Does Masturbation Burn Calories? The Real Answer

Wondering if solo play counts as a workout? Yes, masturbation does burn calories, but not nearly as many as you might think. While your heart beats faster and you move your body, the calorie burn is much smaller than regular exercise.

This guide explains exactly how many calories masturbation burns, how it compares to activities like walking or running, and tips to burn more calories during solo sessions. Plus, we'll share the real health benefits that make masturbation worthwhile—even if it doesn't help you lose weight.

Quick Answer: Yes, But Not Many Calories

Masturbation burns about 10-21 calories per session on average.

How your body burns calories during masturbation:

When you masturbate, your body goes through changes similar to light physical activity. Your heart beats faster than normal. Your breathing speeds up. Your muscles tense and contract. All of these body responses require energy, which means you burn some calories.

Sexual activity makes your heart rate and blood pressure go up, similar to walking up a flight of stairs. However, when you masturbate by yourself, you usually don't move your whole body as much as you would during partnered sex. You might be lying down or sitting still while focusing on one area. Less body movement means fewer calories burned overall.

What affects how many calories you burn:

Your body weight makes a difference. People who weigh more burn more calories doing the same activity. How hard and how long you masturbate matters a lot. A quick five-minute session burns fewer calories than a longer, more active one. Whether you have an orgasm also affects the total calories burned, because your heart rate reaches its highest point during climax.

How Many Calories Does Masturbation Really Burn?

Scientists haven't done many studies specifically on masturbation and calories. However, research on sexual activity in general gives us a good idea of what to expect.

Calorie Burn Numbers

A research study from 2013 measured how much energy people use during sex. The study found that men burned about 101 calories and women burned about 69 calories during a typical sex session. Masturbation burns less than this because solo sessions are usually shorter and involve less full-body movement.

What Happens to Calories During Orgasm

Orgasm burns extra calories, but only for a short time.

During orgasm, your heart rate reaches its peak. This happens over about 10-15 seconds. Research shows that heart rate during sexual activity slowly builds up from the beginning to orgasm. For men, heart rates can go as high as 96-170 beats per minute, with the highest numbers happening right when they climax.

This quick spike in heart rate does require extra energy from your body. That means you burn a few more calories. However, because it only lasts 10-15 seconds, the extra calories from orgasm alone are still pretty small—maybe just a few calories more than the rest of the session.

Masturbation Compared to Real Exercise

Solo play is not a replacement for going to the gym. Here's how the calorie burn compares to actual workouts.

What 30 Minutes of Different Activities Burns

Even a simple walk around your neighborhood burns way more calories than masturbation. In fact, walking burns about 5-10 times more calories. 

Health experts say adults need at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week, plus strength training (like lifting weights) twice a week.

You can enjoy masturbation for pleasure and feeling good, but don't skip your regular workouts if you care about fitness or health.

Can Masturbation Help You Lose Weight?

No, masturbation alone will not help you lose weight.

Why it doesn't work for weight loss:

The number of calories you burn is just too small to make a difference. To lose one pound of body fat, you need to burn about 3,500 calories more than you eat. Even if you masturbated every single day and burned 20 calories each time, that would only be 140 calories per week. That's not even enough to lose one-quarter of a pound in a whole month.

Real weight loss requires several things working together. You need regular exercise that gets your heart pumping. You need strength training to build muscle. You need to eat a balanced diet with the right amount of calories. You need good quality sleep. You need to manage stress. Health organizations like the CDC recommend losing 1-2 pounds per week through healthy lifestyle changes.

Something to watch out for:

If you masturbate a lot, it might make you feel tired or less motivated to exercise. If solo sessions start replacing your actual gym workouts, this could work against your health and fitness goals. The key is balance—enjoy self-pleasure for all its real benefits, but don't expect it to take the place of exercise.

How to Burn More Calories While Masturbating

Masturbation will never burn as many calories as a workout, but these tips can help you burn a bit more during solo sessions.

Make Your Session More Active

Take more time and build slowly:

Longer sessions naturally burn more calories than quick ones. Try a technique called edging, where you bring yourself close to orgasm several times before actually letting yourself climax. This keeps your heart rate higher for a longer period of time.

Move your body more:

Standing up requires more muscle work than lying down. Try standing while you masturbate, or squat over a toy. You can also change positions throughout your session—move from lying on your back to sitting up to standing. Each position change uses different muscles in your body.

Use faster, more intense movements:

Move your hands or fingers faster and with stronger pressure. If you're using toys, be active with them rather than just holding them still. The harder and faster you stimulate yourself, the higher your heart rate will go.

Ways to Be More Active

Use toys in active ways:

Quality sex toys can make you work harder physically. For example, if you hold a wand vibrator against your body while standing, you need to use your core muscles for balance and your arm muscles to hold the toy. Using penetrative toys while squatting makes your leg muscles work.

Check out clitoral vibrators or male masturbators designed for different types of play.

Stay active the whole time:

If your goal is to burn more calories, don't just lie still and relax completely. Keep your body moving, change positions, engage your stomach muscles, and keep up active stimulation rather than letting a toy do all the work while you stay passive.

