What is the caloric balance? The caloric balance is the difference between your intake and expenditure of energy.
IN - OUT = BALANCE
Your IN
Humans gain energy from eating food, and that energy is often measure by the unit calories. You may recognize this unit on nutrition labels. 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.
The sum of all the food you eat in a day (your intake for that day) is called the daily caloric intake (DCI). That is, the more food you eat in a day, the higher your daily caloric intake is, and vice versa. The average daily intake, in the US, was 2,618 calories for men and 1,877 calories for women in the year 1999-2000.
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 is the energy your body spends when you're awake but inactive in normal conditions. It is the minimum amount of energy that your body has to use to survive. This list of functions include 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 actually spending a lot of calories. To some people's surprise, you spend more calories for resting the nearly any other activity throughout the day.
Physical activity
Obviously you spend energy whenever you move. From your bed to the shower in the morning, from home to work or school, and any other activity. Even when you're sitting or standing, your muscles expend energy so you can keep yourself up. The amount of energy you spend that way in a day will depend on what you do: some people don't need to do much physical activity like the office worker who
travels by car and some do a lot more physically demanding labor i.e. a manual worker, or someone
who walks or bikes a lot.
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 output the days you are exercising. 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 perspective, than a pound of fat.
Muscle contracts when you move, as it is put to work when you exercise and
constantly rebuilds itself to keep at maximum ability for your daily movements. As we have seen, energy output 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 other physical activity. - 15683
IN - OUT = BALANCE
Your IN
Humans gain energy from eating food, and that energy is often measure by the unit calories. You may recognize this unit on nutrition labels. 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.
The sum of all the food you eat in a day (your intake for that day) is called the daily caloric intake (DCI). That is, the more food you eat in a day, the higher your daily caloric intake is, and vice versa. The average daily intake, in the US, was 2,618 calories for men and 1,877 calories for women in the year 1999-2000.
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 is the energy your body spends when you're awake but inactive in normal conditions. It is the minimum amount of energy that your body has to use to survive. This list of functions include 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 actually spending a lot of calories. To some people's surprise, you spend more calories for resting the nearly any other activity throughout the day.
Physical activity
Obviously you spend energy whenever you move. From your bed to the shower in the morning, from home to work or school, and any other activity. Even when you're sitting or standing, your muscles expend energy so you can keep yourself up. The amount of energy you spend that way in a day will depend on what you do: some people don't need to do much physical activity like the office worker who
travels by car and some do a lot more physically demanding labor i.e. a manual worker, or someone
who walks or bikes a lot.
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 output the days you are exercising. 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 perspective, than a pound of fat.
Muscle contracts when you move, as it is put to work when you exercise and
constantly rebuilds itself to keep at maximum ability for your daily movements. As we have seen, energy output 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 other physical activity. - 15683
About the Author:
Author Carl Juneau teaches a special 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.
