What is a calorie? Do you know what a calorie is? It’s a unit of energy. It’s the energy that exists in food and that our bodies in turn utilize. Ultimately, a calorie is determined to be the amount of heat that is required to heat 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So if you have 240 calories in something, that’s enough energy to heat 1 kilogram of water to 240 degrees Celsius and that’s pretty hot, right?
Calories Are Important
Whether you care that there are 710 calories in a double cheeseburger or not, calories are a part of your every day fitness existence. Do you track how many calories you burn in a day? Do you keep count of how many calories you consume? Ultimately, when it comes to calories, they are the end all, be all of weight loss.
Because if you want to lose weight, you want to burn more calories than you consume – at least, in most diets you do. Why? Your body stores excess calories in your fat cells. If you consume more calories than you burn, you actually pile on the fat. Ideally, to lose weight, you want to consume 1,000 calories a day, but burn 1,200 calories. (These are arbitrary numbers by the way).
You would burn 1,000 of the calories you consume, plus an additional 200 calories from your fat stores. So that would create a weight loss effect. The best exercise when it comes to burning calories is cardiovascular exercise. Cardio includes:
- Walking
- Jogging
- Dancing
- Cycling
- Stair Climbing
Strength training is important and we’ve discussed that before, but cardio burns calories pure and simple. If you burn 500 ‘excess’ calories per day – that’s 3500 ‘excess’ calories per week and that translates to 1 pound per week. Strength training helps because muscles burn more calories than fat, so the more muscle you build, the more excess calories you burn.