How Many Calories Do You Burn in a Day?

How many calories does the average person burn in a day, if they did nothing but sit all day, and sleep all night?

That depends on much you weigh. For someone weighing about 150 pounds, most of the research seems to suggest the answer is 2,000 calories.

I used some online calorie calculators to figure out how many calories a 150 pound person burns in a day, assuming they spend 14 hours sitting down, and 8 hours sleeping at night. That leaves only 2 hours for standing and walking.

Here's what I came up with...

Brush teeth, 5 min, 14 calories
Stretching, (bending or reaching to grab something), 5 min, 22 calories
Sex, 30 min, 96 calories
Standing (little bit all through the day), 30 min, 40 calories
Reading, 60 min, 72 calories
Talking on phone, 60 min, 72 calories
Showering, 15 min, 72 calories
Walking 2 mph (little bit all through the day), 30 min, 94 calories
Walking up stairs (little bit all through the day), 15 min, 137 calories
Shopping, 60 min, 161 calories
Cooking (includes all preparation), 60 min, 180 calories
Sleeping, 480 min/8 hours, 504 calories
Sitting (general sitting), 600 min/10 hours, 720 calories

Total Calories Burned: 2,184

So you can see that just by being lazy, you're still burning off a good deal of calories. If you're burning 2,184 calories a day, just by being lazy, then all you need to do is consume fewer than that, and eventually you'll lose weight.

The amount of calories burned is proportionate to your weight. Thus if you weighed double (300 pounds), then your calories burned would be double, at 4,368. If you're 200 pounds, it would be about 2,912 calories burned.

But remember that you have to burn 3,500 calories just to burn off one pound of fat.

So, let's assume you weigh 200 pounds right now, and your day's activities is typical of what I listed above, meaning you're burning about 2,912 calories a day.

If you can manage to limit your diet to 1,500 calories, then you'll end up with a net calorie burn of 1,412. If you stick to that, you'll burn off three pounds of fat in about one week.

So is that good news? It only proves that one of the biggest keys towards losing weight, is to count the calories you consume daily. If you can keep a calorie count of what you consume, and stick to a daily limit, the pounds will come off.

If you want to look up calories burned for other activities, HealthStatus has a pretty good tool...

http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc

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