Burning Fat vs Burning calories..which Is best...so Confused

Shortly before I got pregnant with my 6-month old, I had gone to a trainer at my gym and he instructed me to do interval training for weight loss. So, alternate between periods of low versus high intensity. If you Google "interval training" and "weight loss" you should be able to find good articles on the issue.

Well, as you already know, to lose 1 lb, you need to burn 3500 calories.

If you want to lose 1 lb per week, eat 500 calories less than you burn each day (there are charts available on the web that can help you estimated how much you burn based on age/height/weight/etc.).

So, e.g., I am a person who burns approximately 2000 calories a day based on my stats. To lose a pound per week, I must eat only 1500 a day.

However, if I add exercise into the mix - say, for example, I walk briskly for 30 minutes, which burns 178 calories - then I can either:

Eat an additional 178 calories on top of my already allotted 1500 to continue my goal of losing 1lb per week

OR

Don't eat anything additional, stick to my 1500, and I will wind up losing a little more than 1 lb per week

The more calories you burn, the more fat you burn.

Also, exercise adds tone to your figure and can help suppress the appetite.

From the sounds of it, walking is your best bet at the moment - just work your way slowly up to a more brisk pace - e.g. 4 mph.

Also, maybe a recumbent bike?

Best of luck!

burning calories from exercise can be good if you are also counting your calories. If you eat the calories you burn then you are no further ahead. I think we have shifted from the idea of low intensity fat burn during exercise to high intensity to burn more calories down the road with your new muscles. And in another 10 years there will be a whole new reason why we should or shouldn't be doing it the way we were doing it. I would say neither, the trend is to build muscles (high intensity). However, walking is all you should do post surgery, maybe biking too. Any exercise will benefit you. But at the end of the day its about creating a calorie deficit. Excersise can help a lot, but it really comes down to restricting your calories.

There is a book called The Four Hour Body that explains quite nicely the benefits of short, high intensity workouts in terms of fat loss. Sometimes this type of workout is called intervals. Here's how you do it: Start with a 5 minute warm-up, then quickly speed up to your maximum, and stay there for 30 seconds. The idea is to push yourself so that at the end of the 30 seconds you feel as though you can't go on. At that point you do a 90 second (minute and a half) recovery/cool-down. Use the 90 second recovery to really recover, so that at the end of the 90 seconds you are ready for another 30 seconds at maximum. You repeat these cycles, 30sec. max / 90 sec. recovery, 8 times, or as many times as you can in the beginning. It sounds easy but you will find that it's very difficult to make it to the 7th and 8th cycles at first. The first time I did it I only did 5. That's ok! If you decide to do these types of workouts you need to make sure you only do them 3 times a week because they work your muscles so hard, you need the days off to recover and rebuild. The nice thing is the entire workout only takes about 20 minutes. You might want to try incorporating one such workout into your weekly routine and see what you think.
Don't obsess too much over calories. Weight loss is a lot more complex than calories in, calories out. If you are overweight you probably need to jump start your metabolism by getting your muscles engaged. challenging your muscles through high intensity interval training will speed up your metabolism and allow you to burn fat even at rest. It is important to eat plenty of protein and good fats to help your body rebuild and recover, so don't fall for the low cal, low fat fake packaged foods. They will do nothing for you in terms of keeping you injury-free, and they might even hinder your progress. Keep it real! Good luck with your new routine. Good for you for deciding to improve your health!

Everything you do burns calories. You might research a calorie, which is actually a unit of energy. Food energy, also known as a kilocalorie, is the amount of energy basically given off by a food as it is consumed/digested, etc. I tried to copy a table, and it came out a mess...I'll see if I can straighten it out. The following food components are the only ones that contribute to the calorie count of a food.
Food component Energy density
kJ/g kcal/g
Fat 37 9
Ethanol (alcohol) 29 7
Proteins 17 4
Carbohydrates 17 4
Organic acids 13 3
Polyols (sugar alcohols, sweeteners) 10 2.4
Fiber 8 2

So, to make it a little easier to make sense of...you can see that fiber per gram has less of a calorie content that fat or alcohol, etc.

To lose fat, you have to concentrate on losing calories...which has to happen at least by exercise. Dieting isn't the most important component of losing weight...you can eat a lot that's more easily burned, easily digested, etc.

I'm terrible at wording this.

You need to walk faster than 1.7 miles an hour to make a difference. Try to walk at 3-4 miles per hour...but work up to it slowly. Riding a bike is great, if you are able, because it's low impact.

There is no difference. When you burn calories you will eventually burn fat. Fat is where we store our extra calories.

The most efficient way to walk is to start off slow for five minutes and then kick it up. The slow first signals your body that you are about to work it. It prepares it to burn calories. Kinda like when you starve yourself you burn less calories because your body is preparing to store all it can for the long haul.

When doing a regular work out start with strength training. After strength training your body will burn calories more efficiently for up to eight hours.