How do we burn calories?

I’m going to tell you how to burn body fat and keep it off. And How you can lose weight and burn calories. But first, we need to learn how we burn calories. What is the best way for me to train in order to do this? If you haven’t already, check out What is a calorie deficit

We burn calories throughout the day by doing a number of different things. In this graph, I am going to explain what each abbreviation means, and what this means to you and burning calories.

Everything shown in this breakdown is called your TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure. And the things that make up your TDEE are:

For a deep dive into the science follow this link

BMR - Basal Metabolic Rate

These are all of the calories your body uses to just stay Alive. This means even if you lead in bed all day and did absolutely nothing, you would burn calories. Crazy right? - most of the calories you burn on a daily basis, come from just keeping you working properly.

NEAT - Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis

These are all of the calories you burn when not exercising. This includes things like walking, talking, fidgeting, typing on a keyboard, picking up your phone and scrolling through this blog.

TEF - Thermic Effect of Food

Believe it or not, it actually costs calories to digest food. Can you remember when everyone used to tell you to eat nothing but celery, because “negative calories” Ignore those people, those people are stupid. Well kind of. They basically said that it costs more calories to eat celery, than the calories you get from celery. Christ, I need to stop saying celery. Anyway… your TEF is the calories you burn while consuming food. The reason this is important to know is that some food has what we call a “higher thermic effect of food”. Foods like protein or high-fibrous foods tend to have a higher thermic effect of food when compared to other foods. Still, it’s pretty amazing that you burn calories from eating.

EAT - Exercise Activity Thermogenesis

There are all of the calories you burn while exercising. I know, I know. “5%!! You must be kidding me!!” Honestly, it’s true. And the follow-up question is… “Then what is the point in exercising? I thought you were going to tell me how to lose weight quickly!”

So the 2 ways that I recommend you burn calories are through 2 different ways. In the Calorie deficit blog, I talk about how to get into a deficit. But when it comes to creating that deficit through exercise how do we do it?

First of all, exercise is a poor tool for fat loss. It can help to increase the number of calories you burn but ultimately, your body will adapt to the training you do and send signals to your body to be more efficient with calories. It also is a losing battle because it could take an hour to burn 500 calories, but it could take 10 minutes to consume that amount of calories. In fact it could probably take me 2 minutes on a quick day. So burning calories through exercise isn’t a good idea. Exercise should be left for building strength, building muscles and improving your cardiovascular fitness.

Now this being said cardio is beneficial and it can help to increase the amount of energy you use each day, but flogging yourself for hours a week for zero returns isn’t what fun looks like to me. But if you enjoy cardio and enjoy the benefits you get for your Mental Health and Cardiovascular health. Then please do it. Do what you enjoy. That is always the number 1 thing we should do when we go to the gym.

The Best way to increase the number of calories you burn each day (TDEE) is to look at your steps. How much do you move each day? And can you increase this movement? By wearing a smartwatch or keeping your smartphone on you while you walk around, you can see the steps you do each day. And start working on increasing them.

The other way is to increase your BMR. The best way to do this is to increase the amount of muscle you have on your body. Go to the gym and focus on getting stronger, lifting weights and shaping your body. By increasing the amount of muscle mass, you will increase the number of calories your body burns on a daily basis. Muscle is an expensive tissue. And it costs calories to keep it.

There unfortunately is no quick way to lose a ton of weight. Not in a safe or long-term way anyway. Following the rules and getting into a calorie deficit will help you lose weight. I mean starving yourself and running a marathon a day (I do not recommend either) will help you lose weight. But for this to be sustainable. You want to look at building habits in your life.

The way you lose body fat is to be in a deficit. To be in that deficit. Look at your food intake and the amount you move.

How do I burn calories quickly?