Losing weight, calories

[LoveryJ]

I've heard that in order to lose weight you need to burn off more calories than the intake. The RDA is 2000Kcal and I've run 2 miles on a treadmill to only find that I've burned off 100 ish Kcal. So I would have to run 40 miles a day, surely thats insane?

[Doc Spock]

RDA 2000Kcal
Is the russian back with some type of code.


Seriously you need to take the contraption outside, sling it over your shoulders and do a 10 mile run uphill. Should sort out the RDA wotnots.

[V2 Schneider]

Mmmmmmmmm.

No the RDA for calories is based on what an average person will burn off during the day.

the average person does not run 2k a day.

Doing nothing, sitting on your bum watching TV and sleeping 8 hours a day will burn off 2000 calories. Therefore any exercise will burn off more.

Also remember, after the run your body is still hot and your metaboloism high.

As a strict rule of thumb add another 50 percent on what you burn off in the aftermath of exercise.

Also as your body loses fat and gains muscle (lean) you body will burn off more doing nothing as a pound of muscle burns a lot more than a pound of fat.

This is because muscle moves whreas fat is static. energy (calories) is needed to make things move!!!

Aim to burn 300 calories off a day and eat 200 calories a day less (3/4 of a mars bar!!!!!!). That should burn a pound of fat a week as there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat. (7 x 500 calories a day)

[irnbru666]

How are you running? Are you setting it to an incline or varying your speed? I find a 40 minute run takes me 4.5 miles with about 430 calories burns.

You burn calories throughout the day anyway, so obviously you don't want to try burning over 2000 calories on a treadmill.

I would try to vary the kind of cardiovascular exercise I was doing, because running all the time would make me bored, so I switch to the cross trainer or rowing machine sometimes.

Also, doing weight training is highly beneficial when it comes to burning calories, because when you, for example, run, you burn calories when you're running, whereas when you're weight training, you also continute to burn calories for a significant amount of time afterwords, whilst toning up without worrying about bulking up.

Hope this helps.

[V2 Schneider]

Indeed, just to add to irnbru,

When you build muscle, you still will through aerobic (same as cardio-vascular) the muscle needs to grow.

The aches and pains you feel after any exercise (even if super-fit) is the muscle fibres which are repairing themselves. Each time they repair they get bigger. This is quite simple "body-building". All this repair work is putting extra strain (good strain!!) on the heart and metabolism, thus making you burn more calories, thus further getting rid of the fat!!!

(PS don't become a body builder in the literal sense though, errrrrrgggghhhhh)

[Champagne]

Did you know that just through 8 hours of sleep alone your body burns off around 574.4 kcal, or "food"
calories, per night?

So although exercise is great for improving your muscle tone, endurance and metabolism, you shouldn't just count the calories that you're burning off during your exercise regime. Running 2 miles every single day is actually a high amount of exercise so you would probably need to increase your carb intake to sustain that.

And Schneider is right. Your heart rate is faster and your body is still working harder after your run, so you will continue to burn off a higher amount of calories for a short while after your session.