Thinking about how to lose weight correctly, many people understand that they need to lose weight and how they can spend the calories they receive from food. And for this, it is advisable to consider exactly what kind of calorie consumption occurs during various actions, say, when walking, when jumping, when running or when doing housework. Actually, we will talk about this and much more further.
According to professional nutritionists, the average modern person may need about 1800 or a maximum of 2000 calories per day. Moreover, about 50% of the energy produced (about 1000 calories) by the body is always spent on standard metabolic processes occurring within the body itself.
Next, the remaining 50% of the energy received from food must be completely spent as a result of certain physical activities as a result of elementary physical activity that occurs during the working day. But, if such calorie consumption does not occur, a particular person may develop excess weight, in one or another amount.
However, how many calories should you burn in order to lose weight? You need to understand that every day, in everyday life or simply at work, a person can spend on average no more than 700 calories, which means that in order to maintain a vital energy balance, in order to maintain the necessary physical shape, it is important to spend at least another 300 calories per day. day. In other words, in this way the average person should spend about 2 thousand or 3 thousand calories in one week during his life.
As a rule, this can easily be done simply by regularly performing certain physical exercises, say, playing sports, or as a result of the most ordinary work or just everyday activity that accompanies everyday situations or affairs.
We combine business with pleasure
The “sweet candy” will be the realization that everything you do involves burning unnecessary calories. Well, the benefits of the completed tasks will be quite obvious.
cleaning your apartment is on your agenda in the near future , then start doing it immediately. Keep in mind that deep cleaning the room for 1 hour will help you get rid of 200 calories at once. And if during the cleaning process you move furniture, then add the same amount to the previous figure.
You looked into the refrigerator and realized that it was time to visit the grocery store . This “event” also promises fabulous results in regaining your former harmony. If shopping in a store takes about half an hour, then you can subtract 120 calories from your calorie budget; walking back home with a couple of heavy bags and going up, for example, to the third floor will contribute to the loss of another 130 calories.
Are you planning to iron your laundry ? If you devote half an hour to this activity, then another 100 calories will “leave” your body.
Do you like to work in the country? Great: working in the garden or on your personal plot is great outdoor fitness. Digging or weeding your garden beds for just 15 minutes will save you 100 calories.
If you are a car enthusiast , then forget about the car wash.
Do it yourself - and the work will be done more efficiently, and another hundred calories will be burned by the body in just 20 minutes.
How to burn calories through daily activities
Doing housework, shopping or playing with your child can also burn up calories. How to spend calories at home, in the country and in the store? Here is a list of things that require considerable energy expenditure:
- Simple cleaning – 250 kcal/hour;
- General cleaning – 300 kcal/hour;
- Shopping in a hypermarket – 250 kcal/hour;
- Playing with a pet – 200 kcal/hour;
- Active walks with a child – 400 kcal/hour;
- Gardening work – 350 kcal/hour;
- Cooking – 80 kcal/hour;
- Driving a car – 50 kcal/hour;
- Ironing – 45 kcal/hour.
How are calories spent during seemingly such simple movements? The fact is that even minor muscle contractions, holding the body in a certain position, and static muscle work significantly increase energy costs. For example, a person in a sitting position spends 30 calories every hour, and if he also knits, then all 100 calories are spent, because due to the movement of the fingers, the arms become tense, and it is harder for the spine to keep the body in a state of balance.
Having figured out how many calories to burn to lose weight and how to do it correctly, it should be said that no titanic work can replace regular daily activity, because only in this way can you create a calorie deficit and get rid of fat deposits.
Don't forget about walking and being outdoors
Daily walking is the most affordable way to keep yourself in good physical shape. A half-hour walk at a brisk pace will burn about 200 calories. You can, for example, walk to the nearest metro station, avoiding the crowds on the bus, or walk a few stops to work or back.
If you have a four-legged friend, then daily walks with your beloved dog are also a wonderful workout for the body. On weekends, you can go with the whole family outdoors and play badminton, volleyball or some other outdoor game.
Losing weight and burning calories while walking
Walking, along with other physical exercises, helps you lose weight and stay fit, because the calorie consumption when walking is comparable to working out in a fitness club.
You need to start active walks gradually, especially if before this the person led a sedentary lifestyle. At first, it is enough to walk 3-4 times a week for 10-15 minutes. Gradually it is necessary to increase this time to 30-45 minutes, and the number of walks to 5-6 per week. You should not give up or put off walking until tomorrow, as only regular exercise will help you lose weight.
To lose weight and lose weight, you need to walk quickly, since the calorie consumption when walking at a slow pace is small and amounts to 45 calories in half an hour, but if you speed up to 5-6 km/h, you can spend 150 calories in 30 minutes.
It is necessary to increase the pace of walking through small steps, rather than large sweeping ones, while you need to work with your hands, and not just hold them at the seams. If you work actively with your hands, it will be easier to walk, but energy consumption will increase.
It is better to walk in the morning to lose weight, since after sleep the reserves of glucose in the blood are depleted and when walking, fats from the subcutaneous tissue serve as a source of energy. In addition, a morning walk starts an active metabolism for the whole day.
