6 Things That Will Increase Your Calorie Burn
What is your daily calorie requirement, and how do you increase it? I will explain to you in this article how you can increase your calorie burn if you add my 6 things into your daily life.
Losing weight is easy.
Create an energy deficit, and you lose weight.
That means eating fewer calories or burning more calories — ideally both.
Sure, SIMPLE doesn’t have to mean easy. But the solution seems difficult to many because they do not know all the possibilities.
The wider the array of fat loss tools in your toolbox, the easier it will be to find a path that feels good and easy.
My goal with this article is to show you the whole spectrum that your daily energy needs offer you.
Here you can find out how to optimize your calorie intake without losing the fun in life.
In this article, you will learn the other side of the fat-burning formula and control your daily calorie requirement.
What influences your daily calorie consumption? If you don’t have a concept of it, you will have a hard time creating an energy deficit, losing fat, and staying lean.
A coach friend of mine calls it “losing weight at random.”
But if you KNOW the six elements from which your daily energy needs are calculated, you’re in the driver’s seat. Then you can influence the adjusting screws that lower your body fat percentage (or build muscle in the calorie plus) and increase your calorie burn by knowing how and why.
6 Things That Increase Your Calorie Burn
How is your daily calorie requirement calculated?
How do you increase your calorie consumption? Obviously, through training.
But did you know that a total of 6 elements influence your daily calorie needs?
The good news:
You can influence each of the six factors, in some cases massively.
If you want to boost your metabolism and lose weight fast, you can take each of these elements one at a time and increase them as much as possible.
Now let’s go through the six factors one by one. Increase your calorie burn.
Daily Calorie Requirement #1 – Basal Metabolic Rate (RMR)
Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the amount of energy you need to keep your body’s vital functions running.
So if you increase the number of calories you burn naturally, and at rest, it can significantly impact your body fat percentage over time.
Whether perfect cardio training can increase your basal metabolic rate in the long term is still being researched, but there are two things we can say for sure:
- You can temporarily increase your basal metabolic rate through intensive endurance training and strength training.
- The level of your basal metabolic rate is directly related to the mass (= weight) of your muscles.
Conclusion:
- If you lose muscle through extreme diets, your basal metabolic rate will drop.
- If you build muscle through the right food and strength training, your basal metabolic rate will increase.
Daily Calorie Requirement #2 – Proper Strength Training (S)
Many people avoid strength training because they believe it has nothing to do with fat loss.
That is a mistake.
Many women avoid heavy weights because they think they’ll get big quickly like a bodybuilder.
That, too, is a mistake.
It is not without reason that strength training comes before cardio training in the MBSC formula:
First, weight training burns just as many calories as cardio.
In contrast to cardio training, however, proper strength training pushes through two more metabolic accelerators:
Second, your basal metabolic rate (by building muscle, #1) and post-workout calorie burn (#4) will increase.
Proper strength training burns an impressive 6-9 calories per minute, even if you factor in the breaks in sentences.
Muscle building training is more than a niche sport for bodybuilders, strongmen, and powerlifters.
Strength training has absolute mass sport potential.
Because strength training helps you to reduce body fat like no other form of training, if there’s such a thing as a “fat-burning miracle pill,” it’s strength training.
Daily Calorie Requirement #3 – Cardio Training (C)
Cardio exercise is one of the most effective ways to burn calories and fat.
How much your daily calorie requirement changes due to endurance training depends on how intensively, how long, and how often you train.
If your calorie intake stays constant, you can – to a certain extent – burn more fat with more endurance training.
In coaching, a 45-minute moderate-intensity cardio workout or a 20-30-minute HIIT workout has proven to be effective.
If you train intensively, you will also burn some extra calories after training (see #4).
In most cases, however, you will burn most of the energy during your cardio session.
Daily Calorie Requirement #4 – Afterburn Effect (EPOC)
After an intensive or extended training session, your metabolism switches up for 12-24 hours. In extreme cases, this effect can last up to 48 hours.
In technical terms, this effect is called Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption, or EPOC for short. The German translation, “Oxygen consumption after training,” is not necessarily handier.
In practice, therefore, a more catchy term has prevailed: afterburning effect.
How many additional calories you burn with EPOC depends on how intensive and long you train.
The training intensity plays a more significant role than the duration:
- With increasing duration, EPOC increases linearly(e.g., double duration, double EPOC).
- With increasing intensity, EPOC increases exponentially(e.g., 20% higher intensity, 120% higher EPOC).
However, the EPOC only works with intensive training, such as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).
To avoid injuries, beginners and people who are overweight should still avoid HIIT training. You should first train more moderately and a little longer to achieve the same effect.
Daily Calorie Requirement #5 – Food Thermal Effect (TEF)
Eating something increases your daily calorie requirement – digestion costs energy.
This process is called the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF).
The Thermic Effect of Foods accounts for about 10% of your daily calorie requirement.
