A 240-lb. person burns approximately 872 calories jogging for an hour, while a 160-lb. individual expends around 584 calories for the same workout, according to MayoClinic.com. Your body weight affects how many calories you burn both during exercise and at rest, which impacts your calorie needs for weight maintenance or weight loss. If you lose weight, you generally lose muscle as well as fat, which results in changes to your metabolism.
Factors
Your body composition plays significantly into your calorie-burning potential because lean muscle mass burns more calories than fat. Several factors affect your ratio of lean tissue to fat tissue, including your age, gender, genetics, activity habits and weight. The number of calories you burn during specific activities depends on the duration and intensity of the activity, as well as your body weight. You can also calculate your basal metabolic rate before factoring in calories burned through exercise.
Basal Metabolic Rate
The number of calories you burn without even trying depends largely on your weight and body composition. Multiply your body weight by 10 if you're a woman and 11 if you're a man to estimate the number of calories your body burns each day just to keep your temperature regulated, your heart beating and your blood circulating. Add another 20 percent to that total to account for sedentary activities, such as sitting, sleeping and reading. It generally takes another 10 percent to digest your food. This formula gives you a general idea of how many calories you burn based on your body weight, before accounting for exercise.
Calorie Expenditure During Exercise
A typical moderate-intensity workout, such as brisk walking or recreational cycling, burns roughly 5 calories per minute in a 160-lb. person, 6 per minute in a 200-lb. person and 7 per minute in a 260-lb. person. More intense activities, such as stair climbing, jogging and high-impact aerobics, burn around 10, 12 and 14.5 calories per minute, respectively, based on the same body weights. Physical activity calculators, such as the one provided on the American Council on Exercise website, help you estimate calories burned during a workout based on the activity, the duration and your body weight.
Considerations
You can maximize the number of calories you burn through exercise by incorporating interval training into your workout schedule. Bursts of running during a walking workout, for example, help you burn more calories in the same amount of time. The more lean muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism, so strength training once or twice a week can help you burn more calories both during exercise and at rest. Consult your doctor before starting a new exercise program if you have a history of heart or orthopedic problems.
References
- MayoClinic.com; Exercise for Weight Loss: Calories Burned in 1 Hour; Mayo Clinic staff; Dec. 2009
- BJC Health Care: Calorie Needs: Calculate Your Basal Metabolic Rate
- American Council on Exercise: Physical Activity Calorie Calculator
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Physical Activities for a Healthy Weight
- MayoClinic.com; Metabolism and Weight Loss: How You Burn Calories; Mayo Clinic staff; Oct. 2009
- American Council on Exercise: Weight Loss Plateaus and Pitfalls
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