Question: How many calories do you burn in a day?
Answer: It depends.
And today we’re gonna find out how many calories you burn in a day in just a few minutes. First off, let’s understand a bit more about calories.
Calories Explained Simply
No matter what fitness or health journey you’re on, you can never run away from calories.
As humans, we exist and do daily tasks by using energy. This energy comes from the food we eat, so in simple terms, calories is just a scientific term for energy. Everything we consume gives us the calories, or energy, to carry out various tasks.
Why Do I Need To Know How Many Calories I Burn?
Knowing how many calories you burn is so important in a fitness journey – in fact it was one of my biggest mistakes when trying to lose weight.
Here’s the cool part: You can transform your body based on how many calories you consume.
If you consume more than you burn, that’s called a calorie surplus. You get extra energy that may turn into fat, or if you work hard enough, it gets turned into muscle. That’s why bodybuilders eat so much!
If you burn more than you consume, that’s called a calorie deficit. To compensate, your body will burn your muscle or fat, causing you to lose weight.
If you burn just as much as you consume, then nothing happens to your body, you’ve maintained your calories.
By knowing how many calories you burn, you can then decide how many calories to consume based on your goal. If you want to gain weight/build muscle, eat more than you burn. If you want to lose weight, burn more than you eat.
So How Many Calories Do I Burn In A Day?
Everybody burns a different amount of calories a day. Among the factors are gender, age, weight, height, how active you are, and how much muscle you have.
You can use this Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) Calculator to measure how many calories you burn in a day. Head over and once you have your results I’ll explain a bit further how you should interpret the results.
Back? Here are my results:
As you can see, my maintenance calories are 2,767 per day. That’s the amount I burn for my activity level.
So if I want to lose weight, I’d eat 300 to 500 calories less, this is called cutting.
If I want to gain weight, I’d eat 300 to 500 calories more, this is called bulking.
Some other notes: If you look at the breakdown, Basal Metabolic Rate is what I’ll burn if I didn’t do anything for the entire day (literally by just breathing and lying flat). As you go down the table, you’ll see if you’re more active the more you’ll be burning.
I’d skip the ideal weight and BMI parts. These are average estimates and it’s not a one size fit all metric, especially if you workout a lot.
Now we’ve got that figured out, you no longer have to guess how many calories you burn! I’d recommend you to regularly check your TDEE again once you’ve had weight or lifestyle changes.
How Do I Know How Many Calories I Eat In A Day?
I’ve written another article on this topic here. Combine these 2 concepts and you’ll be able to transform your body however you wish.
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments! I’d be more than happy to share my experience to help.