You can increase the Thermic Effect of Foods by eating foods that require more energy for your body to digest.
The less processed a food is, the more energy your body has to invest in the digestive process.
This is one reason (along with the ingredients themselves) that people who eat a lot of processed foods tend to have higher body fat percentages than those who eat mostly natural foods.
In addition, the composition of your meals has a significant influence on the Thermic Effect of Food:
Some macronutrients eat up more calories than others.
In concrete terms, this means that part of the energy contained in the food is used again in the digestion process, namely:
- Carbohydrates: 5-15% of the calories contained
- Fat: 5-15% of the calories it contains
- Protein: 20-35% of the calories it contains
If you eat a high-protein diet, your daily calorie requirement increases.
Therefore, many people lose weight faster with a high-protein diet with the same calorie intake.
Another reason is that protein is a very effective way to curb appetite.
Protein fills you up.
In addition, protein protects your muscles from a calorie deficit. Getting enough protein in your diet reduces the risk of your body breaking down muscle for energy.
Studies show positive changes in physique from just replacing one serving of saturated fat or processed carbohydrates with protein.
Tip: You can learn more about how to use protein to break down fat or build muscle in this program.
Daily Calorie Requirement #6 – Thermogenesis through Everyday Exercise (NEAT)
In the USA, NEAT stands for Nonexcercise Activity Thermogenesis, “thermogenesis through exercise in everyday life.”
This means all movements in everyday life that you carry out outside of your training, for example:
- Movement in the office / at work,
- Stand,
- Walk,
- Dance,
- Shopping,
- Gardening,
- Housework,
- Sex,
- Chew,
- Talk,
- Tap your foot,
- Etc.
Of course, some activities use more energy than others, but every movement burns calories, no matter how small.
At first glance, the idea that you increase your NEAT by exercising more every day doesn’t seem particularly effective. This is deceptive!
You can easily burn more calories without sweating with NEAT.
Okay, now you know the six factors from which your daily calorie requirement is calculated. And now? Should you pinpoint each of the 6 Energy Factors?
Do you need to count the calories you burn daily?
You may now be wondering whether you should also track the calories you burn in your workout and everyday life.
As you may know, I think many of you track specific values: physique, nutrition, or training progress.
However, you don’t need to track the calories you burn during exercise.
Why? Because most measuring methods are so imprecise that recording the calorie values is more like occupational therapy.
There are calorie tables for a wide variety of sports. Still, the average values given can deviate so much from your calorie consumption that tracking by table value does not necessarily help.
My goal with this article is for you to understand the concept that this article is about:
- What influences your daily calorie requirement?
- What can you do to increase your calorie consumption?
My recommendation – keep it simple:
Maybe you are analytical people who like to track everything or enjoy technology tools. Then go for it! A track like crazy.
I am sure you will learn something from your metrics if you look at them at the necessary distance and enjoy them. But this part is optional.
For everyone else:
Look at your progress: Are you losing body fat or not? How is your physique changing?
If nothing should happen, you are in a calorie balance.
Then you can re-establish a deficit by adjusting one side of the equation: your calorie intake or expenditure. Simple: increase your calorie burn again!
How To Increase Your Calorie Burn?
Case study: Daily calorie requirements with different lifestyles
How does your lifestyle affect daily calorie consumption?
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Two identical twins live a different lifestyle:
- Twin A – is the typical average American. No exercise, average diet.
- Twin B – live an active lifestyle and eat consciously.
Otherwise, the requirements are identical: in addition to gender, age and height, body weight also matches.
Now take a look at the graphic below.
Twin B needs considerably more energy than his brother during the day:
- Basal Metabolic Rate (RMR): B has more muscle and less fat because of the strength training. This increases the basal metabolic rate.
- Eating thermal effect (TEF): Because he relies on natural, mostly unprocessed foods and a high-protein diet, his digestion requires more energy.
- Movement in everyday life (NEAT): He leaves the car, takes the stairs instead of the elevator, and sometimes makes a phone call while walking.
- Training (S, K, EPOC): B regularly trains his strength and endurance.
Of course, I constructed this example. But it shows what effect it can have if you change your lifestyle step by step.
It is best to start in areas where it is really easy for you to change.
Increase Your Calorie Burn – Conclusion
Many people only think of endurance sports. A few maybe of strength training if they want to switch their metabolism up a notch.
There are so many more options if you want to burn more calories. My goal with this article was to show you the whole spectrum.
You now know not just one or two but a total of six energy factors, all of which you can influence yourself (you can find out more about the individual factors via the links):
- Basal Metabolic Rate (RMR)
- Proper strength training (S)
- Cardio training (C)
- Afterburn Effect (EPOC)
- Thermal Effect by Eating (TEF)
- Thermogenesis through Exercise in Everyday Life (NEAT)
It’s a good idea to stay relaxed and change one habit at a time as your caloric needs increase. Maybe you start with training, move a little more in everyday life from today, or work on your diet.
