Measuring Burned Calories With an Exercise Chart

Measuring Burned Calories With an Exercise Chart
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Calories in Calories Out

When exercising it is a good rule of thumb to remember calories in and calories out. You cannot exercise and burn calories willy-nilly without knowing how many calories you ate for the day. Nutrition is 85% of losing weight, and exercising helps you absorb the fat in your body and create lean muscle. The best way to burn calories and know if you are on the right track is to make an exercise and meal chart.

Calorie Log

There are many websites out there that have a free food log. Search for these websites, and try them out for a few days to see if you like it. These sites are usually free. If you eat an apple and oatmeal for breakfast, enter how many quantities and search for the brand. The websites will populate how many calories you ate. Document this daily and compare your weeks and months to see if you are making good or bad choices. If you are not into internet calorie tracking sites, you can do it the old fashioned way by writing down everything you ate, and using a book to find out how many calories each food item has.

Calories Burned

Before you start exercising, figure out how many calories you would be burning per activity. Treadmills and elliptical machines can be inaccurate sometimes when tracking these amounts. Search the internet just as you did for your food calories for an exercise calorie site. These sites will ask you how many minutes you did each activity and will show you how many calories you burned per repetition or minute, depending on what activity you performed. It is quite interesting to see how many calories you can burn from doing the simplest things. Did you know you can burn calories from laughing, or just existing in general? Sleeping also burns calories!

Charting Calories

Charting the calories that you have eaten and burned will be beneficial in many ways. To begin the charting process, buy some poster board, or even create a chart using an excel document. On the left side, document how many calories you ate, and on the right side, document how many calories you have burned. At the end of the week, find the difference of the two to determine if you ate more than you burned, or if you burned more than you ate. It has been proven by doctors and fitness experts that exercising in large amounts requires more calories than exercising moderately. As a mental note, remember you need to fuel your body to be able to maintain the energy it takes to last through the workout session. You do not want to burn out early before seeing the results that you are capable of producing!

Doctor Visits

In any exercise routine, it is important to clue in your doctor on what you are up to. He or she can determine what heart rate zone that you need to be at to burn calories properly. This is determined by your age, height, and current weight. Every pound you lose will change this zone, so make sure to check in with your doctor regularly. Show your doctor your calorie intake and burning chart. They may recommend deducting something from your diet entirely, or adding something to your exercise routine that you haven’t thought of.

Calorie Burning Machine

Charting anything, whether it is how much money you make verses how much money you spend, or even how many books you read a month is important for progression and self awareness. Keep up with the calorie burning chart, and you will be surprised with how much you have improved and what a calorie burning machine you have become!