Lose Weight For Life: Exercise Basics 1 - Burn Calories for Fat Loss Today

Exercise Basics 1

Burn Calories for Fat Loss Today

We have broken down Calorie Expenditure into two categories your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Physical Activity. In order, to lose weight we are trying to achieve a greater calorie expenditure than their calorie intake. In the short term, you cannot meaningfully change your BMR but you can burn calories through movement. This section will focus on burning calories through your daily physical activities. 

In a day you burn calories in every movement you perform, walking to work, standing up, eating, etc. but the greatest amount is burned through exercise. The goal is to create that caloric deficit and increasing your calories burned through exercise gives you an even larger gap to lose more weight. By creating that gap we are ensuring our body uses energy from storage rather than from food aka burn fat.

The body needs to use calories to move, the more intense the movement the greater the calories required. If your goal is to lose weight then your goal is to burn calories, if you want to burn more calories your workout intensity should be higher. 

Different Exercises

Here is an example of calories burned through different types of exercise for a 150 lb woman (age, sex, weight, etc., make a difference in total calories burned but the difference between exercises remains the same):

If you are trying to create that deficit, the more intense activities are to the left of this chart. This is because those exercises like HIIT, have more rigorous constant movements. This does require a high amount of energy (calories) to perform and therefore will create more fat loss. Walking at a fast pace will burn more calories per hour than weight training, therefore if you are just weight training you may want to add some endurance activities to burn more fat.

Intensity and Heart Rate

The intensity of your exercise is very important, a slow walk burns less than a fast walk, and lifting 2 lb weights burns less than 20 lb weights. This intensity should be reflected in your heart rate because the higher the intensity the more oxygenated blood your heart needs to pump. If you are doing an exercise for 60 minutes the goal would be to have a higher average heart rate over those 60 minutes, this is a good indication of how hard your body is working and how many calories are being burned.

In the exercise example given, the calories burned are based on your heart rate throughout the exercise. For the most part, you could replace the exercises with average heart rate and achieve the same answers:

The answers do differ due to spikes in intensity (heart rate) during the different exercises but the same general results.

Your physical activity has a large impact on dictating your calorie deficit for the day/week. You do not have to exercise to create that deficit, you could just eat less but you may be depriving yourself of essential nutrients by eating too little. To achieve the best health results you should be exercising and eating a well all your nutrients needed to repair your body.

Incorporating exercise is a great way to lose weight, in the short term and the long term. In Lose Weight For Life: Exercise Basics 2 we will focus on increasing your BMR to achieve longer-term success.