How Do You Know How Many Calories You Are Burning?

For most people burning as many calories as possible from your workout is one of if not the most important goals. Fit Bits or similar such devices can give you an indication of calorie burn, but how accurate are they? And what actually determines how many calories you are burning?

1/ Heart Rate – Affects How Many Calories You are Burning

The old theory goes that you should work at lower intensities and stay in the ‘fat burning zone,’ as this burns more fat.  This is largely a myth. The truth is the harder you work the more total calories and fat you burn. You don’t have to be an expert to work that out, it’s basic common sense.

Of course there is no point working out so hard in the first 10 minutes of your 60 minute workout that you can barely do anything for the remaining 50 minutes. You have to strike the balance between working as hard as you can whilst still lasting the duration of your session. But the higher you can keep your heart rate the more calories you burn during the workout.

For example on if you walked or ran the same distance, let’s say 5km, the heart rate at which you do it impacts the total calorie burn massively.

Let’s say you walked it and your heart rate was 100 bmp throughout, you may burn around 300 calories.

But if you did the same workout but ran all/some of it with your heart rate at 150 bpm you would burn about 600 calories. That’s double!

I won’t get too much into the science, but basically the more your heart rate is elevated the more calories you burn. This is because when your heart rate is raised it makes energy aerobically, so it uses oxygen to burn fat and power activity.

2/ How Much You Do – Affects How Many Calories You Are Burning

This one is pretty obvious. Forgetting heart for a moment, the more you do physically the more you burn. So you burn more by training for longer. Breaking it down, you burn more by lifting 5kg weights than you would lifting 4kg weights. And so on….

3/ How Much You Weigh – Affects How Many Calories You Are Burning.

This is only true for weight bearing activity. E.g. Walking/Running. It would not make any difference for a chest press for example.

Using walking as the example, if someone that weighed 20 stone walked 5km, they would burn twice as many calories as someone that weighed 10 stone. You are carrying twice the weight so you burn twice as much. As discussed above heart rate is another variable in this equation, the figures above are based on the 2 people walking at the same heart rate.

Conclusion – How do you know how many calories you are burning?

So in short, you want to work as hard as you can for as long as you can. No great surprises there, but hopefully understanding how your body burns calories will help you burn them more effectively.

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