 60 minutes. It’s the perfect weekend activity: it’s fun, and it’s a great way to stay active and burn calories. Invite your friends or your date for an evening at the local lanes. Bowling for an hour will burn about 200 calories for most people.

    • You may be used to thinking of bowling as a relaxing leisure activity, but this sport actually engages lots of major muscle groups, including your arms, shoulders, wrists, and upper legs.
    • For an even better workout, go for a heavier ball (just don't make it too heavy, or you risk injuring yourself).
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Section 2 of 2:

How long will it take to burn 200 calories?

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1. 1
   It depends on your age, body type, and speed. You can determine roughly how many calories you’ll burn exercising for 1 minute by using the following equation: (0.035 X body weight in kg) + ((Velocity in m/s ^ 2) / Height in m) X (0.029) X (body weight in kg)

   • For example, if you're 1.6 meters tall (or about 5.25 feet tall), weigh 60 kg (or roughly 132 lbs.), and usually run at a rate of 2.86 meters a second (roughly 5.7 mph), you'd calculate (0.035 X 60 kg) + ((2.86 x 2.86) / 1.6 m) X (0.029) X (60 in kg) = 10.96.
   • In other words, if you weigh 132 lbs. (60 kg) and are 5.25 feet (1.6 m) tall, you'd burn about 10.96 calories a minute running at a pace of 5.7 mph, or 200 calories in about 18.24 minutes.
   • You can use the University of Rochester Medical Center’s calorie burn rate calculator to get a general idea of how many calories you’ll burn doing certain activities.
     • Just keep in mind that while your current weight factors into how you burn calories, it’s not the only factor: your age, sex, current weight, and height also affect how your body burns calories.
2. 2
   2.5 minutes of exercise can burn 200 calories throughout the day. Exercising for 15 minutes to an hour can help you burn 200 calories in the moment. But one study found that exercising intensely for just 2.5 minutes can spur extra calorie burn throughout the rest of the day—up to 200 calories' worth.

   • You don't need to do the full 2.5 minutes at once: bike or sprint at full capacity for 5 30-second periods, broken up with 4-minute breaks during which you exercise slowly.
   • While 2.5 minutes of exercise is a great way to start bringing more exercise into your day, aim for 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, or 75 minutes of intense physical activity.
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