You should not allow your body to dehydrate, otherwise the process of losing weight will go slower. Before a walk, as well as immediately after it, you need to drink a glass of clean water.
Proper breathing is another tip for burning calories while walking. You need to inhale air through your nose and exhale through your mouth. If you have shortness of breath, you should slow down your walking pace until breathing is restored.
Reduce snacking with water
If you are used to snacking between breakfast and lunch, and even have time to throw something in your mouth before dinner, then I advise you to give up this habit. Thirst sometimes hides under the guise of “my body is hungry, it’s time to eat something.” Try drinking a glass of cold water instead of a traditional snack - and you will see that the “feeling of hunger” has disappeared.
Many nutritionists recommend drinking more water if you want to lose weight. Our body consists of 75−80% water. It is a good solvent, supplies nutrients to cells and tissues and removes waste. Water is an important thermoregulator of our body. With enough water, the skin is always hydrated, our muscles are reliably strengthened, and our joints retain their flexibility for a long time. But, most importantly, all digestive processes of the human body take place in the aquatic environment. Correct water balance is a guarantee of stable functioning of all organ systems.
While counting calories, how much you ate and spent, we should not forget that the energy that enters our body with food is spent on basal metabolism, on the digestion process, on tissue growth and renewal, on maintaining thermal balance and physical activity. If the energy intake (from food) exceeds its expenditure, then the excess energy is stored in the body in the form of fat. Carbohydrate and fatty foods contribute to fat deposition.
Review your diet to increase the proportion of plant and protein foods. And remember about physical activity that can be combined with useful work. They help get rid of extra pounds.
Tags: physical activity, useful tips, healthy lifestyle, weight loss, excess weight, calorie counting
How to increase your calorie expenditure?
A sedentary lifestyle can be a serious obstacle on the path to a slim figure, because in order to burn more calories, you need to move more. For many, this will seem like a difficult task, especially in office or sedentary work. But there are simple ways to increase your activity levels naturally. In this article we will look at simple methods and illustrate with specific examples that everything is possible - you just need to take it and do it.
How to increase your calorie expenditure?
The higher the calorie consumption, the more effective the weight loss - this is a fact. High calorie consumption allows you not to cut your diet too much, helps you become more active and makes losing weight comfortable. Our body constantly spends calories not only on movement, but also on maintaining temperature, breathing, and heartbeat. Unfortunately, achieving significant expenditure through exercise alone is difficult unless you do it daily. Daily multi-hour training is the prerogative of athletes, but for ordinary people, three workouts a week and increased energy expenditure due to non-training activity are enough.
The trap of a sedentary lifestyle
The human body is designed to move. To get their food, our ancestors spent hours hunting animals and working in the fields. For long periods of modern history, physical labor was the only way to feed ourselves. Automation of production and the advent of household appliances have simplified our work, while television and the Internet have brightened up our leisure time, but have made us sedentary. The average person spends 9.3 hours a day sitting. And this does not take into account sleep, watching TV and communicating on the Internet. Our body is not designed for this lifestyle. It suffers, gets sick, grows fat.
A sedentary lifestyle reduces calorie expenditure by up to 1 calorie per minute and reduces the production of fat-burning enzymes by 90%. Prolonged daily inactivity leads to increased cholesterol levels and decreased insulin resistance. A sedentary lifestyle leads to poor posture and muscle atrophy, and also provokes hemorrhoids.
According to statistics, obese people spend 2.5 hours more sitting than slim people. And during the years of rapid development of information technology from the 1980s to the 2000s, the number of obese people doubled.
There is a way out, even if you work in a sedentary job 8 hours a day.
Ways to increase activity outside of home and work
If you decide to lose weight, then you will have to become more active than you are now. The easiest way to increase your activity is to find an active activity that you enjoy. Cross stitch will not work. Look for something that will make you move.
Active hobby options:
- Roller skating or ice skating;
- Cycling;
- Nordic walking;
- Dance classes;
- Classes in the martial arts section.
An active hobby can help occupy your free time, but if you work a sedentary job, find ways to get away from your chair.
Ways to be more active at work
Ways to be more active at work:
- Get off one stop earlier and walk (you can do it both before and after work);
- During a break, do not sit in the office, but go for a walk;
- During your coffee break, do a light warm-up.
The worst thing you can do with a sedentary lifestyle is to come home and sit back at the computer or in front of the TV. However, you can combine business with pleasure - do a set of exercises or exercise on a simulator while watching your favorite show.
Ways to increase activity at home
If you spend most of your time at home, then use the following ways to burn more calories.
Ways to increase activity at home:
- Household chores;
- Wash by hand;
- Active games with children;
- Shopping trip;
- Active dog walking;
- Perform a light set of exercises.
It is important to understand that the point of these actions is simply to increase calorie expenditure, which will allow you to lose weight faster and more effectively. And if you turn this process into an exciting game “Get rid of extra calories,” then by the end of the week the result will pleasantly surprise you. To encourage yourself to move more, place things as far away from the places where you use them as possible. For example, put the printer in a far corner so you can get up from your desk more often, and at home, deliberately lose the TV remote control to change channels manually. Train your body to be active while playing!
