Tag: burning calories

Burn 500 Calories A Day To Lose A Pound A Week

Do you know how to balance your calories? Weight loss begins with knowing what foods to eat and in what amounts. This article will look at calories & weight loss.

The most important thing you need to know about calories & weight loss is that you need to burn 3500 more calories than you take in to lose 1 pound. You can do this by exercising, dieting, or a combination of both.

The easiest way to break this down is to think of it on a daily basis. You need to burn 500 more calories than you eat each day.

An inactive or lightly active man weighing 150 lbs, will burn roughly 2000 calories each day. If he weighed 200 lbs, he’d burn around 2300 calories each day. On the other hand, a 150 lbs. woman will burn about 1700 calories a day.

Why do men and women of the same weight burn different calories? Most of it has to do with the fact that men have more muscle mass which allows them to burn more calories at rest. This should also encourage you to put on muscle, whether you are a man or a woman.

So, going back to calories & weight loss, if you are a 150 pound woman and you don’t want to do any exercise, you need to eat no more than 1200 calories a day.

However, if you are willing to put in some work, you can eat a little bit more. For instance, even housework can increase your eating ability. Heavy cleaning burns 432 calories an hour. Do that for 70 minutes a day and you’ll have your 500 calories. Mowing the lawn for an hour (with a push mower) burns 324 calories an hour. But there are fun ways to burn calories too. An hour of singles tennis burns 549 calories an hour. And, an hour of skiing burns a whopping 740 calories.

If you are serious about controlling calories, weight loss will follow. One way to do this is to control your portion sizes. Meals, both at home and at restaurants have been growing in size for decades. For instance, in the 1930s, the average dinner plate size had an 8 or 9 inch diameter. Now, the average diameter is 10 to 12 inches. Switch to salad plates for dinner and watch the pounds disappear.

It’s no secret that restaurant portions have grown. For instance at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, a seemingly good for you Teriyaki Salmon dinner has a whopping 1240 calories. If you are eating out, either split the meal with someone else or ask for a take home box at the start of the meal. Then, place half of the food in the take home box before you start eating. That way you can still “clean your plate” without taking on the additional calories.

There calories weight loss formula is calories in-calories out. Make sure that there is a differential of 500 if you want to lose one pound.

Burning Fat vs. Burning Calories

To lose weight and get in shape you must have a good diet and exercise regularly to burn fat. The first thing you must understand about exercise is that just because you are burning calories does not mean you are burning fat. Your main focus when you exercise should be losing body fat, and you can’t lose body fat just from burning calories. When we exercise, our bodies will start burning calories, but the calories that are burned are the calories from carbohydrates in our system. In order to burn calories from your stored fat, your body requires the presence of oxygen. There is a certain amount of oxygen that your body needs in order to start burning fat and the only way for you to measure the amount needed for your own body is to keep up with your target heart rate during exercise. Please understand that if you continue to only burn calories from carbohydrates, you will lose mostly “water weight” which leads to a decrease in your metabolism. Also, think of the calories that are burned from carbohydrates as your energy calories. If you lose too much energy calories then your muscles will not receive enough energy to increase your metabolism which indirectly burn fat. Therefore you must increase your calorie intake when you are on an exercise program to replace your burned energy calories.

 

Burning Fat Calories during exercise

 

During aerobic exercise, your body goes through several stages before it reaches the point where you are burning fat. You will hear people say that you are only burning sugar (carbohydrates) not fat during the first 10 minutes of exercise. This is true to a certain extent. I say this because you will continue to burn sugar past the 10 minute mark if you are not working out hard enough for your body to want more oxygen; or you are working out too hard and you can’t supply your body with enough oxygen for fat burning. When you exercise you must move at a steady pace (not too fast, not too slow) so your body will utilize your stored fat (not carbohydrates or sugar) as its energy source. Also remember that just because you reached the fat burning stage does not mean you will stay there. Staying at the fat burning stage once again depends on if you are moving at a pace that is right for your body. Make sure that you are within your target heart rate range.

 

Burning Fat Calories at rest

 

The only way for you to continue to burn fat calories hours after you have finished working out is through the anaerobic exercise of weight training. Weight training is the key to burning fat at rest. Weight training is an anaerobic activity that will cause you to burn more calories than aerobic exercise. The calories that you are burning during weight training exercises are mostly calories from carbohydrates (meaning you must eat even more calories per day for energy); but the calories you burn at rest are mostly calories from fat. The reason you are burning fat at rest is because weight training increases your metabolism which uses your stored fat as energy.

 

To make your body the ultimate fat burning machine you must do aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (weight training) exercises.