Tips and Tricks

I attended a fitness conference last week and I learned so many new things that I wanted to share a little cheat sheet with you. If you are like me and you are always trying to figure out how many calories you should eat and how many calories you are burning, below are a few simple formulas.

Daily Calories Required:
Current weight x 15 - 500 = Daily required calories to lose 1 lb per week
ie. 150lbs x 15 - 500 = 1750 calories

Calories Burned:
I like to know how many calories I burn per minute. The less you weigh the fewer calories you burn, the more you weigh the more calories you burn per minute. Below is a scale based upon a 150lb adult which you can easily adjust up or down based upon your current weight.

At Rest - 1 calorie burned per minute
Strength Training - 3 calories per minute
Yoga - 3 calories per minute
Walking - 5 calories per minute
Kickboxing - 7 calories per minute
Running - 10 calories per minute
Skipping - 12 calories per minute

What Contributes to Burning Calories?
We all know muscle burns more calories than fat so we should all work towards a lower body fat percentage. But surprisingly our organs burn the most calories for us. Your body needs calories to function and here is a list of how those calories are allocated.

Liver - uses 21% of your daily calories
Brain - uses 20% of your daily calories
Kidneys - use 8% of your daily calories
Heart - uses 9% of your daily calories
Muscle - uses 22% of your daily calories
Fat - uses 4% of your daily calories
Everything else like your skin, intestines etc use 16% of your daily calories

As you can see your liver, kidneys and brain use almost 50% of your calories. When you severely restrict calories its not the fat in your body shrinking its your organ and brain function decreasing.  Go have breakfast!