How Many Calories are You Burning?

Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

I still say the best way to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight is to eat less and exercise more.  To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you consume.  It sounds really simple, but most people have a hard time actually doing that.  Unless you have a very physical job that requires a lot of movement, you really need to fit in exercise somewhere, and with busy schedules that is so hard to do.  I consider myself blessed that I have the time to walk 2 miles every morning, and I worry about how I will keep it up if/when I have to go out and get a job, and my time will be even more precious.

I may have to change my workout in order to get more bang for my buck, so to speak, and find some exercises that will burn more calories and build more muscle in less time.  This handy tool at FitClick looks like it will come in really handy to find out the calories burned for different exercises. Just put your body weight and exercise duration in, and then find your exercise.  When I put in walking, it gave me various options, from an easy walk to an inclined walk to walking lunges with weights - and each one tells me how many calories I'd burn in the time I have.  Cool, huh?

Another good thing about this?  When you see exactly how much exercise it will take to burn off the calories in, say, a candy bar, you might be less likely to eat that candy bar.  Maybe?  Remember, to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you take in.  Walking 2 miles every morning at about 4 MPH - doesn't even burn the calories in a candy bar!  Not that I eat very many candy bars, but I'm thinking maybe I better 'step up' my exercise plan.  Maybe lunge walking with weights?  That burns more.