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.
