Your body functions by a balance and intake of energy, counted by the units of calories. Calories can be directly translated to body weight as 3,500 calories is equivalent to 1 lb. of fat. By using more calories than you intake you are able to lose weight. Keeping a daily log will allow you to monitor your calories both for intake and expenditure for a week, month, year or even beyond. Watching what you eat and logging your exercise routine gives you a foundation to continue changing your diet and exercise routine to reach your weight loss goal.
Calculating Calories
Step 1
Time all exercise sessions using a stopwatch or timer. If performing two or more forms of exercise, split the different forms of exercise into different segments maintaining the time for each segment. If you lift weights and jog on a treadmill during an exercise session, for example, maintain a separate time for each of the two forms of exercise.
Step 2
Chart or log every segment and session immediately following exercise. Eliminate any confusion about the exact time or types of exercise by keeping accurate information. Exercise is fatiguing, not just physically but mentally. It is better to carry a notebook to the gym than to forget a day's session.
Step 3
Convert your exercise times into hours. If you already used hours as your unit of measurement then skip this step. If you used minutes, divide the total number of minutes by 60. This will provide you with your time in hours. For example, if you exercised 45 minutes, divide by 60 to equal .75 hours.
Step 4
Calculate the calories per hour of exercise using one of the charts in the Resources section. These chart factors weight into account. Other charts and calculators exist. For example, jogging at 5 mph for an hour is 728 calories if you weigh 200 lbs.
Step 5
Multiply the number of hours of activity by the calories for that exercise per hour. For example, if the .75 hours of activities was jogging as in Step 4, then .75 multiplied with 728 calories would equal 546. This is the amount of calories burned during that activity.
Step 6
Add your calories burned during exercise for each week.
Step 7
Divide your weekly total of calories during exercise by 3,500. Since 3,500 calories is equivalent to 1 lb. of fat, the resulting number will be the number of pounds of fat lost during exercise that week. For example, if you spent a total of 5,250 calories for the week exercising, then dividing by 3,500 will give you 1.5 lbs. of weight loss from exercise for the week.
Tips and Warnings
- Calculating calories by hand lets you see the amount of calories you are expending through each exercise. This will help you decide if you need changes in your exercise routine and what to change to reach your goal. By keeping a log you can chart progress and see where you gained and lost to make even more corrections long term to your exercise routine.
- Body changes from exercise do not happen immediately. Water weight may also throw variation of actual body weight versus the calculated weight loss. By exercising you may add muscle while eliminating fat, and your body weight on a scale may not change drastically. Charts used to calculated calorie expenditure during exercise are only estimates as each person's exact calorie output will vary.
Things You'll Need
- Notebook, chart or log
- Stopwatch or timer
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