Calories Burned
Losing Body Fat
I want to start by telling you a difficult fact to accept, but one that many people need to know. When you count calories burned through exercising, You're not counting actual calories burned. At best, you're coming up with an estimate.
Everyone has a different metabolism, and burn calories at different rates. The rate is also based on your cardiovascular health, your overall physical fitness, the time of day, what you've been eating, and even the way that you do the activity. Calorie burning is something that exercise always does, but it doesn't always do it in a consistent way.
Nonetheless, calories burned are useful as a measurement of how much you have accomplished through exercise. They are not useful because they are accurate, but because they are close enough to provide you with a ballpark figure. Some people get motivated by the idea of running a marathon. They train very hard so that they can run more miles every day in a shorter time. Other people get motivated by the idea of burning calories and losing body fat. If you are the latter, by all means try to calculate calories burned. It certainly will give you a closer approximation of how quickly you are going to accomplish your weight loss goals.
Another great thing about calories burned exercising is that it helps you plan out your diet. Every day, the human body burns a certain number of calories naturally. If you're sedentary that number is relatively low. If you have a very active life, it's higher. Coming up with a good estimate of how quickly you body is metabolizing the food you consume will tell you how fast you will be able to shed the pounds and look your best. A lot of people lose weight because they want to look better. If thinking about burning calories helps you accomplish that goal, so be it.
Nonetheless, calorie burning should not be the only measure of what exercises are the best to do. A lot of people forget about the importance of varying what exercise they do, for example. If you do the same exercise every single day, your body will eventually get used to . It will become easier and easier for you, and as a result the amount of calories burned will drop. If you change things up regularly, however, you will keep burning calories and increasing your strength at a much more rapid pace. This is important whether your goal is physical fitness, weight loss, training for the marathon, or simply staying in shape.
