How many calories do I burn a day?

This week has been a fitness struggle for me. After pretending I was still in college for the weekend, it was hard to get back into the swing of things. The extent of my exercise for the week was moving from my bed to the couch and occasionally walked to work. After a whole week of no exercise, I'm starting to get a tad antsy.

While couch surfing, I looked into how my daily activities contribute to my fitness goals. Walking to work, standing on the Metro train, walking up and down the stairs to my apartment, cooking, cleaning. All the real world stuff we have to do.

Normally, I'm not a calorie counter, pound focused individual. But sometimes its nice to know how much you're getting out of your workout. So to put all these things in perspective, 1 pound=3,500 calories. 

Run v. Walk

Speed walking! My friend and I had contests this summer-I lost [Image]

Runner's World has a nice article from 2005 comparing the calorie burning power of our two cheapest exercise options. In general, running burns about 50% more calories per mile than walking. So for 1 mile a woman burns about 100 calories running a 9:30 mile, verse about 50 walking a 19:00 mile. Do a little math and running for an 1 hour burns about 450 calories. Walking burns about 150 calories per hour. For me, my daily walking commute is about 2 miles, so I'm burning only 100 calories per commute.

Amby Burfoot, the author of the article, did a little experiment of her own to compare fast walking to running. When she crunched the numbers, she found that walking at a pace 12 min or faster is better than running. I'm not sure about other people, but at a 12 min mile I'm basically jogging it out on my short legs, so I think I'm gonna stick with running.

Stairs

I usually walk a total of 6 flights of stairs daily. According to LiveStrong the average woman can burn about 800 calories an hour running stairs.

I will never run stairs for an hour. That sounds like my own personal hell. My knees would probably just give out after about 30 min and someone would have to push me around in a wheelchair for the rest of the week. Not to mention, I doubt I will ever run stairs in a skirt and blouse while going to work.

When I feel ambitious, I even walk up the escalators [Image]

However, they break it down for us mere mortals. Walking up or down the stairs burns about 7 calories a minute. I would guesstimate I spend about 5 min on stairs a day, so I'm burning about 35 calories a day by taking the stairs. They end with this little tidbit:

"By taking the stairs for five minutes a day five days a week, the typical person can expect to lose about 2.5 pounds in a year."

Other Activities

Here is a quick list of other activities and the calories they burn [Source]. These are all weight dependent, so I'm listing the numbers for my own weight (125 lbs).

Working at a Desk: 106 calories/hour
Watching TV: 46 calories/hour
Cleaning: 270 calories/hour
Cooking: 150 calories/hour

Check out Self magazine's calorie counter if you want a more specific amount.

My Totals:

So my calorie total is about 935 calories/day. Of course this does not include such things like the calories my body burns purely to survive. This is called the basal metabolic rate, which is basically defined as the calories an individual would burn if they didn't move from bed all day. It varies with gender, age, height, and weight, but DiscoveryHealth has a calculator. My BMR is 1402 calories per day.

So my grand total....2337 calories per day!! Obviously the FDA does not think of people like me when they suggest a daily calorie intake of 2,000. I would shrink into nothingness if I actually did that.