How to find out how many calories you burn with Apple Watch

Thinking about increasing, or decreasing the amount of food you eat?

Before you do, it’s helpful to know how much energy your body is using every day. We can call this total energy.

It’s easy to find out your total energy # with online calculators or apps like myfitnesspal. But if you own an Apple Watch, you have access to much more accurate data.

To find out your total energy, you need to sum your Resting Energy and Active Energy, two stats that Apple Watch tracks.

But first, a few definitions.

Resting energy: Your body uses up energy no matter if you don’t exercise. Breathing, thinking etc. Your resting energy expenditure is roughly 60 - 75% of the calories you burn in a day.

Active: This is what most people think of when you Mens Health says “torching calories”. Everything from walking your dog, household chores to throwing down a triathlon.

For me, on average, the total energy my body is using every day is about 3300 calories.

The easiest way to find these stats is in the “Health” app on your iPhone. You can see daily, weekly, monthly and yearly averages for both.

• Example active energy chart

Once you’ve had the watch for 6 months or so, check your averages, sum resting and active energy and you’ll have a really clear picture of your total energy.

And if you want to lose weight, it’s as simple as consuming quite a bit less than that number.

Big Sur, Mike Matas, February 24 2013

There was a point in the early 2010’s, where a handful of designers and creatives were living in the Bay Area, and taking photos like this. Day hikes, landscapes, cherry blossoms, campfires, street scenes, mountains, ramen, palm trees, cliffs, deserts.

It looks innocuous now, boring even, but for me, it was a fantasy.

Row 5k

A few months ago I was looking for Crossfit style workouts that used a rower, and stumbled on a sort of benchmark fitness test with the 5k.

It’s a good test of your overall cardio and a bit of strength. You are using your lungs, need blood to pump around your body, and a bit of grip, shoulder, arm and leg strength. Would be a good complement to running, swimming, cycling or yoga or other activities. I’m on the taller side, so for me rowing was one of the few CrossFit exercises that I was naturally good at, that’s probably the main reason I like it.. Most people in my gym HATED rowing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good workout! YMMV.

But the genius of the 5k is you can take as long as you want. All you need to do is get it to 5k. It’s up to YOU to really push the intensity and try as hard as you can to bring that time down. For most people, it’s just not worth the punishment, but I think it’s worth trying a few times.

Why the 5k

• Only 1 piece of equipment. • Should take less than 25min to complete. • One simple metric to beat: Time. • Involves a ton of muscles. • Leaves you on floor afterwards (or that’s what it does to me.)

Strategy

None, really, but here are a few tactics that I’ve found helpful. Still playing around with different things. I try and be fully rested before an attempt, although one of my fastest times was at the end of a fairly active day. On the display, I try not to look at the distance completed until the last km, and focus on keeping stroke rate at about 30-31 and speed? above a certain level. Music helps. Cool temp or fan helps. Make sure you’re fueled up and not hungry. If you are really going hard, prepare for your brain to start doing weird stuff for the last 1km. Mental strength helps. I think a basic warm up would help. Run around the block or do some skipping first.

Time

Anything under 20min is strong!