This article will show you a simple method to see the number of calories burned in exercises and activities to help you count calories and lose weight.
A calorie counting approach to weight loss requires you to have an understanding of the calories you consume and burn. Understanding the calories you consume can be achieved by maintaining a diet journal and an understanding of the
calories in food, which will allow you to add up the calories of the foods in your journal to give an indication of the total calories you consume. In order to see how many calories you burn, there are numerous approaches.
An online
calorie calculator will give a good initial indication of the of the calories you burn. You will simply need to input some basic information about yourself such as you height, age and exercise level and an estimate will be computed from this information. It is also useful to be able to see the calories typically burned during any given activity or exercise. Calculators have been developed which can give an approximation of this value derived from both the length of time you have spent on an activity and your weight.
The calculations are on the basis of a value called the activities
MET (Metabolic Equivalent). An exercises Metabolic Equivalent (MET) measures the energy spent during an activity, and is expressed as a multiple of the calories you typically burn at rest, or your resting metabolic rate (RMR). For example, being asleep has a MET of 0.9, indicating you are burning slightly less calories while sleeping than while at rest. A moderate pace walk is considered to have a MET of 3.3, and therefore burns roughly 3.3 times the calories than in a resting state. Running up stairs has a high level of calorie burnage and has a MET of roughly 15. You can convert the METs to see how many calories you burn during an exercise by using an an
exercise calorie calculator. These calculators multiply your weight in kilograms, by an exercises time length in hours, and it's MET value to get the calories burned.
When calorie counting, you should be aware of the general number of calories you burn with your ordinary activities. The calculated calories burned in an exercise should not be added to the more general estimate of your total calories burned by a typical weight loss calculator, as such calculators already include you activity level and provide an estimate for a twenty-four hour period. Rather than this it can be useful to sum the calories burned in your various activities over a 24 hour period to give another rough indication of the number of calories you are burning through your activities.
