When calorie counting, most people focus on total calories, overlooking other critical nuances like active calories. Total calories refer to the total number of calories you burn daily, while active calories measure the number of calories you burn during physical activity. A clear understanding of active calories vs total calories can help you make more informed choices about your health and fitness. This article will discuss the differences between active and total calories and how this knowledge can help you achieve your health goals.
Goldi AIâs calorie tracker can help you better understand how active and total calories relate to your body and fitness goals. This is one of the best apps to track macros that can help you identify patterns in your calorie intake and expenditures to make informed decisions for a healthier, more balanced lifestyle.
What are Active and Total Calories?
Active and total calories are two measurements that help you understand how your body expends energy. As the name implies, active calories (or active calorie burn) are the calories burned during physical activity.
All forms of exercises, whether light (ex. walking) or heavy (ex. resistance training), that increase your heart rate fall into this category. Total calories, on the other hand, include active calories plus the calories your body burns at rest to maintain essential functions (basal metabolic rate).
Examples of Activities that Contribute to Active Calories
Almost any physical activity that gets your heart rate up will burn active calories.
Some examples include:
- Running
- Swimming
- Cycling
- Gardening
- Cleaning
- Dancing
- Playing sports
- Resistance training
- Walking
Why Understanding Total Calories Matters
Total calories matter because they help you understand overall energy expenditure. Whether youâre trying to lose, maintain, or gain weight, you must be aware of the active versus total calories âdebate.â These two metrics are critical in determining whether you meet your daily burning calorie goals.
Active Calories vs Total Calories Comparison Guide
Active and total calories differ in what they measure, how they are calculated, and how they can help you reach your fitness goals. Understanding how active and total calories complement each other can help you track your energy expenditure more precisely.
Active and Total Calories for Effective Weight Management
Active calories, sometimes called exercise calories, are the calories you burn during physical activity. Total calories, on the other hand, include both active calories and the calories you burn at rest. Your body constantly burns these resting calories to maintain bodily functions like breathing and digestion, even when youâre not moving.
Total calories better represent your overall metabolism, while active calories help assess the impact of exercise on weight loss and fitness.
Why Are Both Active and Total Calories Useful?
Active and total calories can help you reach your fitness goals, especially if youâre trying to lose weight, gain muscle, or improve your performance. Tracking these metrics can help you understand how your diet and exercise habits influence your metabolism and energy balance. For example, if youâre trying to lose weight, both active and total calories can help you track your progress and adjust as needed. Active calories can help you understand how much to eat to recover from workouts, while total calories will help you gauge how many calories you burn daily to inform your weight loss diet.
How Do I Calculate My Active and Total Calorie Burn?
As previously stated, smartwatches and equipment can help you monitor your currently active and total calorie expenditures throughout the day. Tracking only the time spent working out will not give you the precise numbers to track your calories. As a dietitian, I want to help you use innovative technology and tools to monitor your calories daily!
Smartwatches
Almost all smartphone companies now offer smartwatches that easily pair with your phone. These smartwatches, most notably the Apple Watch, are equipped with heart rate monitors and sensors to track your daily calorie expenditure. The best part of these watches is that they can provide real-time data on the active calories you burn during workouts! After the day ends, you can check your smartphone for close estimates of the total and active calories you have expended.
Fitness Applications
Many fitness and health applications allow you to record your daily caloric intake from food while tracking your current active and total calorie burn. Regularly monitoring my caloric intake and checking if Iâm expending more energy than I consume can help me track my fitness goals.
Online Nutrition Calculators
Since diet plays a massive role in my active and total calorie burn, gaining insights into how much and what foods I eat is vital. As a dietitian, I understand how challenging it can be to familiarize myself with the amounts of calories different food items have.
Thankfully, online nutrition calculators allow me to record the food items I have consumed and provide information regarding their caloric and macronutrient profiles.
Active Calories Vs. Total Calories on the Fitness App
When you track an activity on your Apple Watch and then go to the Fitness app to see your data, it often gives two different answers to the question, âHow many calories did I burn?â Those are active and total calories, and you may notice that both fields sometimes show the same number; other times, they are two different numbers.
The Difference Between âActive Caloriesâ And âTotal Caloriesâ In The Fitness App
Youâre probably familiar with the idea that exercise burns calories. We might say, for example, that a half-hour jog burns 300 calories. (The exact number will depend on factors like how big and fast you run, but letâs use this as an example.) Jogging burns calories, but you still would have burned some calories if I had stayed home watching TVâjust not as many. Remember, keeping your body alive and functioning takes a few calories.
Understanding the Impact of Exercise on Total and Active Calorie Burn
For example, if I weigh 200 pounds, Iâll burn around 46 calories in half an hour of watching TV. (Yes, there is data on this.) Meanwhile, half an hour of easy-paced running burns 363 calories. That means I burned 363 total calories, but only 317 of those are on top of what I would have burned while staying home. Apple tries to communicate this with the âactiveâ and âtotalâ calorie labels. To give a real-life example, I went for an easy three-mile jog one day, taking about 38 minutes. Apple reports that I burned 351 total calories, of which 294 were active calories. (That means I think I would have burned 57 calories if I hadnât been running during that time.)
