Burning calories: Amount of exercise required to burn 3500 calories

If you do not want to sacrifice food to lose weight, burning calories through exercise might be your best option. Learn how much exercise exactly you'd have to do to burn 3500 calories.

About cutting calories and burning calories

If you’re trying to lose weight without cutting calories, so by not eating less, you can opt for burning calories by only exercising or by dieting wisely.

The saying goes: "You can always eat more than you can exercise".

So you’ll have to exercise a lot for burning calories that is equivalent to cutting the same amount of calories through dieting.

To lose 1 pound of weight, you have to expend or burn approximately 3500 calories.

But how much exercise must you do to burn 3500 calories? Let’s take a look at a few popular physical activities.

Amount of exercise required for burning calories – 3500 cal

The amount of calories you burn when doing exercise depends on your body weight. To keep things simple, let’s assume you currently weigh 157 lbs (71 kg).

To burn 3500 calories, you could:

  • Play squash for almost 4 hours
  • Run at a pace of 11 min per mile for 6 hours.
  • Backpack without a load for 7 hours.
  • Plan tennis for 7 hours and a half.
  • Cycle at a leisurely pace of 9.4 mph for 8 hours.
  • Play badminton for 8 hours and a half.
  • Train with free weights for 9 hours and a half.
  • Play golf for almost 10 hours.
  • Walk at a pace of 3.0 mph for 11 hours.

Contrast this for example with not eating a meal from McDonald’s. If you have a Big Mac (540 calories) with large French fries (500 calories) and a large Coke (310 calories) twice a week, this would come to a total of 2700 calories.

If you cut out these two meals from your diet, you’d only have to burn 800 calories through exercise to reach a deficit of 3500 calories.

Conclusion

While it is not impossible to lose 1 pound of weight – burn 3500 calories – by only exercising, you’ll lose weight faster if you combine exercise with a good and healthy diet.

One final note: You’re always burning calories just by being alive. This is called your basal metabolic rate or BMR for short. So you can add the calories from your BMR to the calories from exercise.

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Disclaimer: Any content published on 'The Weight Loss Digest' is not meant to replace the advice of medical practitioners. All articles published on 'The Weight Loss Digest' are the opinions of a layman. We are no medical experts (just very experienced fitness fanatics) and take no responsibility for any injuries, malnutrition, or harm that you may incur after reading any of the articles published on 'The Weight Loss Digest'. We strongly encourage you to seek the advice of a doctor before engaging on any diet or exercise program.