Calories Burned During Exercise
Understanding calories burned during exercise can maximize your
workouts. When
trying to lose weight many people incorporate a weekly exercise routine
in addition to eating healthy.
Studies show that those who
add
exercise to their weight loss plan versus those that only diet tend to
lose more weight in the same period of time.
If you have decided
to add exercise to your weight loss plan, that’s great!
In
order
to get the most from your exercise then you want to understand your
exercise calories. In other words, you want to know how to
calculate calories burned.
Certain exercises will give you higher calories burned during exercise
while others may
give you more fat burning benefits while still others will give you the
benefit of raising your basal metabolic rate.
What is an Exercise Calorie?
Although
the word
calorie
has various definitions, the ones we think of when
talking about weight loss and exercising are “a unit of measure for the
energy value of food” and “a measure of energy expenditure”.
This
second definition is what many refer to as exercise calories.
You
are expending or burning calories while do everyday tasks including
while you sleep. This is what is considered your basal
metabolic
rate, or the rate at which you burn calories for normal body functions
and activities.
Exercise calories are the calories you expend, or burn, by
performing specific exercise activities like walking, jogging, swimming
and many other types of workouts.
There are literally
thousands
of different types of exercises you can do and each will produce a
different number of calories burned.
Calories Burned Through Aerobics
In
general, aerobic exercises will give you the higher calories burned
during exercise.
Although some anaerobic
exercises can give
you a
significant calorie burn most people cannot keep up the level of
intensity required for this high calorie burn.
Aerobic exercises
require oxygen and fat needs oxygen to burn, so your aerobic exercises
will give you a greater fat burning benefit in addition to the higher
calorie burn.
But
don't just focus on exercises that have higher calories burned
during exercise.
You also want to include in your weekly workout routine some
strength training exercises. These types of exercises will
help
tone and strengthen your muscles and build lean muscle mass.
The
more lean muscles you have the higher your BMR, thus the more calories
you will burn doing everyday activities.
Variables Used in Calculating Exercise Calories
Everyone knows that you burn calories while exercising, but do you know
how the exercise calories are calculated and what information is used
to calculate calories burned?
There are many free exercise calorie calculators available on
the web
where you can type in certain information and get the results of your
exercising efforts. These calculators make our lives much
easier when we are trying to track our exercise calories.
The results that are returned from these calculators are not an exact
figure, but rather a good estimation of how many calories you burned
during your exercise routine.
Why is this calculation just an estimate? Well, understanding
how this is calculated will help you understand why it is not an exact
scientific figure. There are various factors that are used to
calculate the exercise calories. These factors include;
- Weight
- Activity
- Intensity level of the activity
- Duration
Although some exercise calculators include gender and age as one of the
selections, this really is not part of the calculation for calories
burned during exercise. These calculators may use this
information to provide you details on your
target heart
rate zone.
How it's Calculated
The calculation for exercise calories is
actually very technical and as stated above, not an exact
science.
In order to determine your exercise calories, you
must know the metabolic equivalent, or MET, for each different type of
activity.
The MET is a relative measure of
intensity. The formula for calories burned during exercise is
as follows;
Total Calories Burned = Duration
(in minutes) X (MET X 3.5 X weight in kg)/200
So, if a person weighing 68 kg did low impact aerobic exercises for 30
minutes, the calculation would be;
Total Calories Burned = 30 min X
(MET X 3.5 X 68 kg)/200
To figure out the MET, let’s complete the calculation – time to get out
the algebra books to figure this out. Let’s use the variable
c for calories burned and variable m for MET. The formula
would look like this;
c
= 30 X (m X 3.5 X 68)/200
c= 30 X (m X 238)/200
c= 30 X (m X 1.19)
c = 35.7 X m
Of course this does not solve the equation because we have two
variables, but if we use an exercise calorie calculator and select
the correct information (68 kg for weight, aerobic, low impact and 30
minute duration) it will return an answer of 180 calories.
So
now we can provide our formula with the 180 calories and it would now
look like this;
180
= 35.7 X m
If we divide each side by 35.7, we now have the answer to our MET
variable of 5.042017. As stated above, the MET is different
for each different type of exercise and intensity level. This
is why the value is an approximation and not an exact
science.
Math
lesson is over for the day (whew!). The good news is, you
don’t have to figure out the MET for each activity you plan to
do. Just use this
calculator
to figure out your calories burned during exercise.
Let this tool exercise it's mind
while you exercise your body.
Additional Articles
Fat
Burning Aerobic Exercises
Aerobic exercises can give you a higher fat and calorie burn than
strength training. Check out this article to see which types of aerobics really burn the
fat.
Exercise
Calorie Tracker
Download this free spreadsheet to track your workouts. Keep
track of when and how long you exercise and compare that to how much
weight you are losing. Then adjust your workouts if needed.
Exercise
Motivation
Not ready to get up off the couch yet? Try using these motivational
tips to get you exercising today.