19/01/2024
Your body is always burning calories. Up to 75% of your daily calorie burn is just for basic body functions like breathing, circulating blood and building cells. This means that even if you are just sitting around all day, you'll still burn at least 1,300 calories—and likely more. As you move your body through daily activities and exercise, you can add hundreds more calories to your total energy expenditure.
So how does our body use calories?
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): Your RMR is the amount of energy your body needs to maintain basic functions like breathing, circulating blood and building cells. Things like age, body size and gender affect your resting metabolic rate. Your RMR accounts for 60% to 75% of the total number of calories you burn each day.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): This is the amount of energy that your body uses to do daily activities like washing dishes, typing on your computer, or walking around your office. The number of calories you burn from NEAT varies greatly based on your activity level.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): Your body burns calories to chew, digest, and store food. Each type of food (macronutrient) has a different TEF. Eating protein burns the most calories by a small margin. TEF accounts for about 10% of the total number of calories you burn each day.
Calories Burned During Exercise: The actual number of calories you burn during your workouts will depend on the intensity and duration of each session. Calories burned through exercise and non-exercise physical activity account for roughly 15% to 30% of your TEE.
If we want to fuel our brain correctly, perform well, and build muscle, then we need to be eating at least at maintenance! With a little bit of a surplus, you can see that there will be benefits such as increased energy and mood, productivity, muscle growth… all the things you need to go and boss your life!
Because you're not taking in enough calories, your body slows down your metabolism in an effort to conserve energy. You might feel sluggish and cold and have gastrointestinal abnormalities.
