The number of calories you burn exercising depends on three factors:
1. Your Bodyweight
2. How Long you Exercise
3. How Hard you Exercise
Body Weight
The biggest factor in determining how many calories you burn exercising is your bodyweight. The good news is that the more you weigh the more calories you will burn while working out. The reason for this is very simple-a heavier person has to use more energy (burn more calories) to move themselves around.
A 250lb person will lose weight at a quicker rate than a 150lb person. For example if a 250lb and 150lb person both went dancing for 30min the 250lb person would burn 350 calories while the 150lb person would only burn 200 calories.
What would the 150lb person have to do to burn the same amount of calories as the 250lb person did dancing in 30 minutes? That 150lb person would simply have to:
* Exercise Longer -OR- * Exercise harder
Workout Time
One way for the 150lb person to burn the same amount of calories as the 250lb person did dancing is to dance longer. If the 150lb person dances for 30min they will burn only 200 calories but if they danced for 60min they would burn 400 calories.
The longer you workout the more calories you will burn.
You'll burn more calories if you walk 3 miles instead of 2 or if you clean up your entire house instead of just cleaning the kitchen.
You can also burn the same amount of calories that you do in 30 minutes of exercise by splitting it up into 3 shorter 10-minute exercise sessions done throughout the day. Doing this has the same effect that eating 6 small meals does (see page 28 in Weight Loss made Easy).
Doing a lot of mini-workouts throughout the day also keeps your metabolism elevated throughout the day. Mini-workouts are good for people who are short or time or have funny schedules.
You can also split a 60-minute exercise session into three 20-minute sessions or six 10-minute sessions. A 45-minute workout could become three 15-minute exercise sessions. Whatever you decide to do to split up workouts try to keep them at least 10min of longer to get any real weight loss benefits.
You don't have to exercise longer to burn more calories there is one more factor you can manipulate when comes to burning calories.
* Exercising Harder
What if that 150lb person can't stay and dance for 30min but only has about 20min to dance-what can they do to burn 350 calories or more in 20minutues? One solution is for them to increase the intensity of their workout activity.
In this case the 150lb person would have to dance a little faster or change their intensity from a low to moderate/high intensity. The higher the intensity of a workout the more calories you will burn.
You will burn more calories walking at 6mph pace than you would walking at 4mph pace. The good thing about increasing workout intensity is that you don't have to workout for a long time to burn the same amount of calories working out at a lower intensity.
You would burn about the same amount of calories if you walked at 6mph pace for 30min and walked at 4mph pace for 45min.
There are 3 ways you can determine how hard you are working: 1. Talk test Low intensity if you can sing your favorite song or carry on an uninterrupted conversation while exercising, then you're exercising at a low intensity
Moderate-High intensity If you can't sing your favorite song and can only carry on an interrupted conversation (a conversation where you can only respond) then you are working out at a moderate intensity. Speech that is somewhat labored with a little huffing and puffing is a good test of exercising at a moderate-high intensity.
High-Very high intensity Can't talk at all. Have to stop and catch you breathe are signs that you may be working TOO hard at very high intensities.
2. 1-10 scale
Rate your level of intensity on a scale of 1-10. With 1 being sitting on a couch watching TV and 10 being you exercising Too hard.
Rate anything that's a 2-4 as low intensity, 5-7 as moderate-high intensity and 8-10 being high-very high intensity.
3. Sweat Test
No sweat. No problem! Low intensity
Breaking a sweat. Sweat appears on the normal places on your shirt around your collar and armpits moderate-high intensity
If you can ring a gallon of sweat from your shirt after exercising then you are working too hard at a high-very high intensity
You would have to consistently work out for 45-90 minutes everyday to start seeing any weight loss results from doing only Low intensity activities, about 30-45 minutes for moderate-high intensity activities, and 15-30min for high-very high intensity activities
You can get an idea of how many calories you are burning when doing certain workout activities by using the WEIGHT LOSS CALCULATOR.
You will see that the more you weigh the more calories you will burn when doing any workout activity and you will also notice that the amount calories you burn will vary depending on the activity.
To burn more calories 24 hrs a day is simple. Yes, I said simple but I did not say it is easy. That is because you must have a firm commitment and mental discipline to do it. However, it will get easier and easier when you adapt to your new lifestyle. By then, you will be able to burn off extra calories fast forever. You will no longer be fat and unhealthy.
So how do you burn more calories 24 hr a day? Here are some simple steps to burn more calories:-
?Build muscles. Muscles are active cells and they are great calorie burners. The more muscles you pack on, the more body calories you will burn because the calories you have eaten will be burned for energy by your muscles. It is estimated that with each pound of muscle you put on, you will burn an extra 35-50 calories everyday even when you are sleeping. You can see how much calories you will burn in a year just by multiplying these figures 365 days of the year. All these calories are burnt just because you have gained a pound of muscle. What if you have more muscles?
?Do your cardio exercises in the morning before breakfast. Make sure that your cardio exercises raise your heart rate sufficiently to burn more fat. The exercises must be intensive and will leave you puffing, panting and sweating. This is to make sure that you will continue to burn calories hours after you stopped your cardio exercises.
Do your cardio exercise 5-6 days a week. On top of that, because your carbohydrate store is low in the morning, your body will burn more calories from your body fat to fuel your cardio exercises so that you will lose weight and body fat consistently.
?Eat 5-6 times a day with about 3 hrs intervals between meals. Make the meals small consisting protein and complex carbohydrate. Complex carbs are carbs that are more difficult to digest so that they do not spike insulin quickly to be converted into body fat. So instead of eating white rice, eat brown rice. Instead of having white bread, substitute it with brown bread instead. Have plenty of fresh leafy fibrous vegetables.
The frequency of meals will tell your body that there is plenty of food and so your body need not store body fat for emergencies. On top of that, your digestive system will be constantly working to digest the food and so that means burning of calories.
?Do weight training 3 times a week with rest days in between. Do your weight workout in the evenings so that you will continue to burn calories in the night. Workout with compound exercises such as bench presses, squats, lunges, dead lifts etc to activate more muscle fibers and so that these large muscles will carry on burning calories for many more hours into the night. That means you will be losing weight even when you are sleeping.
?Take slow release protein supplement before bed such as casein protein. This is to feed your body throughout the night and help your muscles to recover from the day's activities and at the same because casein protein is slow to digest, your body will continue burning calories even when you are asleep.
So with a combination of all these activities, you will be burning body fat calories almost 24 hrs a day. Simple? Great. Let's start to lose weight by burning more calories round the clock now.
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