Whether you’re burning them or consuming them, most people are aware of calories and their role in weight management, but have you ever wondered which exercise burns the most calories? Could a sweaty session on one of the best treadmills be the answer, or hitting the yoga mat for a HIIT workout? Unsurprisingly, it’s more intense workouts that use several different muscle groups that will ultimately burn more calories – like cycling – but the key is finding the right solution for you, and understanding what you’re trying to achieve.
As such, first it’s important to understand what a calorie actually is, how calorie burn is measured, and the factors that will determine how energy-intensive a given activity is.
For the answers, we spoke to Dr Javier Gonzalez, an associate professor in Human Metabolism at the Department for Health at the University of Bath.
WHAT IS A CALORIE?
While we can find calories everywhere we look, from the best fitness trackers to the back of food packets, the actual definition of the term is often lost in translation.
A 2006 article on the “history of the calorie in nutrition”, published in The Journal of Nutrition, details how the calorie began as a unit of heat in France during the 19th century.
“A calorie is a unit of energy,” says Dr Gonzalez. “Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree celsius (at a standard atmospheric pressure).”
