Your body is burning calories all day long, here’s the breakdown.

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) are the calories your body requires daily to maintain weight, support your daily activity and keep you alive. ⠀
A common misconception when it comes to dieting and exercise is that by putting in an hour a day at the gym, you’re going to make major progress or vice versa, you’ll never make progress without the gym. ⠀
This chart represents our total daily calorie requirements and the percentages each area burns daily. ⠀
(**many things such as muscle mass, age, the current state of your metabolism etc can shift these percentages a little. These percentages are from the National Library of medicine**)⠀
I’m sure it’s surprising to see so many of our daily calories are burned at rest, also known as our BMR (basal metabolic rate. Think basic life functions) ⠀
Next, we have NEAT which stands for Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is the daily movements we do without thinking too much about it. Walking, fidgeting, shivering, standing vs. sitting, carrying a shopping basket instead of pushing a cart, taking the stairs instead of the elevator etc). As you can see, this has the potential to burn a bigger chunk of calories than time put into intentional exercise. ⠀
Next on the chart comes TEF (thermal effect of food). The foods we eat and the quality of food determines how many calories your body burns to digest it and absorb it. Protein is #1 here, you can actually burn more calories daily just by making sure you’re eating adequate protein. Mic ? drop. ⠀
Lastly we have exercise. Exercise improves your mood, enhances your quality of life, is good for your heart and strong muscles help support our bones when we age. ⠀
The point of this post is to show you:⠀
✅Daily movement absolutely makes a difference. Don’t discredit the small stuff. (This is why I’m always talking about step goals with clients).⠀
✅ Protein intake matters A LOT. ⠀
✅So does the quality of your foods⠀
✅Exercise improves our physical and mental health but it’s not the whole picture. If you can’t workout, there is still a lot of progress you can make in other areas. ⠀
I hope you found this helpful!
Coach Mallory