Amit's data tools
BurnLab

About BurnLab

A reference site, not a fitness blog.

Why this exists

Search "calories burned swimming" and you get a hundred pages that all quote one number, none of which say where it came from. They came from the same place: the Compendium of Physical Activities, a research dataset that has quietly powered every calorie calculator for thirty years.

BurnLab publishes that dataset directly — all 574 activities, all 1,109 measured intensity levels, the equation used, and the limitations. If you want one number, it is at the top of every page. If you want to know how much to trust it, that is here too.

Who runs it

BurnLab is built and maintained by Amit Sharma, a marketer based in Auckland, New Zealand, alongside a small family of free data tools at amit.marketing. I am not a doctor, a dietitian or an exercise physiologist — which is exactly why this site sticks to publishing the primary source and the arithmetic rather than dispensing advice.

How it is funded

Advertising, through Google AdSense, and links to my own fitness challenge at PeakForm. Nothing on this site is a paid placement, and no figure has ever been adjusted to suit an advertiser. The data does not care who is paying.

Corrections

If a number here disagrees with the Compendium, the Compendium wins. Send the page URL and it gets fixed.

One family of free data tools