In order to burn 1000 calories a day, you need to exercise intensely. This may not be possible if you are just starting out, but you can gradually build up your fitness so that you are able to do so over time.
There are a number of factors that determine how many calories you burn:
The intensity, duration and type of exercise – the more intensely you exercise, the harder your heart and muscles have to work and the more calories you burn. And as expected, longer periods of exercise require larger amounts of energy.
Your weight – the heavier a person is, the more calories they burn. This is because larger bodies require more energy in order to move.
Gender and age – on average, men tend to have more muscle mass than women. Muscle tissue is active, so the more muscle an individual has, the more calories they will burn. As you get older, you begin to lose muscle mass, which means your metabolism slows down.
There are a wide range of activities that you can do in order to burn 1000 calories.
These include cycling, jumping rope, swimming, running, rowing and kickboxing, to name a few. The intensity of each activity will determine how many calories are burnt.
The average adult can expect to burn 300 – 400 calories per hour, walking at a brisk pace. Running, swimming and cycling will burn 600 – 700 calories per hour, whilst rowing and jumping rope will burn 700 – 1000 calories per hour.
Of course these are just average predictions; the intensity of exercise plays a large role. For example, someone who runs for an hour at a speed of 8 miles per hour will burn significantly more calories than another individual who runs at a speed of 5 miles per hour. In the same way, cycling intensely will burn far more calories than jumping rope at a leisurely pace will.
If you want to maximize your calorie expenditure, high intensity interval training (HIIT) is recommended.
This type of training involves short bursts of intense activity followed by longer periods of the same activity at a more comfortable pace.
An example of HIIT would be running at a moderately intense pace of around 70 – 80% of your maximum heart rate (MHR) for 90 seconds and then quickly increasing the intensity to 90+ MHR for 30 seconds.
You would repeat this cycle for up to 30 minutes. HIIT can be done with any of the activities mentioned above.
This study involved 45 overweight women, some of whom did HIIT and others who did regular cardio. The HIIT involved sprinting on a bike for 8 seconds followed by light cycling for 12 seconds. This was repeated for a period of 20 minutes. The regular cardio involved exercising at a regular pace for 40 minutes.
The study found that even though the HIIT group exercised for half the duration that the regular cardio group did, they lost 3 times as much fat, which means more calories were burnt. This shows that HIIT can be a highly effective way to burn calories fast.
It is important to approach HIIT with caution however, because it is not intended for everyone. Due to its intensity, individuals who undertake it are more prone to injury and fatigue.
If you are just starting out with exercising, don’t jump into HIIT right away. Build up your endurance and strength gradually and then think about doing it.
Also speak with your doctor so that he or she can advise you on whether you are fit enough to do HIIT.
Even with HIIT however, total calorie expenditure will vary greatly from person to person.
It is therefore impossible to accurately pinpoint the exact number of calories that an individual will burn doing a certain activity, due to the sheer number of variables.
Your best option to measure calorie expenditure fairly precisely would be to invest in a fitness gadget that monitors calories, such as a Fitbit.
This is a watch that you wear around your wrist that monitors your movements and provides an estimate of how many calories you burn per day.
Once you know this number, you can easily determine what needs to be done in order to reach your goal of burning 1000 calories a day.
For example, if you ran for an hour and burned 600 calories, simple increase the duration that you run to one hour and forty minutes, or run at a faster pace.
How many calories do you really need to burn through exercise?
In order to start losing weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit.
This means that you use up more energy than the energy that you get from food. Doing so forces your body to use its fat stores as a source of energy.
A healthy amount of weight to lose is 1 – 2 pounds per week.
You can use the calculator below to determine how many calories you should be consuming and burning, depending on your goals:
This calculator will never show a number below 1000 calories per day. Please speak to a qualified health professional before attempting to eat less than that.
Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the number of calories that your body burns whilst at rest. As you become more active, your overall calorie expenditure also increases. The food that you eat is what supplies these calories and the average adult needs to consume around 2000 – 2500 calories per day in order to maintain their weight.
This means that you can use a combination of both diet and exercise to achieve a net calorie deficit.
For example, if you were able to reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories, then you would only need to burn 500 calories per day through exercise, instead of 1000, in order to create a total net deficit of 1000 calories.
The first thing that you should do if you don’t already is keep a food diary so that you can monitor the type of food and total number of calories that you are consuming per day.
You can do this using a pen & paper or a calorie counter app such as myfitnesspal.
If you use a pen & paper, you will need to refer to a website such as nutritiondata.self.com to obtain the number of calories in different foods. If you use the app, it will automatically calculate your daily calorie intake.
Once you know how many calories you are consuming, you can begin to swap some foods for others and also minimize or eliminate the consumption of certain foods.
Take the following meal plan for example.
Breakfast – 2 medium butter croissants and a glass of orange juice – 574 calories
Snack – 1 protein bar – 190 calories
Lunch – 1 chicken & cheese sandwich and a can of cola – 767 calories
Snack – 1 medium sized banana and 1 medium sized apple – 200 calories
Dinner + dessert – 2 cups of spaghetti with sauce and vanilla ice cream – 688 calories
Total: 2419 calories
This meal plan can definitely be tweaked to reduce total calorie intake.
The first step would be to minimize processed carbohydrates and replace them with complex carbohydrates, protein and fat. Studies have shown that increasing protein intake can greatly benefit weight loss because it fills you up and boosts metabolism.
The 2 medium sized butter croissants have 462 calories but they are not very filling and provide little nutritional value. Eating them will just cause your blood sugar levels to spike and fall quickly, leaving you feeling hungry very soon.
They could easily be replaced with 2 large boiled eggs, a cup of cooked oatmeal and a cup of strawberries for a total of 369 calories. Not only will this breakfast be more filling, thereby keeping you feeling satisfied for longer and making you less likely to overeat later on, it also saves you almost 100 calories.
The second step would be to replace sugar sweetened beverages with plain old water. Fruit juice is OK once in a while because it provides vitamins & minerals, but eating solid fruit instead is generally the better option.
However, you should aim to cut down or completely eliminate soda. It is a source of “empty calories” i.e. calories that have no nutritional value, and the large amounts of sugar that it has does your body no favours.
Water has 0 calories and studies have shown that drinking it can help you lose weight. Swapping sugar sweetened beverages with water is a very easy way to save on a large number of calories.
If you don’t like the taste of plain water and find that drinking it all the time becomes monotonous, you can infuse it with fruit, drink herbal & green teas and opt for carbonated water once in a while as well.
Now take a look at the following revised meal plan.
Breakfast – 2 large boiled eggs, a cup of cooked oatmeal and a cup of strawberries – 369 calories
Snack – 1 protein bar – 190 calories
Lunch – 1 grilled chicken breast and steamed vegetables – 394 calories
Snack – 1 medium sized banana and 1 medium sized apple – 200 calories
Dinner + dessert – grilled cod, quinoa salad and 1 cup of Greek yogurt with blueberries – 667 calories
Total: 1820 calories
Notice that we didn’t reduce the total amount of food in the second meal plan. We simple swapped some foods for other more nutritious and lower calorie ones. And by doing so, we ended up saving 600 calories! This means that you would need to burn far fewer calories via exercise in order to reach your goals.
Conclusion
Burning 1000 calories per day through exercise is not an easy task, but with some dedication it can definitely be achieved. The more intensely and longer you workout, the more calories you burn. High intensity interval training (HIIT) is particularly effective.
Your optimal strategy would be to consume more nutritious (and less calorie dense) foods and combine this with intense exercise to obtain a daily net deficit of 1000 calories.