Recently updated on October 25th, 2022 at 11:01 am
Burning calories has a direct relationship with your metabolism, cardio exercise, and lifestyle changes. A lot of people hit the gym and work out like fanatics, but they may not track down the calories they are burning. Ultimately, it is easy to lag on your fitness goals.
That said, burning calories has also much to do with your lifestyle. For example, suppose you are living a sedentary lifestyle. In that case, you will need to engage in cardio and HIIT (high-intensity workouts) to achieve your goal: to burn ‘X’ amount of calories per day.
If you can burn about 500 calories a day, it is a good head start. Let’s explore some of the critical activities you can engage in to start burning 500 calories in a day.
1. Go for a run
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Running is an age-old strategy to burn calories quickly. Calorie- burnout while running is directly related to the speed, the faster you run, the greater your calorie burnout. For example, if you are running at a moderate 5 miles per hour (covering a mile in 12 minutes), you can easily burn off about 600 calories.
Run a tad faster at 8 miles per hour, and you can upscale the calorie burnout to about 1000 calories. Remember, these figures are for a 160-pounds body. Because every person has different metabolic rates, they may burn calories differently. That said, these calculations are roughly accurate.
2. Try cycling
For people who love cycling, this should be a fun exercise combined with a proper calorie-burning workout.
Conventionally, a regular 150-pound person can burn about 250 calories in about thirty minutes of a moderate-intensity workout, such as cycling. This means, you only need an hour’s work of cycling to hit the 500 burnout mark, and you’ll enjoy the process too.
Of course, you can hit this target even quicker by opting for a more challenging, uphill route. This will naturally require exerting greater effort. Also, you can try using a high gear, which would require more force to push through the pedals, increasing your calorie burn-out rate.
Indoor cycling exercises work just as effectively. So there are really no complaints if you are too busy to hit the road!
3. Engage in high-intensity interval training (HIIT)
High-intensity interval training exercises have an edge over others – in that – they enable you to burn excessive calories in relatively shorter periods. Some of the HIIT workouts include:
- Box jumps
- Sprints
- Jump lunges
- Air Squats
- Reverse Pull-Ups
Experts suggest that during HIIT exercises, recovery times are just as significant as the exercises themselves.
So for instance, if you engage in a HIIT exercise for 30 seconds, make sure you give yourself a break for the next 30 seconds for a rapid recovery. Generally, health experts suggest you should aim for around 70-90% of your maximum heart rate during a HIIT workout.
4. Resistance training workouts
The great benefit you get with resistance or weight training workouts is that you not only burn calories during the actual workout but continue to burn calories even after the exercise. Some of the resistance training exercises you can engage in are:
- Press-ups
- Sit-ups
- Planks
Studies show that, by doing press-ups, you can lose about seven calories in about one minute.
The reason why you continue to burn calories even after your resistance workout is – because your body goes into a recovery mode – and high amounts of oxygen make way to your bloodstream and reach your worn-out muscles. The body provides essential nutrients through the blood to enable your muscles to recover after the workout. Experts say that you could end up burning calories for muscle recovery after as many as 38 hours.
A piece of advice: Indulge in a set of, say, 50-100 pushups in combination with 30-50 pushups with 10-25 planks, and see how your body reacts. Remember, you don’t want to overdo a resistance exercise to avoid unwanted muscle injuries, so it’s best to listen to your body when to stop.
Adding these numbers to your regime in addition to the ones described above could help you burn 500 calories a day fairly easily.
5. Get your dancing moves on
Dancing is another highly effective calorie-crusher. No wonder, professional dancers need to be at the top of their game to indulge in high-intensity dancing. Some of the dancing techniques such as Salsa, Zumba, and tap dancing can help you hit your 500-calorie-burnout mark quite easily.
The great thing about dancing is that you instantly get your heart rate up and don’t even have to go to the gym. Also dancing is a highly enjoyable activity for most people. You get a lot of excitement and thrill especially if you engage in group dancing.
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