How to Burn Calories Effectively (the Healthy Way)

If you’ve been proactive with your health and are exercising regularly, you will probably look at how to burn calories effectively while still staying healthy.

Fortunately, there are different things you can do with exercise, diet, and lifestyle to burn extra calories.

First, you need to understand calories better.

What Are Calories?

A calorie is the energy content in food, but if we’re getting technical, a calorie is what it takes to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree.

Calories are determined by using calorimeters^[1], which are like mini incinerators. They involve a chamber surrounded by water, where freeze-dried powdered food is placed and incinerated. The temperature of the water is then measured, and this is how we determine the energy content of food in kilocalorie form.

Also, this is why it is said that “all foods aren’t created equal.” After all, one handful of lettuce will burn up quickly, leading to a minimal rise in water temperature, while the same portion size of almonds will be much denser, thus leading to higher temperatures. One cup of almonds will have around 530 calories, while one cup of lettuce will have maybe just five.

However, our body doesn’t “incinerate” calories; it digests them. This makes calorie counting far from a perfect science because, not only do you not know exactly how many calories you’re burning each day, but you can’t be sure of the calorie content in food.

The FDA allows labels to be off by as much as 20% in either direction, and most nutritional information comes from databases and not actual calorie measurements. This doesn’t mean calories are insignificant—far from it—but trying to measure things down to the calorie will be next to impossible.

How Many Calories to Burn a Pound

This is another common question when discussing calories, and the answer varies greatly. This will depend on your lifestyle, body type, gender, BMI, and more.

The old rule was that for every 3,500 calories you burned, one pound was lost. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. The more fat you have on your body, the quicker you will lose weight as your body burns away fat and water. However, when you’re fairly close to your natural body weight, your body resists burning away fat and will begin to burn away muscle.^[2]

All of this affects the amount of calories you’ll need to lose a pound. I wish there was an easier answer. However, the good news is that there are lots of things you can do to learn how to burn calories effectively and help your body function better overall.

Below are six tips that will get you started. Try them out and see what works for you.

1. Focus on Real, Whole Foods

When you focus on genuine food, and not things that come out of a package or a box, you make it much easier for your body to process those calories.

Your body is designed to manage calorie intake sufficiently without things getting thrown out of whack. It has been doing this since the beginning of time, and it’s only when we add artificial and processed ingredients to our dirt that things get messy and weight loss gets harder.

Think of your metabolism like a sink, designed to drain water effectively. If we give our body real, whole food, it’s able to process and drain it effectively. However, if we put things such as hair and other gunk in the sink, the drain will get clogged up, leading to flooding.

Hair and gunk have the same effect on the sink as processed food has on our bodies. Processed food does not allow our body to run optimally; instead, it promotes fat accumulation and poor health.

One critical review found that “of 43 studies reviewed, 37 found dietary UPF [ultra-processed foods] exposure associated with at least one adverse health outcome. Among adults, these included overweight, obesity and cardio-metabolic risks; cancer, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases; irritable bowel syndrome, depression and frailty conditions; and all-cause mortality.”^[3].

Do your best to stay away from processed foods, and your body will naturally become better at burning the calories you give it.

2. Work on Strength Training

If you’re learning how to burn calories, clearly, physical activity is important, but we will look at specific forms of exercise that are more effective than others.

Strength training will do a few things. These exercises take a good amount of effort to perform and require a lot of calories to provide energy. They also help us build lean muscle, and the leaner the muscle we have, the better it is for our metabolic rate.

Muscle requires calories to maintain it, which means that, even at rest, our body is burning calories. Strength training improves insulin sensitivity, thus allowing our body to better handle sugars because they will be processed more effectively, leaving us less likely to end up storing it as body fat^[4].

3. Do High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

Most people know of HIIT, as it’s one of the best workouts you can do. It also is a great calorie burner and can burn off more calories in a fraction of the time spent doing regular, steady-state cardio.

HIIT training involves doing an all-out exercise (such as bike sprints or regular sprints) for around 30 seconds, followed by a 90-120-second, slower-paced recovery period. You can do anywhere from 3 to 8 rounds of this, leading to a workout that won’t take you long.

HIIT is similar to strength training, as it uses a lot of calories. They are tough workouts, but the good news is that they don’t take as long and burn more calories in less than 30 minutes, compared to an hour of walking on a treadmill. This is why sprinters look leaner than marathon runners.

Another benefit of HIIT is known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, or “EPOC.” This is an “afterburn” effect that allows our body to burn calories long after the workout is done. Our body needs a lot of oxygen to perform a HIIT workout, and it needs to replenish it—this is done by burning calories.

We can burn calories for up to 24 hours after doing a HIIT workout^[5]. The great news is that we do not need to work out every day to get these benefits; just 2-3 times a week can be effective.

Here’s a beginner guide to HIIT: How To Choose The Best Moves For Your HIIT Workout

4. Try Tabata Training

This is HIIT ramped up to the next level. Tabata’s were invented for Olympic athletes as a super intense training method, but it’s one that will also act as an amazing calorie burner.

Tabata is a four-minute workout, and as bizarre as it may sound, there’s a lot of science behind its design. Tabata follows the same breakdown as a HIIT workout, but here the intense exercise is done for 20 seconds followed by a ten second rest, over 8 rounds, for four-minutes total.

The great thing about Tabata is that it can be done with a bodyweight exercise such as burpees or mountain climbers, and it can be done anywhere. Check out the video below to learn how to do burpees correctly for a great workout.

Of course, bodyweight will add to the intensity of the workout, pushing us to our limit. At first, it may not feel like it can, but it is important to persevere, because once at the half-way point, the rest periods will feel insufficient.

If you’re really determined to learn how to burn calories, Tabata can be added to the end of a strength training workout and can be done every other day.

5. Eat Spicy Food

Here’s one that doesn’t require you to leave the dinner table! Eating spicy foods, such as jalapeno peppers, cayenne, chilis, or a hot sauce, can give your metabolism a boost by up to 8% because they contain a chemical compound called capsaicin^[6].

Eating spicy foods increase our body’s thermogenic output by burning fat to create heat, thus we feel warmer, and our sinuses clear up. Capsaicin can also prevent weight gain; talk about a double whammy!

If you want additional information about the health benefits of spicy food, check out this article.

6. Drink Cold Water

This will not burn the same number of calories a day as a good HIIT session, but since we have to drink water throughout the day, we may as well burn calories while we’re at it.

Not only does water keep us hydrated and quench our thirst, but drinking it cold can give us a temporary metabolism boost.

With cold water, our body must warm it up, thus creating a thermogenic effect. It varies quite a bit, but one study showed that drinking 17-ounces of cold water may increase calorie burning by at least 4.5% to up 30 % for 30-40 minutes^[7].

Final Thoughts

When considering how to burn calories effectively to lose weight, it is important not to forget that our body has this ability built into it.

We can rely on natural methods to boost calorie burning and improve our health. Not only are these natural methods healthy, but they generally don’t cost much and are easily added into most lifestyles.

More on How to Burn Calories

• What 500 Calories Really Looks Like in Different Foods
• Why Focusing on the Calorie Doesn’t Help You Eat Healthier
• Intermittent Fasting Weight Loss (The Ultimate Weight Loss Hack)

Featured photo credit: Julia Ballew via unsplash.com