How does your body use 2000 calories each day, but you need to run an extra mile to use up an additional 100 calories?

Question

Why can’t we eat and lose calories.. LOL

In: 209

Answer 1

2000 calories a day is around 80 calories an hour. You use less while sleeping, so guesstimate about 100 calories per hour while you’re awake.

Say you run a mile in, say, 10 minutes (approx 2x walking pace), that’s working at 600 calories an hour or 6x your body’s rest work rate. Run that mile in a much brisker 6 minutes and you’re at 10x your body’s rest work rate.

The reason you only burn around 100 calories running a mile is because you’re only running for a short time of the day.

The reason it feels like a lot of work to run a mile is that even at a gentle pace you’re operating at many times your rest work rate.

For calorie burn, unless you’re rather fit and can run a 10k, the most realistic option for most people to burn calories is a modestly sustained increased work rate for a long duration – eg hikes or some sort of sport where you’re moving around a fair bit for a long duration with intermittent rest, Eg soccer.