LG John

Ballpark figures required?

How many calories a day does an average man between 20-30 burn on an average day with no added exercise (say on office worker)?

Also how many calories a day does said average man burn if he was to sit on the couch and watch TV all day and hardly move?

This all stems from me playing one of those video game cycle machines at the gym. I got my a$$ kicked at Solitaire but it amused me long enough to cycle for about an hour and a half. The machine said () I would have burned about 1200kcal and I'm trying to gauge if thats good or if its much in the grand scheme of daily calorie burning.

P.S. Those machines are great, really takes your mind of it

LG John

<waits patiently for the gym junkies to log on>

TopBanana

1200kcal is a hell of a lot. We normally use about 3k or so a day I think

LG John

Any advances on 3k a day?

That would suggest that if I did a similar cycle and got similarly p1ssed off a solitare for an hour and a half ever other day it would have a noticable effect on my body fat and general health.

V5

The average guy is going to need around 2800-3000kcal to maintain their basic metabolism. Any extra exercise is going to require more calories, or you'll start burning it off. There's a far better explanation here plus a calorie calculator (thanks to ozzy for the link ). This also breaks down how many grammes of carbs, proteins and fats you'd require.

ozzy

There's a handy, simple calculator here http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/nutrit.htm.

Doesn't take into account your age, but I'd reckon 2500 average.

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 6/26/2003 12:26:01 PM]

SiPie

Dude....

You are going to waste away

Stop obsessing about all this calorific crap and get yourself some beer down yer neck

Your turning into more of a bore than my ex-girlfriend who would count the calories on the side of a cigarette paper

V5

[Reflective mode]
How is it that despite knowing a fair bit about this subject I reverted back to being a fat knacker??
[/Reflective mode]

Ah well, back in the gym habit now!

V5

Hi ozzy! Beat ya!

ozzy

According to my HRM, I managed to burn 1800 calories in 1.5hrs running around the Campsie Hills; wasn't fun in the 20 degree heat.

Hit the wall after the first climb (only 15mins gone) and spent the next hour or so trying to get over it. Splitting headache since last night and had severe cramp in my legs through the entire race.

Only myself to blame as I never took on enough fluid over the last few days, muppet

V5

ozzy

Kenny,

You've got to watch the intensity of your exercise and not just the total calories being burned. Most of my run last night was probably with a heart rate around 170bpm, so I'd be burning carbohydrates and not fat stores.

IIRC my own fat burning zone is between 125-145bpm.

Do you check your heart rate when training?

Stefan

ozzy

There must have been 4 or 5 people sailing past me last night and I think I came in about 10mins off my normal pace, but I haven't seen the results yet.

Although I did manage to pass two people about 10m from the finish line on the really fast downhill finish. I bet they were really chuffed after passing me on my hands and knees a couple of miles back

Stefan

Gordo

I thought we need to consume about 2800 a day (average male) BUT (and this is where I get confused), presumably we only absorb a percentage of this ('cos we can't be 100% efficient at processing food), so the amount we burn each day must be, say, c1700 (assuming 60% efficiency).

It never ceases to amaze (and upset me ) how few calories you burn running - I need to run about 1.3 miles for each 250 calories. On this basis, 1200 calories is a lot to burn - well done!

Gordo

scoobydooooo

170 bpm , thats high , i use the concept 2 rower and turbo trainer a lot and have to work really hard to hit 170 nver mind average

[Edited by scoobydooooo - 6/26/2003 12:41:43 PM]

LG John

I will reunite myself with beer shortly - roll on the summer holidays

Ozzy, what carb? I have so little carb in a day I'd burn most of it off climbing onto the machine! The rest of the energy has to come from the fat I've consumed in the day and/or the fat on my body (you see my thinking here )

What excersises nail the most cals per hour? I'd have though rowing and swimming would be good as they use a large percentage of the bodys muscles and movement. Cycling on the other hand would be less so?

