Did you know that your body is burning calories right now? Even if you are lying on your bed reading this. Interesting right? I know. While we often tie a calorie burn to running, lifting weights, or sweating, the truth is that your breathing, blinking, and heartbeat requires energy every time. In essence, your body quietly burns calories all day long even when you are not working out. For surety, we cannot undermine the major role exercising plays in staying fit and healthy, but some of your daily calorie burn comes from what your body does behind the scenes. From every breathing you make to the digestion of food, your body is performing a full-time calorie burning. Understanding how your body naturally uses energy can be a powerful tool for your weight management, improving energy levels, and making smarter health choices. If your goal is to lose weight, maintain it, or better understand how your body works, this article will shed light on the ways you burn calories without even trying. Here, you will learn the five natural, science-backed mechanisms your body uses to burn calories everyday even without stepping foot in the gym. 1. Basal Metabolic Rate: Your Body Built-In Energy Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is our body’s built-in energy. It is the number of calories that our body burns to perform its most basic functions while at complete rest. Examples of these basic functions are breathing, circulating blood, and cell repair. Even if we were to stay indoors all day doing nothing, our body would still burn some calories. Research has proven that BMR accounts for 60-70% of daily calorie burn, making it the largest contributor to total energy expenditure. This is proof that most of our calorie burning happens when we are not actively exercising. Now, we do not all share the same BMR. The BMR varies widely by several factors. They are: Body size and composition: People who are larger in size have a higher BMR. This is because it takes more energy to maintain a bigger body especially if that mass includes muscle. E.g, somebody who is tall and sturdy will likely have a higher BMR than a short person. Muscle Mass: The more muscle we have, the higher our BMR. It helps to burn calories even when we are not using it. Age: As we get older, BMR naturally reduces. This is because we tend to lose muscle mass and gain more fat tissue over time Genetics: Our inherited traits can determine how efficiently our body uses energy, stores fat, or builds muscle. Sex: Men generally have higher BMR than women. This is because men are known to have more lean muscle mass and larger bodies than women of the same age and weight. In reverse, women have a higher percentage of fat in their bodies, which burns fewer calories at rest. That means men are likely to burn more calories than women. Other several factors are hormones, Environmental temperature, diet and caloric intake, pregnancy, health conditions and medications. Healthy Tips: According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, muscle burns approximately 3 times more calories at rest than fat. Strength training is advisable so that it can help us to boost our metabolism over time, even on days that we do nothing. 2. Thermic Effect of Food: Calories Burned During Digestion Oftentimes, sleep gets overlooked when talking about metabolism. Sleep is actually a vital part of how our body burns calories. During sleep, our body continues to use energy to fuel brain activity, cell repair, hormone production, and organ function. We underestimate how many calories that gets burned when asleep. Truly, we may burn fewer calories during sleep than when awake, but the body still burns an estimated 40-70 calories per hour depending on our BMR. More importantly, quality sleep supports healthy metabolism in the long run. Having inadequate sleep can: Disrupt hunger-regulating hormones like leptin Increase cravings for sugary and highly processed foods Slow down your body’s ability to process glucose Lead to weight gain over time. Healthy metabolism tip: Aim for 6-8 hours of regular bed-time sleep and stick to it. Avoid heavy meals and looking at screens at night. Eating food doesn’t just fuel our body, it also burns some calories. This is a process called Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). It is the energy our body uses to digest, absorb, and process the nutrients in what we eat. TEF represents about 10% of the caloric intake of a healthy balanced meal. It means that if we expend 1500 calories in a day, it is expected that about 150 will be burned just from eating food. Macronutrients such as protein and complex carbs have a higher thermic effect than fats or simple carbs because our body has a harder time breaking it, making us spend more energy and burn some more calories. Several factors affect TEF, majorly portion sizes, and macronutrient composition. Here is a breakdown of how different macronutrients affect TEF: Proteins burn the most calories. Its TEF is 20-30% Carbohydrate provides about 4 calories per gram. Its TEF is 5-15% Fats provide the lowest calories. Its TEF is 0-5% In essence, this means that a high-quality protein diet like egg and tofu has a metabolic advantage over normal or low protein diets with the same amount of calories and has been proven to keep one full for a longer period of time. Fats on the other hand, have the lowest thermic effect at approximately 5-10%. They are also the simplest to digest. That is not an excuse for excluding fats from your diet, it’s just about eating the right ones. Good sources of fat to include in our diet are avocado, nuts, egg yolks and pumpkin seeds. Healthy tip: To support TEF, we can try swapping our highly processed food with rich proteins, and complex carbs. This will increase our metabolism and regulate our blood sugar. 3. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