Real Health Benefits Beyond Calorie Burning

While masturbation won't help you lose weight, it offers many real health benefits that make it worthwhile.

How It Helps Your Body

Better sleep:

Masturbation helps many people fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply. A 2019 research study asked over 1,000 men and women about sleep and sex. The study found that sexual activity leading to orgasm helped people fall asleep. Your body releases special chemicals after orgasm—hormones called oxytocin and prolactin—that make you feel relaxed and sleepy.

Pain relief:

The good-feeling chemicals (called endorphins) that your body releases during orgasm work like natural pain medicine. Many people say that masturbation helps with period cramps, tight muscles, headaches, and general body aches. The extra blood flow and muscle relaxation that happens during arousal also helps reduce pain.

Stronger pelvic floor muscles:

When you have an orgasm, the muscles in your pelvic floor contract (squeeze tight) over and over. Doing this regularly can help make these important muscles stronger over time. Stronger pelvic floor muscles help you control your bladder better, support your pelvic organs, and can make sexual pleasure feel even better.

May help prostate health:

Some research suggests that ejaculating frequently might lower the risk of prostate cancer. A large study in 2016 followed almost 32,000 men. The study found that men who ejaculated at least 21 times every month had a lower chance of getting prostate cancer compared to men who only ejaculated 4-7 times monthly.

How It Helps Your Mind and Emotions

Reduces stress:

Masturbation causes your brain to release chemicals that make you feel good. These include dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. These natural chemicals reduce stress levels and improve your mood. Many people use masturbation as a healthy way to manage stress in their lives.

Builds body confidence:

When you explore your own body, you learn what feels good and become more comfortable with your sexuality. This self-knowledge often helps you feel more confident both during sex and in everyday life.

Improves sex with partners:

When you know what feels good for your own body, you can tell partners more clearly about what you like. This leads to better, more satisfying sexual experiences and stronger emotional connection in relationships.

Safe way to release sexual tension:

Masturbation gives you a way to release sexual feelings without any risk of unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. It's a form of sexual expression that's always available and completely under your control.

Common Wrong Ideas About Masturbation and Calories

Let's clear up some things people get wrong about masturbation and burning calories.

What's True and What's Not

The honest truth:

Yes, masturbation does burn some calories because your heart beats faster and your muscles move. However, the number of calories is very small. If you think of it as exercise or a way to lose weight, you'll be disappointed.

Instead, focus on the real benefits—masturbation reduces stress, helps you sleep better, relieves pain, and helps you understand your sexual preferences. These are the reasons it's worth doing, not because of calories.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many calories does a 30-minute masturbation session burn?

A 30-minute session might burn somewhere between 15-30 calories, depending on how active you are during that time. This is about the same as 5-10 minutes of walking slowly. For comparison, if you walk at a normal pace for 30 minutes, a 155-pound person would burn about 140 calories. The difference is huge.

Will masturbating every day help me lose weight?

No, it will not. Even if you masturbate every single day, you won't burn enough calories to lose weight. If you burned 20 calories per day from masturbation, that's only 140 calories for the whole week. That's not even enough to lose a quarter of a pound per week. To lose weight healthily, you need to change what you eat and do regular intentional exercise.

Do men burn more calories than women during masturbation?

Men might burn slightly more, but the difference is very small. Men usually have more muscle on their bodies, and their bodies naturally burn calories a bit faster. This means they typically burn a little more doing the same activities. However, how hard you masturbate and how long you do it matter much more than whether you're male or female.

Can using sex toys make me burn more calories?

Yes, but only if you use them in active ways. If you hold heavy toys, change positions often, or use toys that make you engage your muscles (like holding a wand against your body while standing up), you'll burn more calories. However, if you just lie still and let a toy do all the work, you won't burn much.

Is masturbation better exercise than walking?

No, definitely not. Walking burns 5-10 times more calories than masturbation. Walking also gives you real health benefits like making your heart stronger, building up your leg muscles, strengthening your bones, and improving your overall fitness in ways that masturbation simply cannot do.

Does sex with a partner burn more calories than masturbating alone?

Yes, usually 3-5 times more calories. Sex with another person involves more movement of your whole body. You change positions, you support body weight, and the activity usually lasts longer. Research studies show that sex with a partner burns 69-101 calories on average, while masturbation only burns 10-21 calories.

The Bottom Line

Masturbation does burn calories, but the amount is too small to replace exercise or help with weight loss. A typical masturbation session only burns 10-21 calories. This is significantly less than even light physical activities, such as walking or doing yard work.

However, masturbation offers many other real health benefits. It reduces stress in your life, helps you sleep better, provides natural pain relief, makes you feel happier, and helps you understand your body's sexual responses. These benefits make masturbation a healthy part of taking care of yourself, even though it won't help you get fit or lose weight.

If your goal is fitness or weight loss, focus on things that actually work: regular exercise that gets your heart pumping, strength training such as weightlifting, and eating balanced, nutritious meals. Enjoy masturbation for what it really is—a pleasurable, healthy activity with genuine mental and physical benefits.

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