How Do We Burn Calories That Are Not Active Calories?
It takes a lot of energy to keep a human body alive! You must keep your heart beating, lungs breathing, and brain thinking. Each cell of your body has to do lots of microscopic maintenance work to stay alive.
Basal Metabolic Rate: The Foundation of Daily Calorie Expenditure
Think about how a dead body is different from one thatâs alive. It stops defending itself against germs and fungi and begins to fall apart. That doesnât happen while youâre alive because your body constantly works hard to repair damage, attack invaders, and more. And all of that takes energy, which we measure as calories. For example, a 200-pound, 6â man would be expected to burn 1,930 calories daily as their basal metabolic rate; a 150-pound, 5â5â woman would burn 1,426. That is before counting any exercise or daily activities like walking around the house and brushing my teeth.
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) vs. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Understanding the Difference
This number, which represents the bare minimum needed to stay alive, is called my basal metabolic rate, or BMR. The resting metabolic rate, or RMR, is closely related, which includes the energy we use to digest our food. RMR plus the activities we doâsuch as exerciseâequals our total calorie burn for the day. If youâre curious about your RMR, the Apple Health app includes a number for Resting Energy, which estimates your RMR. Take that number with a grain of salt, though. Itâs calculated from your age, sex, and weight, so itâs just an estimate of what a person your size would be expected to burn.
Why Are The Active And Total Calorie Numbers Sometimes The Same?
I see different numbers for active and total calories for activities that I logged directly with the Apple Watch fitness app. You know the oneâitâs the greenish-yellow icon with the little running person. But my active and total calories are the same for workouts logged through other apps. Strength training from Whoop? 58 calories active, 58 total. A five-mile run with Strava? 695 active, 695 total. My morning walk picked up by Oura? 68 active, 68 total. Thatâs not because my basal metabolism ceased to activate; these apps only communicate a single number to Apple as calorie burn. Since the Apple Fitness app doesnât know the split, it reports the same number in both spots.
Which Number Should I Pay Attention To, Active Calories Or Total Calories?
Trick question! Calorie burn, measured by wearables (any wearables, not just the Apple Watch), isnât always reliable. So the most correct answer is neither. But if I find it helpful to track calorie burn from my wearable, maybe to keep an eye on how much more I should eat if itâs been a high-activity day, the active calories are most helpful. To return to the example of my three-mile jog, that jog burned 294 calories over what I would have burned if I hadnât gone on that jog. So, if I want to eat enough to make up for the extra burn, Iâd eat the active number of 294 calories, not the total number of 351.
Active Calories Vs Total CaloriesâŚOr Active Calories And Total Calories?
Navigating your active and total calorie burn can help you set realistic body composition goals. Once you have mastered tracking and monitoring my caloric consumption and expenditure, focusing on my diet and physical activity, I will experience accurate results.
The Importance of Tracking Active and Total Calories for Fitness Beginners
Of course, suppose I can be more precise with my tracking, such as learning the âartâ of counting macronutrients or applying this tracking to a more specific endeavor (such as counting macros for CrossFit or another sport/fitness endeavor).
In that case, I will achieve even better results. However, getting active and total calorie burn sorted is a very commendable goal for beginners. It can be a good starting point for those who want to take more control of their fitness and dietary journeys.
How to Burn More Calories Faster
When it comes to increasing calorie burn, high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, truly is your best friend. This is because HIIT simultaneously âhitsâ all the individual avenues for calorie burn. It burns many calories during your workoutâtypically 30 minutes longâand has been shown to burn more calories for up to 38 hours after your workout.
I know. This is also known as âthe afterburn effect,â it occurs due to the energy your body requires to return to homeostasis following an intense workout.
The Afterburn Effect: How HIIT Boosts Calorie Burn Beyond Your Workout
When you perform an extremely intense workout (aka HIIT), your body uses energy to repair your muscles, re-oxygenate your system, bring your body temperature back to normal, and replenish energy sources such as ATP.
All of this results in an increased calorie burn even after your workout is finished, and this is something you may not get after, say, a light jogging or walking session. Many HIIT sessions also use bodyweight movements and weights, which means youâre building muscle⌠and muscle burns more calories at rest than fat! This, again, also means youâll be burning more calories even when youâre not working out.
Diet is Key
In addition, diet is key to losing fat, and an ultra-clean diet will make it easier to maintain your calorie limits/goals. This recent blog breaks down exactly what you should and should not be eating regarding shredding, so check it out.
Steps Add Up
Another way to increase total calorie burn outside of working out is to increase your daily steps. This could mean always taking the stairs instead of the elevator, going for a walk during lunchtime, parking farther away in the parking lot, or generally walking more throughout your days. This may seem insignificant, but trust me, it adds up over the week!
Spicy Foods and Protein
This idea may not significantly increase your burn, but every little bit counts. Research shows that spicy foods, like peppers, can temporarily boost metabolism. Similarly, other research has also shown protein can burn more calories due to the energy required to digest it.
Again, I wouldnât rely on these for significant burns, but both can assist in feeling full and are part of eating healthy regardless! At the end of the day, remember that your Active calories compromise those youâve burned during activity. In contrast, your total calories are your active calories combined with the rest of your calorie burn.
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