How do you measure your caloric intake and output? Your caloric balance is the difference between your intake and expenditure of energy, or your output.
IN - OUT = BALANCE
Your Intake
As human beings, we consume food to produce energy. The amount of energy supplied by a given food is usually measured in calories (Cal). For example, a medium size apple contains 72 calories, a glass (250 mL) of 2% fat milk, 128, an egg (50 g), 78, and McDonald's Big Mac, 5632.
All the food you eat in a day is called the daily caloric intake (DCI). You can increase or decrease this number by eating more or less food. The average daily intake, in the US, was 2,618 calories for men and 1,877 calories for women in the year 1999-20003.
Your OUT The human body spends the energy drawn from food in basically two ways: to fuel the metabolism at rest and for physical activity.
Resting metabolic rate The resting metabolic rate refers to the energy your body spends when you're awake but inactive in a fasted state at room temperature. It is, basically, the minimum amount of energy it needs to keep your cells alive. That includes tissue regeneration, regulation of the body's temperature, breathing, blood circulation and filtering, and hormonal and nervous activity. These functions are carried out by your liver, brain, heart, kidneys and muscles; these organs and tissues stay active, even when you're not. Thus, even when you're resting, you're spending calories big time. Actually, you might be surprised to learn that, for most people, the resting metabolic rate is the largest source of daily energy expenditure.
Physical activity Quite simply, you spend energy whenever you move. From your bed to the shower in the morning, from home to work or school, and so on. Even when you're sitting or standing, your muscles spend energy so you can maintain good posture. The amount of energy you spend that way in a day will depend on your lifestyle: some people are more sedentary like the office worker who travels by car and some are more active i.e. a manual worker, or someone who travels by foot or bike.
Sport and physical exercise also increase the
amount of energy spent on physical activity. For example, a 121 pound
individual would spend roughly 75 calories per hour when sitting, 200 when
shopping and about 450 when walking at a fast pace. Ultimately, physical
activity can account for between 20 (little or no physical activity) and 50 %
(athletic activity) of your daily caloric expense. In conclusion, the more physically active you are, the more physical activity increases your daily caloric output.
Interestingly, exercise affects your OUT in two ways: first, it raises your daily expenditure the days you train. Second, in the long run and as you slowly build muscle, it increases your resting metabolic rate. The fact is that a pound of muscle is a lot more "active", from a metabolic standpoint, than a pound of fat.
Muscle contracts when you move, is put under stress when you train and constantly rebuilds itself to sustain its daily effort. As we have seen, energy expenditure can also be calculated in calories. Your daily caloric expense (DCE) is the sum of the energy required by your metabolism at rest in a day, plus the energy used to do physical activity in that same day. - 15432
IN - OUT = BALANCE
Your Intake
As human beings, we consume food to produce energy. The amount of energy supplied by a given food is usually measured in calories (Cal). For example, a medium size apple contains 72 calories, a glass (250 mL) of 2% fat milk, 128, an egg (50 g), 78, and McDonald's Big Mac, 5632.
All the food you eat in a day is called the daily caloric intake (DCI). You can increase or decrease this number by eating more or less food. The average daily intake, in the US, was 2,618 calories for men and 1,877 calories for women in the year 1999-20003.
Your OUT The human body spends the energy drawn from food in basically two ways: to fuel the metabolism at rest and for physical activity.
Resting metabolic rate The resting metabolic rate refers to the energy your body spends when you're awake but inactive in a fasted state at room temperature. It is, basically, the minimum amount of energy it needs to keep your cells alive. That includes tissue regeneration, regulation of the body's temperature, breathing, blood circulation and filtering, and hormonal and nervous activity. These functions are carried out by your liver, brain, heart, kidneys and muscles; these organs and tissues stay active, even when you're not. Thus, even when you're resting, you're spending calories big time. Actually, you might be surprised to learn that, for most people, the resting metabolic rate is the largest source of daily energy expenditure.
Physical activity Quite simply, you spend energy whenever you move. From your bed to the shower in the morning, from home to work or school, and so on. Even when you're sitting or standing, your muscles spend energy so you can maintain good posture. The amount of energy you spend that way in a day will depend on your lifestyle: some people are more sedentary like the office worker who travels by car and some are more active i.e. a manual worker, or someone who travels by foot or bike.
Sport and physical exercise also increase the
amount of energy spent on physical activity. For example, a 121 pound
individual would spend roughly 75 calories per hour when sitting, 200 when
shopping and about 450 when walking at a fast pace. Ultimately, physical
activity can account for between 20 (little or no physical activity) and 50 %
(athletic activity) of your daily caloric expense. In conclusion, the more physically active you are, the more physical activity increases your daily caloric output.
Interestingly, exercise affects your OUT in two ways: first, it raises your daily expenditure the days you train. Second, in the long run and as you slowly build muscle, it increases your resting metabolic rate. The fact is that a pound of muscle is a lot more "active", from a metabolic standpoint, than a pound of fat.
Muscle contracts when you move, is put under stress when you train and constantly rebuilds itself to sustain its daily effort. As we have seen, energy expenditure can also be calculated in calories. Your daily caloric expense (DCE) is the sum of the energy required by your metabolism at rest in a day, plus the energy used to do physical activity in that same day. - 15432
About the Author:
Carl Juneau teaches a magical combination of the best abs exercises and secret superior cardio that gets you six pack abs in less than 15 minutes per day. Visit his website to discover how to get six pack abs.
