How Many Calories Should I Burn Daily to Stay Healthy?

How Many Calories Should I Burn Daily to Stay Healthy?

How many calories should I burn daily is a question that is asked by a lot of people. 

A calorie is the amount of energy that is released when your body breaks down food. We burn calories and intake calories every day. Every day our body requires energy to perform its daily activities. We shell out a set number of calories for those activities. 

We intake food every day. All of the food items we eat have a specific number of calories that give our body energy. 

Your body absorbs food better to release energy when you work out. Exercise helps you to burn your calories easily. There are multiple exercise options that are readily available that help you increase your intensity to burn as many calories as you like. 

Exercises like weight training are effective if you’re trying to build muscles through your daily calorie expenditure. On the other hand, high-intensity interval training and cardiovascular exercise are recommended for people who are trying to lose weight through their daily calorie expenditure. 

Daily calorie expenditure is the number of calories that you spend every day. 

How many calories should I burn daily through calorie calculators?

There are various tracking apps that allow you to accurately track the calories you are spending during an activity. Take smartwatches, for instance, Apple, Mi, Samsung, and other brands have come up with smartwatches that track your pulse rate to give you the calorie number that you’re spending. These smartwatches are usually synced with their respective applications on smartphones to function better. 

Your body burns calories even when you’re not exercising. Your body burns calories through tasks such as breathing, cell processes, and blood circulation. 

You can track your calories even without smartwatches and applications. You can use the Harris-Benedict formula to calculate your basal metabolic rate or BMR. BMR is the number of calories your body needs to keep functioning even at rest. 

The Harris-Benedict formula gives you a result on the basis of your sex, weight, and age. Therefore, the answer that you get is personalised and not generic. 

Once you have your BMR result you can multiply it with your activity level to find out the calories you need to maintain your weight. 

How to gain, lose or maintain my weight while burning calories every day?

In order to maintain your weight, you need to find out the number of calories that you require for it. 

You can do this by weighing yourself. After you weigh yourself, download fitness apps that help you with calculating your calories. Enter your current weight and then enter your goal weight as your current weight. This will give you the calories that you require to maintain your current weight. 

In case you want to increase your weight, you will have to eat more calories than your body burns. 

Some people complain that even after they eat a lot, they have difficulty gaining weight. This is because they have a high rate of metabolism. In order to gain weight, they need to exercise to create more appetite.

If your goal is to gain muscle then you need to train weights. Heavy lifting allows you to burn a lot of calories. Now you must be wondering how burning more calories will help you gain weight. 

Burning more calories increases your appetite. This will help you intake more calories. When you eat more food, you intake more calories. This automatically helps your gain. During gaining your goal should be to eat more than your burn. We call this method eating in a calorie surplus. 

Weight loss secrets

In case you want to lose calories, you will have to eat fewer calories than your body burns. 

Several people complain that they seem to gain at the drop of a hat. It is true that some people tend to gain more easily than others. There is science behind this behaviour. People who tend to gain easily have slower metabolisms. Burning calories is more difficult for them. 

This is why cardiovascular exercise is recommended for them so that it increases their heart rate and burning calories becomes easier for them. However, only exercising and starving is not the way to go while losing weight. 

Many people make the mistake of starving themselves after vigorous exercise. This practice harms the body. You need to have a balanced diet. If losing is your goal, you need to make sure that you have fewer calories than the number you burn. The name of this practice is calorie deficit. This will let you steadily burn your calories.

Do men and women burn calories differently? 

Yes, men and women have different bodies and so they burn calories at a very different rate than each other. Therefore, the question of how many calories should I burn daily will have different answers for both genders. It is different for all people regardless of gender.

Males have more testosterone in their bodies. Therefore, as a result, they have more muscle mass. They have less body fat. Having more muscles means that the body burns more calories at rest. 

Therefore males burn more calories than females. However, body composition plays a huge role to determine the number of calories that a body burns. 

Tips for staying healthy 

No matter what your fitness goal is, you will need good nutrition to support it. 

You will need healthy food, good sleep, and good exercise.

Stress can lead to muscle loss. We need muscle power to perform our daily activities. Therefore, having good muscles help contribute to overall health. 

You should consider reading nutritional values at the back of the food packaging before purchasing it. This tells you the nutritional value of the food item you’re about to purchase. 

Track your food throughout the day. This helps you be mindful of what you eat. 

Avoid consuming refined carbohydrates. Pay attention to your protein consumption. Protein not only helps you build more muscle but they also help you fix your health problems. 

Final thoughts

How many calories should I burn daily has different answers for different people. However, how to stay healthy has the stable answer of taking care of your nutrition and exercise goals. 

There is no right or wrong number here as long as you’re taking steps towards leading a healthy life. Be mindful of following a sustainable diet and avoid crash diets for the sake of your health.