Many Apple Watch users who track their activity throughout the day often wonder – what is the difference between active calories burned during exercise versus total calories? Most fitness trackers operate on only one of these types of data, but both are needed to accurately calculate. So what are active calories?
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Basal metabolic rate (daily calorie intake)
In fact, accuracy in calculating calories burned is very important for people seeking to change their own body weight in one direction or another. There are many methods of losing weight, or, conversely, weight gain, based on the indicators of calories received and burned per day. At the same time, the number of calories that our body spends on maintaining life even with minimal human activity is always taken into account. This value is usually called Basic metabolism or Basal metabolic rate or Basal metabolic rate (passive calories, “sleeping” calories, etc.).
Basal metabolism is the minimum amount of energy (calories) that is necessary to ensure the normal functioning of the body under normal conditions. Normal conditions mean a person’s condition in conditions of psychological and emotional rest, during wakefulness, in a supine position, at a temperature of comfort (18 – 20 ° C).
In simple words, BX – it required daily calorie intake for human life without taking into account physical activity.
In order to roughly measure the required daily calorie intake in men, you need 1 kcal × weight in kg × 24 hours. For example, a man weighing 84 kg spends 1 × 84 × 24 = 2016 kcal on basic metabolism.
In women, the value of the Basic metabolism is 10% less.
So, adults burn about 1500-3000 calories daily, the indicator can differ significantly based on age, weight, metabolism and other input data, while men burn noticeably more energy than women. More accurate calculations are made according to various methods that we have given in the material “How many calories do you need per day to lose weight for a man or woman, how to calculate.”
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What are active calories and how are they different from regular ones?
Moving on to the activity metrics on Apple Watch. By active calories, the program means the amount of energy that was expended directly on the workout. That is, it is taken into account only physical activity that requires a certain amount of calories. At the same time, during training, the body also spends energy on the Basic metabolism, described above – on the functioning of internal organs, and these calories are recorded by the Apple Watch separately from the active ones.
For example, on a 46 minute pool swim workout, I burned out 540 calories (calories only). And during this time, my body spent another 83 kcal for the general vital activity of the body (these are the calories that relate to the required daily rate).
In this case, the following metrics are displayed on the Apple Watch screen and in the Activity app on iPhone:
Active Calories – 540;
Total Calories – 623 (540 + 83)…
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