by Isabelle Esteves

Created on: August 21, 2010

In order to understand what healthy living is you need to know what a calorie is and the ways that our body burns them. 500 calories doesn't seem like a lot.  Seven times 500 calories burned will equal just about one pound lost.  It is important to any plan to understand what is required to actually burn 500 calories. It takes quite a lot more than you might imagine.

Understanding calories

Calories are a measure of energy. The calories in food provide energy to the different systems in our bodies. In turn, our bodies use these measures of energy in order to function. Everything we do uses calories, including breathing, digesting food and even thinking. How many calories these activities take depends on the size of the body performing them. Larger bodies use more calories to perform a task.

BMR-Basal Metabolic Rate

Every person uses a certain amount of calories everyday just by being alive. So in reality you can just lay in your bed and breath, maintain a stable temperature and have your heart beat and you will use more than 500 calories in a day. For the purpose of this guide we will assume that you weigh about 150 pounds. If you are lighter you will burn less and if you are heavier you will burn more.

Light exercise

In order to burn 500 calories with light exercise you will need to enjoy several games of badminton for an hour and thirty-five minutes; you can also shoot hoops for the same hour and thirty-five minutes. If you are busy doing your house work, in about two hours and ten minutes you will have burned 500 calories.

Moderate exercise

If you don't have that much time to put into exercise then you are going to have to step up your pace. To get in that 500 calories in around an hour you will need to jog for slightly over an hour, take a horseback ride for just under an hour or move boxes and items around your house for an hour.

Heavy exercise

As you can see, it takes quite a lot to burn 500 calories. In order to do it with exercise, you have to be vigorous about performing it. You will need to play racquetball competitively for 43 minutes to burn 500 calories or an hour and 10 minutes if you are a more leisurely player. If you run at the rate of 9 miles per hour which is fast you can run for a little under 30 minutes, at five miles per hour you will burn 563 calories in an hour.

You are what you eat

It seems like such a simple thing to burn an additional 500 calories per day. Think about it, 500 calories gets you a McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese, three handfuls of mixed nuts or a normal size bagel with cream cheese. When you realize how hard you have to exercise to burn 500 calories you will think twice before you place any of these 500 calories items in your mouth.

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