Burning Calories

Your body burns calories 24 hours a day, even if you are sedentary or asleep, your body requires calories to stay alive. As I discussed in my "Metabolism" blog, you will burn additional calories with a faster metabolism, and when you have more muscle mass.

Every move that you make requires calories to make that move. Obviously, the more intense the activity, the more calories that are burned.

What is a calorie? When a calorie is defined in reference to food, it is the amount of energy in the food that is available through digestion. It is a measure of heat energy. In other words; calories are energy that fuel our bodies. If you have too many of these calories, and not enough activity to burn them off, you will get fat.


An hour of moderate biking (10 to 12 miles an hour) will burn around 500 calories. Playing basketball will burn 500 per hour. Push ups, sit ups, tricep dips, will also burn 500 per hour.



Cleaning your house will burn around 200 to 300 calories in an hour. Preparing food, playing croquet, and throwing darts, will all burn around 150 calories. Dancing, light aerobics, and horseback riding all burn approximately 300 calories during an hour.


In an hour you can burn 600 calories running a ten minute mile, 500 in rollerblading, 400 in downhill skiing, 600 in swimming the breast stroke, 500 in singles tennis, 350 lifting weights, and 600 in jumping rope.


Everything you do burns calories, but everything you eat adds them back into your body. If you go out and run for an hour and burn 600 calories, and then return home to eat a bagel and cream cheese, you will put back in most of the calories that you burned off, as well as added fat.

This is where you need to be more aware. If you want to lose the fat, be cautious of what you are burning, and what you are putting back in. You want to burn more calories than you are eating. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you just did all of this exercise, now you can eat a lot more. That will sabotage your weight loss. Again, it is simple math.


So be aware of what you are burning, and what you are ingesting. You will be able to get lean and fit by understanding the balance between calories in, and calories out. Burn more, Eat less!


Till Tomorrow,
Queenie