How many calories does yoga burn?
Between 150 and 400 kcal an hour for most adults. That range is not sloppiness — it is the honest answer, because “yoga” names a dozen activities whose energy costs differ by a factor of two or three. Metabolically, a restorative class has about as much in common with a power class as lying down has with a brisk walk.
The range, by style
Energy cost is conventionally expressed in METs, multiples of resting metabolism. One MET is roughly what you burn sitting still. The figures below are gross burn for a 70 kg (155 lb) adult over a full hour.
| Style | METs | One hour, 70 kg (155 lb) |
|---|---|---|
| Restorative, yin | 2.0–2.3 | 145–170 kcal |
| Gentle hatha | 2.5 | ~185 kcal |
| Vinyasa flow | 3.0–4.0 | 220–295 kcal |
| Power, ashtanga | 4.0–5.0 | 295–370 kcal |
| Hot, Bikram-style | 3.0–4.5 | 220–330 kcal |
These scale roughly with bodyweight: at 55 kg (120 lb) take off about a fifth, at 90 kg (200 lb) add about a quarter.
Two things in that table surprise people. The first is how low the bottom end sits — a restorative hour is barely above sitting on the sofa. That is not a criticism of restorative yoga, just a description of it. The second is that hot yoga does not top the list.
Hot yoga: what the room is doing
Measured studies of 90-minute Bikram classes have put the burn at roughly 330–460 kcal. That is about what a brisk 90-minute walk gives you, and well below what the experience feels like.
The gap between feeling and figure is largely thermoregulation. In a 40 °C (104 °F) room your heart rate climbs, you sweat hard and you finish wrung out — but a great deal of that cardiovascular work is cooling you rather than moving you. Heart rate is a poor proxy for energy cost when heat is the thing driving it, which is also why wrist trackers tend to read high in hot classes.
Then there is the scale. Dropping 1–2 kg (2–4 lb) across a hot class is common, and it is water, essentially all of it. A kilogram of fat costs a deficit near 7,700 kcal; nothing available to you in 90 minutes comes close. Rehydrate and the number is back by morning.
Gross, net, and the hour you were alive for anyway
Every figure above is gross — everything your body spent during the class, including the energy it would have spent lying still. A 70 kg (155 lb) adult burns roughly 70 kcal an hour at rest, so:
- A restorative hour at ~155 kcal gross is about 85 kcal genuinely extra
- A power hour at ~330 kcal gross is about 260 kcal genuinely extra
For gentle styles the resting share swallows nearly half the total. And if you log a class on top of a daily figure that already includes your resting burn, you have counted that hour twice — the same trap as the gross-versus-net gap in step counts. Caldown reads active and resting energy from Apple Health as separate quantities for exactly this reason, rather than stacking a workout figure onto a day’s total.
The honest case for yoga in a deficit
Judged purely on burn, a gentle yoga habit is a weak weight-loss tool. An hour of hatha three times a week nets around 350 kcal — roughly a tenth of the 3,500 kcal in a pound of fat, and a small fraction of a sensible daily burn target. Power and vinyasa are respectable cardio, but no more than that.
The real case is better than the burn suggests, and it rests on things that are harder to put in a table.
Stress. Appetite under sustained stress is not a rational signal, and deficits usually fail at the point where they collide with it. Anything that reliably lowers that pressure protects the deficit you already have.
Sleep. Short sleep worsens hunger and makes everything else feel heavier. A practice that helps you sleep improves adherence across the whole week.
Adherence. Yoga is low-impact, does not drive appetite up sharply, and costs almost nothing in recovery, so it stacks on top of whatever else you are doing instead of competing with it. That matters far more than its MET value, because staying in a deficit is overwhelmingly a consistency problem rather than an arithmetic one.
So put power or vinyasa in the exercise column of your deficit if you like, with modest expectations. Put restorative yoga in the column marked things that make the rest of this possible — and do not bother logging it at all.
General information, not medical advice.