There are plenty of articles written about the perfect workouts, ones that you can do in a few minutes and those that burn 1000 calories. Some of those articles are misinformation, while others provide good advice. Let’s focus on whether you can burn 1000 calories in one workout. It is possible, but not for everyone and a little bit fuzzier math than you might imagine. Your weight, build and intensity determines the number of calories you burn.
How intense the workout is makes the difference.
In those 1000 calorie workouts, most are calculated by using calories burned during an intense five-minute session and multiplying it by 12. If you burned 83 calories in five minutes, then in an hour, you’d burn 1000 calories. Nobody can go at peak intensity for very long. HIIT—high intensity interval training workouts are based on volleying between a high intensity level and a recovery level that burns fewer calories. To go at the highest intensity for an hour would be difficult even for the fittest athlete.
Body composition and your gender play a huge role.
Unfortunately, when it comes to burning calories, the average woman doesn’t burn nearly as many as the average man. There’s a reason for that. It’s not that men work harder, it’s that men have more muscle mass naturally. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn. It’s all about hormones and how your body builds muscle. If a man and woman both worked out for a year doing weight training, the man would have between six and nine more pounds from muscle doing the same exercise and expending the same effort. Less muscle mass, means you’ll burn fewer calories.
Younger people burn more calories than older people do.
Again, hormones play a role in calorie burning when it comes to age. Older people tend to lose their muscle mass and build it slower because of lower amounts of hormones. Not only is it harder for an older person to build muscle mass, they’ll also burn fewer calories. Again, hormones dictate how fast you’ll build muscle mass as you age and older people have less, so they have less muscle mass and burn fewer calories.
- You can boost your calorie burning by using circuit training, HIIT, and full body workouts like using kettlebells.
- Both aerobic training and strength training burn tons of calories, but you build muscles with strength training and burn muscle tissue for energy with aerobic training, reducing the amount of calories you’ll burn as you lose the muscle tissue.
- It’s not all about how much you workout. In fact, weight loss starts in the kitchen with a healthy diet. There’s a saying, “You can’t out-exercise a bad diet.” It’s true. A Big Mac meal with medium drink and fries is 1100 calories.
- Burning calories and losing weight starts with a healthy diet and regular exercise, but the key is consistency. Stick with a schedule so you develop a habit to get the results you want.
For more information, contact us today at BioFit Performance