How Your Body Burns Calories
Breaking Down Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure
Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is just the fancy way of talking about how you burn energy (i.e. burn calories) throughout the day. There are multiple ways that our bodies burn calories (4 to be exact) and each way is unique from the next. So for today’s post, I’m going to break each method down - we’re talking what it is, how much we can control it, the works!
Like I mentioned, there are FOUR different methods that our bodies use to burn energy. They are:
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
Thermal Effect of Eating (TEE)
Thermal Effect of Activity (TEA)
First up, your BMR..
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), 70%
Your BMR is the largest component of your TDEE. The BMR is responsible for 70% of your daily energy burn. This is how much energy your body requires to keep you function, if you were to lay in bed all day. So 70% of the food you eat is going to keeping you alive, and this includes all the functions of your body such as breathing, pumping blood, operating different systems in your body such as the endocrine (hormones), immune, and digestive systems, just to name a few!
While approximately 70% of your TDEE is determined by your BMR, we do have some influence over what your BMR looks like. What I mean by that is that your BMR is largely determined by your lean body mass (muscle mass), so you can increase the amount of calories that you burn just by being alive, by focusing on adding muscle to your body! This is often why you hear fitness professionals recommending that one should focus on adding resistance training to their workout routine, if they are trying to lose weight. More muscle = more calories burned = faster weight loss results!
While you do have some control over your BMR, there are other factors that influence the BMR that we do not have control over. Some of these factors are your age, sex (men tend to have higher BMRs), body size (larger individuals have higher BMRs than smaller individuals), drugs - both street & prescriptions, as well as your genetic predisposition.
& then there’s NEAT
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), 15%
Your NEAT is the second largest contributor to your overall calorie burn. NEAT, which stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, is made up of all activities that you do throughout the day, but does not include exercise. So think of brushing your teeth, cleaning your house, driving, walking, reading, studying, etc!
This is the one category that we have THE most control over! Think about it, you can sit around all day and that doesn’t require a lot of energy, or you can simple increase your caloric burn by standing instead of sitting, doing the dishes, walking to your mailbox instead of driving. Whenever I start working with a client, this is one the things we focus on first, increasing his/her overall daily activities/movement. You’d be shocked with how much of a difference that can make!
This is the category we have the most control over. This category includes all other activities of daily living. Walking, driving, studying (your brain needs calories to work too!), cleaning, doing the dishes, you get the picture. Since this is the category we have the most influence over, it’s best to focus on this category when trying to lose weight. The less sitting you do throughout the day, the more calories you’ll burn!
Next up, TEE
Thermal Effect of Eating (TEE), 10%
The thermal effect of eating (TEE) has the third largest influence over your caloric burn. Sometimes refereed to as the thermal effect of food (TEF), this is how much energy your body needs to digest your food & pass it through your body. Unfortunately, there is no way to control or influence how much your TEE is.
& for the other type of TEA…
Thermal Effect of Activity (TEA), 5%
This refers to how much energy you use to fuel your workouts, how many calories you burn when working out. You may have noticed that this type of “energy burn” as the least amount of influence over your TDEE, that’s because while working out is important & has some sway over your overall daily calorie burn, it doesn’t have as much of an impact as people think, hence why the majority of people overestimate how many calories they burn while working out.
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Until next time,
Veronica
Photo by Benjamin DeYoung on Unsplash