How come your body burns 2000 calories a day by existing, but running a mile only burns 100 calories?
In: Biology
That’s the baseline, the lowest number you can burn. The body is always pumping blood, always catalyzing fuel, always breathing, and always thinking, at your base metabolic rate. Anything you do on top of that, taking a walk, or going to a gym, landscaping, talking with people, or even thinking, raises that rate. That’s why desk work, or dealing with people’s drama, can be surprisingly exhausting.
(This is also what METs means on gym equipment)
So if running that mile takes ten minutes, you would burn 600 calories in that hour. That’s 4800 calories in 8 hours. Just one hour can raise your METs for the next few hours if you don’t immediately go back to sitting. That’s like running a boiled egg under cold water to stop it from cooking.
Everything you do is processing fuel. Your effort (or lack of) can raise or lower the rate. And here’s the frustrating part: when you attune your body to more work on a consistent basis, you improve efficiency. So you don’t burn as much by running if you’re already a runner. That’s why you might lose the first fifty pounds easily, but the last ten is a challenge.
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