How to burn more calories without noticing it
Let's look at the example of the day of two women weighing 90 kg, but one leads a sedentary lifestyle, and the other leads an active lifestyle.
In the first case, the daily routine of an ordinary person is sleep, light morning exercises, personal hygiene, cooking and eating, walking to the bus stop and back, sedentary work in the office, watching TV for two hours and taking a shower. A woman weighing 90 kg will spend a little more than two thousand calories on this activity.
Now look at this example. The activities are the same here, but this woman went out on her work break to buy groceries and walked a few extra hundred meters on the way home. She gave up the elevator, did some light homework in the form of hand washing, spent an hour playing actively with her child, and did simple balance and stretching exercises while watching her favorite TV series. As a result, she managed to burn a thousand more calories!
No grueling workouts or active hobbies, but a natural increase in activity, which allowed me to increase my calorie consumption by a whole thousand. Who do you think will lose weight faster? And add here workouts, active hobbies and uncounted regular getting up from your seat and calorie consumption will increase even more.
You too can calculate your energy expenditure in a calorie expenditure analyzer and think about how you can increase it. The main thing is that it is easy and natural for you. So that you can maintain approximately the same level of activity every day.
Author: Ekaterina G., nutritionist, fitness blogger (especially for Calorizator.ru) Copying this article in whole or in part is prohibited.
Physical activity on the water for weight loss
During fitness training and various physical activities in water, a rapid loss of excess weight occurs, since its resistance increases the load on the muscles, but the person feels it is easier to bear it. During physical activity in water, the number of calories burned also increases due to the fact that the body needs to spend energy on thermoregulation, warming the body in an environment with a low temperature.
Moreover, people who are obese are often contraindicated for intense types of cardio exercise due to their negative impact on the musculoskeletal system and cardiovascular system with large body weight, so the pool and water sports are hardly the only way for them to burn excess fat. calories.
In a pool or open pond you can do the following types of gentle, but high-cost cardio exercise:
- water aerobics.
By doing this type of fitness, you can effortlessly burn up to 270 calories in half an hour, and if you use special sports equipment in your training and experiment with the pace and range of movements, the number of calories burned can easily be increased;
- swimming, which is considered one of the most energy-intensive types of physical activity.
Swimming in water, the body spends 285 calories in half an hour. The exact number of calories depends on the style of swimming and the duration of active work in the pool;
- water skiing.
Thanks to this type of activity, you can strengthen the muscles of the back, abdomen and upper limbs, develop endurance and coordination, and also burn up to 180 calories in just half an hour;
- diving.
This fashionable extreme sport helps the body become more resilient, strengthen the heart and blood vessels, train the muscles of the limbs and burn 360 calories in an hour of scuba diving.
Chew gum
James Levine and Paulette Baukol from the Mayo Clinic found that chewing gum increases energy expenditure by 11 kcal per hour.
Moreover, chewing gum helps you consume fewer calories and feel more energetic. Kathleen Melanson, a professor of nutritional science at the University of Rhode Island, studied Chewing Gum Can Reduce Calorie Intake, Increase Energy Expenditure, Nutritionist Finds the effects of sugar-free gum on weight control. When study participants chewed gum for one hour in the morning (three 20-minute segments), they consumed 67 fewer calories at breakfast and did not make up for it throughout the day.
In assessing their condition, participants stated that they felt more energy and less hunger after chewing gum.
The researchers hypothesized that the act of chewing itself stimulates nerves in the muscles of mastication that send signals to the appetite areas of the brain associated with the feeling of fullness. This explains why the subjects were less hungry.
Gain new knowledge
At rest, the brain consumes Each Organ Has a Unique Metabolic Profile about 420 kcal per day and utilizes about 60% of all glucose in the body. And during active mental activity, calorie consumption increases even more.
Several British experiments WATCH: Here's How Thinking Hard CAN Make You Burn Calories showed that solving difficult problems increases glucose consumption. During the experiment, one group performed simple actions, such as repeatedly pressing a button, while the other solved math problems. Participants solving difficult problems experienced a drop in glucose levels. This means they burned more calories in the process.
The 2004 A Metabolic Measure of Mental Effort study found that glucose levels changed in response to the high-concentration Stroop test. In addition, scientists noticed a relationship between glucose levels and answer accuracy. Thus, the more focused a person is, the more energy his brain consumes.
To burn more calories during mental activity, the task must be challenging and interesting. This is the only way you can maintain a high degree of concentration.
The good news is that the more you exercise your brain, the more calories it consumes. In the study Evaluation of a “mental effort” hypothesis for correlations between cortical metabolism and intelligence, Gerald E. Larson found that the higher a person’s mental abilities, the more glucose the cerebral cortex consumes during work.
However, it should be noted that no mental activity can compare with physical exercise and a simple home workout will burn more calories than the most complex mathematical example.
