Exercise is the best way to burn calories to lose weight and if you choose running weight loss can be even more successful. Running is one of the most efficient, non-extreme sport ways to lose weight and accept for the cost of a good pair of running shoes, it is free to do.
Depending on your weight, running weight loss will burn about five calories for every liter of oxygen you breathe. Men will generally burn more calories than women because they generally weigh more. Say you weighed 265 pounds, you would burn about 166 calories per mile. They say on average 100 calories get burned every mile. Yeah, if you weighed 150 pounds, maybe. Someone who is heavier than that will naturally burn more calories over the same time period because they have to work harder than someone who only weighs 150 pounds.
Running also burns more calories than walking. There is information out there that states that running and walking burn the same amount of calories. I never thought this thinking was correct because you do work harder when you are running than when you are walking. Unless you are power walking, that is.
Power walking will actually burn more calories than running because you use your body completely differently while power walking and your body actually works harder because you are making it move in a way that it is not accustomed to moving.
I don’t know if you know this or not but there is a difference between your total calorie burn, or TCB, and something called your net calorie burn, or NCB. Your NCB is calculated by subtracting your resting metabolic calories. These are the calories that you would have burned anyway during the same amount of time even if you had not been exercising.
So, let’s do the math. If you weighed 265 pounds and then ran one mile you would have burned a total calorie burn of 166 calories. But now, to get your net calorie burn you have to subtract your resting calories from that number. Your resting calorie burn is about 20 calories for the same amount of time as your workout. So, subtract 20 from 166 and you get 146 net calories burned. Still not a bad number and that is only for one mile. If you build up to five miles a day then just imagine how fast the weight would come off.
Ok, here’s some more math for you. You need a calorie deficit of 3500 calories a week to lose one pound of fat. So, at 146 net calories burned per mile you would have to run about 24 miles per week to lose that pound. Sounds a little intimidating but when you think about it that is less than five miles a day. Actually it is only about 3.5 miles per day. I think if you paired your running weight loss with a nice low-fat, low-carb meal plan you might just be able to eke out a couple more pounds per week. too.
