How do we burn calories?
Calories out
So today we’re talking about how to burn calories. Your calories outcomes from burning calories by doing things such as going to the gym, doing a home workout, going for a walk, mowing the lawn, swimming etc. All of these things burn calories as you are moving your body.
As for calories in, they 100% come from your diet (what you eat).
Calories can be in foods that we may not even know that they are in. Some examples of this are:
Sauces/Cooking sauces, such as mayonnaise, ketchup, salad cream, hunters chicken cooking sauce, bolognaise, carbonara.
Oils- These can be used to fry foods in and they can be high in calories so it’s better to always be mindful of this, the same goes for some sauces.
Beverages- Coca-cola, drinks from Starbucks e.g frappes, hot chocolate. These are what are called liquid calories. Some of these drinks can contain from 200-600 calories so always try to go for low-calorie drinks such as diet coke instead of regular full sugar coke, skinny lattes/frappes as these can save a few hundred calories when swapping from regular lattes/frappes to a lower calorie option as well, especially if your goals are for weight loss then different swaps can make a difference. Also if you prefer to get your calories from food rather than drinks then lower-calorie options may be more helpful.
BMR
BMR is the calories that you need to stay alive. BMR is also the number of calories that it would take if you were to do nothing, e.g. when you’re lying in bed, sitting on the couch. Even by only doing these things then you would still burn calories, maybe not as much as you would if you were exercising or walking around but you are still burning calories when you are doing nothing such as sitting down.
Your body needs these calories in order to keep your heart pumping, to keep your organs working to remove produce, to keep any food that you have in your body digesting, to keep your brain functioning.
Activities and how active you are
People who do a lot of activity and who do more will burn a greater amount of calories such as, if that person has a busy and active job, for example, a working labourer. When you compare this as to a person who works in an office job it is different. A person who works in an office job will tend to burn fewer calories than someone who is in an active job.
Activities that you can do:
Moving around
Walking
Planned exercises- playing a sport, going to the gym, running.
Digestion
It takes calories to digest the food that we eat to get energy out of them. It takes us more calories to digest protein than it does for carbohydrates and fats.
Protein takes longer to break down when digesting therefore protein makes you feel fuller and it burns more calories when digesting compared to carbohydrates and fats.
NEAT
Ever heard of this and wondered what it was? Well, here I will explain what it is.
NEAT stands for Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. NEAT is the amount of calories that you burn from non-planned exercise. This could be things like washing the dishes, cleaning, fidgeting, mowing the lawn, walking to work, moving around, having an active job.
Active exerciser- A person who has an active job, who also has a higher amount of exercise in their life/schedule and who tends to do more NEAT.
Non-active exerciser- A person who doesn’t have an active job such as a desk job.
Sedentary (Non-active and non-exerciser) - A person who sits on the couch all day. No calories are being burnt through any exercise or being active therefore calories out is much lower. These people have the same BMR as the active exerciser, and non-active exerciser but exercise isn’t a part of their lifestyle, but NEAT and digestion is a part of their life. All of these examples of different people are also based on the fact that they are all the same height and weight but the differences are that the first two groups of people are a lot more active so therefore they will burn more calories compared to the non-active and non-exerciser individual.
Yoyo dieter- Someone who doesn’t exercise and is not active so they have a lower BMR because of the changes in the body base gets more efficient when you diet and for long periods. They also have lower weight as their body wants to save some calories and they have digestion as well which burns calories also.
So there you have it, there’s some ways/examples of how to burn calories.