How To Calculate Calories Burned During Exercise

In order to lose weight, you must create a calorie deficit on a daily basis. You can create the deficit by eating fewer calories than what your body needs, or you can burn calories by exercising. Figuring out how many calories you are burning, however, may be a little bit tougher. Here are a few tips to get a general idea for some of the most popular exercises.

1. The number of calories that any person burns in a given day is dependent upon many factors. Some things such as your weight, height, and lifestyle can affect how quickly or slowly your body burns calories. You've probably heard the word "metabolism" used to explain how someone stays so thin. Metabolism is how fast your body burns energy. If you have a slow metabolism, it takes longer for you to shed weight, whereas someone with a fast metabolism may be able to eat a lot of everything and never gain an ounce! Your activity level and your current eating habits have a lot to do with your metabolism rate.

2. Prolonged aerobic exercise burns more calories. You need to keep in your target heart range for extended periods of time to effectively burn calories. The best way to do this is with aerobic exercise like walking, jogging, swimming, or biking. Stop and go activities and sports are not as beneficial for calorie burning as constant aerobic movement.
3. Know how many calories you burn in one minute of your favorite exercises and then do the math! Low impact aerobics can burn about 6.2 calories a minute. 30 minutes of the aerobics will burn away 186 calories. You can burn about 11 calories per minute jogging, 4.1 calories per minute walking, and 8.6 calories per minute swimming.
4. Find an online calorie burning calculator. Many online sites can be much more specific with their calculations of how many calories you've burned based on your weight, age, activity, and duration of the exercise. Find one you like by visiting the links in the sidebar or doing a search.

You don't have to do traditional exercise to burn more calories and lose weight. Some things to try in your day to increase calorie burning is to get up to change the TV channel instead of using the remote, walk over to your colleague to talk instead of sending an email, or use the stairs instead of the elevator. Just get active and the calories you burn will add up fast!