SiPie

No, not the case I wouldn't think

Surely depends on what sort of cycling it is

And I've yet to see someone swim uphill for too long

Namby pamby road cyling...maybe but cycling to the top of Helvelyn...or the Larraig Gruh (sp) then ..er no

ChrisB

I'm sure I read somewhere that running in a swimming pool burns loads of calories. I guess that's because there is stacks of resistance.

No impact to damage the joints but you look like a right muppet

super_si

The average bloke is 3000 roughtly.2500 for a women

I eat 5000

Si

ozzy

The military 24hr ration packs have 3,000 calories in them, but there is a larger pack with 5,000 calories for use in extreme conditions. That's obviously for active and very active personnel, but it's a good indication of what the average body needs to tick-over.

Kenny,

OK, so you may be on a low-carb diet with Atkins, but you'll just burn the fat you intake when exercising. If you don't burn more than you intake, then you'll not lose weight. It's the same whether you're on a high-carb or high-fat diet.

Energy for muscle contractions all come from ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) and you produce this through aerobic or anaerobic means. Your aerobic metabolism is supplied by carbohydrates or fat. If you chose carbs, then you create the maximum glycogen stores in your body and you use this to create ATP for your muscles. When you use fat as your energy source, this has to be broken down (called lipolysis) to produce ATP.

Whether carb-loading or using stored fat is better or worse than another I don't know and I'd need to look into it further.

If I found elite endurance athletes advocating a high-fat diet, then I'd be pretty amazed, but as yet I don't know of any.

Stefan

blueE9

not sure I'd stress too much about the no of calories one particular session claims to have burned as the benefit really comes from the metabolism-raising effect of regular exercise ie so that you actually do burn more calories lying on the sofa watching vids than the totally inactive bloke doing the same thing. this is particularly true if you incorporate some muscle building exercise into your routine too. i like the Concept 2 like scoobydoo and some weights and swimming.

had a lot of difficulty explaining this one to the missus who claimed there was "no point" going on the exercise bike as she had "only burned off one Mars bar". Doh.

LG John

Cheers stephan for the in depth response. At the moment its unlikely I'd deriving enough calorie intake from my diet (fat based) to sustain myself on a day to day basis, hence the reason that I'm loosing weight. It would seem that if I do cycle for an hour and a half and if I do use a further 1000kcals worth then thats likely to significantly increase the rate at which the stored fat is burned whilst at the same time having other benefitial health effects

ozzy

Kenny,

I found a few sites with some rough indication of the amount of calories burned from different exercises.

http://uhs.berkeley.edu/HealthInfo/E...alorieBurn.htm
http://kirtland.cc.mi.us/~balbachl/calorie.htm

This is quite an interesting read about high-carb vs high-fat diets.

Going by that study, it would seem that Fat produces a higher yield of ATP (a good thing for muscle contraction), but it requires a lot more oxygen to convert.

Have you had your cholesterol checked before or during this diet? The increased risk of heart disease with high-fat diets still worries me and it's not a simlpe case of saying that because you exercise, you burn off all the nasty stuff from fat.

Stefan

LG John

Cheers stephan, I'll follow the links

Not had my cholesterol levels checked, how do you do that? I won't be on atkins for too much longer anyway as I'm pretty much at the correct weight for my size

dba

1/2 hour swim burns 500 calories

V5

So I burnt 1000 before work!

So how many pints can I have tonight then??!!

ozzy

Kenny,

Easiest way is to ask your Doctor to check it. Literally takes seconds and all they'll do is ***** your finger for a small blood sample.

Other options are to

a) buy a home test kit (from Boots or any online chemist) or

b) you might find some gyms/sports centres offer some sort of basic medical. All that would involve is blood pressure check, cholesterol, body fat measurement, VO2 max estimate (not very accurate as all you do is cycle for 10mins at preset levels and they see how high your heart rate gets).

Stefan