Thousands of articles are written every year on how to lose weight, and each one of them suggests a different way to go about it. However, the truth is that any excess weight you gain is related to the number of calories you take in and the number you use each day. It is as simple as that, and no one can prove otherwise. It’s like the gas you put in your car: You put in so much and it travels so far. In the case of your body, you eat a certain amount of food, and it sustains you for a certain amount of time. If you eat more than you use, the extra calories get stored as fat.
Let’s consider in detail the calories that you take in and use each day. As it turns out, there are three main types of calorie burn. The first is called the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. It is the largest of the three, and is your resting metabolism; In other words, it’s the number of calories you expend while sitting around. It is used to fuel your cells, keep your heart beating, make your lungs work, operate your brain, and more. About 60 to 80 percent of the total calories you burn each day are BMR calories.
The second biggest calorie burn comes from the thermionic effect of food. It may sound a bit strange, but calories are needed to burn calories — in other words, to digest your food. Protein requires about 25 calories for every 100 calories consumed, and carbohydrates and fat require about 10 to 15 calories per 100 calories consumed. And that can add up to a substantial number of calories. This accounts for between 10 and 30 percent of the total calories you burn each day.
Finally we come to what may surprise you, namely exercise and general body movement. Most people think that exercise makes a big contribution, but it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean it isn’t important – it is. You can easily burn 500 calories in an intense workout, but in general, for most people, exercise and body movement account for only about 10 to 15 percent of the calories they burn in a day.
Now let’s apply the above to a normal woman and man. First we need the BMR formulas, and they are as follows:
Adult male: 66+ (6.3 times your body weight in pounds) + (12.9 times your height in inches) – (6.8 times your age in years).
Adult female: 655 + (4.3 times your weight in pounds) + (4.7 times your height in inches) – (4.7 times your age in years).
As an example, we’ll assume you’re a 40-year-old woman who weighs 140 pounds and is five-feet-two. Substituting the appropriate number, we get that your BMR is 1360. To get your thermionic calories, we multiply the total number of calories you take in during the day by .15. Let’s say it was 1900; Your thermionic calorie is therefore 285. It is a bit difficult to accurately determine the contribution from exercise and body movement, as it depends on how hard and for how long you exercised during the day. We will assume that you did not work; In this case your contribution is probably around 200 calories. And this gives you a total of 1845 calories.
If you consume 1900 calories for the day, you have taken in excess of 55 calories. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in two months (if you do this every day) you’ll gain a pound, and in a year you’ll gain 6 pounds. (I’m using the fact that there are 3500 calories in a pound here.)
Let’s do the same thing for a 40 year old six foot man who weighs 170 pounds. Substituting this into our BMR formula, we get 1793. In this case we will assume an intake of 2600 calories; Multiplying this by .15 gives 390 for its thermionic calories. For exercise and body movement let’s say he uses 300 calories (means he didn’t work out during the day). His total is 2483, and if he takes in 2600 calories a day, he will have an excess of 117 calories. This will add up to a pound of weight every 30 days and about 12 pounds in a year.
From this it is easy to see that weight gain can take a toll on you if you are not careful. Even a few extra calories each day can lead to considerable weight gain over the course of a year. The best way to keep track of how well you’re balancing your calorie input and output is, of course, to weigh yourself every now and then, and if you notice you’re putting on weight slowly, you should stop sooner. Steps should be taken to change things as soon as possible. , You either have to cut back on your calorie intake a bit or do more exercise. And I’d like to emphasize that, even though exercise doesn’t make a major contribution to the overall calories you use in a day, it can be very important. As I mentioned earlier, a good workout can use up to 500 calories, and this can easily offset any extra you may have.
