How Much Exercise Do I Need?

Exercise. Ugh. No one likes to hear about exercise, particularly if you aren't used to doing any. Exercise usually conjures up images of sweating over a treadmill or a bike, but exercise can be much more than that, and it can be fun. Granted, the exercise that I am involved in as a participant in Augusta's Biggest Loser is not necessarily fun, but sometimes it is. Strenuous exercise does more than just burn calories; it builds muscle, which can burn fat long after the exercise is over with.

So how much exercise do I really need? It depends on how many calories you want to burn. There are some great tools online for figuring out how many calories you can burn doing a specific activity. A very good calorie burn calculator can be found at http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc. You type in your current weight, select an activity, and type in the number of minutes you did (or anticipate doing) that particular activity. The calculator will show you how many calories you will burn. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds and you bowl for one hour, you will burn 276 calories. If you weigh 200 pounds and you walk for one hour, you will burn either 252, 396, or 468 calories, depending on how fast you walk. Remembering that you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories in order to lose one pound, a brisk walk every day for one hour is almost exactly enough work to lose 1 lb. per week, assuming you take in no more calories than your body needs to maintain its current weight. We will learn how to figure that number of calories next time.

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