how many calories should we burn

How many calories on average should we be burning per day for weight loss? example today i burned 308 calories in 40 minutes .

It depends on how much you want to lose, and your metabolic rate.
Each pound is approx 3500 calories.
So if you want to lose a pound of weight, you need to eat or exercise 3500 calories less than what your body requires for metabolic stability.
Same goes for gaining weight.  3500 calories more than what your body needs.

Each person is different and their required calorie intake is going to be different.

So with your example, if you were eating exactly the calorie content that your body needed to neither gain or lose weight, it would take you 11+ days of burning 308 calories due to exercise to lose 1 pound.

Scott

Another way to look at the numbers is:

-For every 500 calories a day deficit, you lose a pound a week.
-For every 500 calories a day surplus, you gain a pound a week.

However, once you have a greater than 1000 calorie a day deficit, reality gets wonky because most people's brains do things to slow down the weight loss, like lowering their metabolism and sending "you're tired, sit down" messages.

For example, you can have a 1500 calorie a day deficit and only lose 2.25 lb. a week instead of 3 lb.

I'm the oddball here on this forum.  I don't believe in exercise as a way to lose weight.  I believe in exercise as the path to good health.  Without good cardiovascular exercise, you can lose all the weight you want but you may not be healthy.   If you get into the habit of daily exercise, weight loss will come, but more importantly your heart and lungs will be more healthy and your lipid levels will also be in the right proportion.  That's the main thing.

Don't get me wrong, fitness is really important to me.  I do races and train hard.  But the end result is that I'm a much healthier person.  (HDL 99, LDL 68, Triglycerides 88)

I just like to try to keep these sorts of things in perspective.  Most of us did WLS for health reasons.  Exercise is the best way to achieve that goal.  It's really not about calories burned as much as it is time at an elevated heart rate.  That's why they say minimum 30 minutes of cardio.  In that 30 min, most people's heart rate should be in the 130's range.

I know that's not what you really wanted to hear, but that's my philosophy...

Linn

(Linn: But you are a cute oddball and I agree with you 100%.)

You might actually gain a few pounds from exercising due to toning and building a little muscle.  Example: at my smallest after sugery I weighted 224 and was wearing a 42 pants.  With increase running and doing 10Ks, I gained 10 pounds but dropped from a 42 to a 40 pants.  I will take that kind of getting healthy over scales measured weight loss anyday of the week.

Thanks Linn!

I agree with you I want to continue excersosing to be healthy and to lose the weight. I just wanted to know really what i should be doing. So I guess 30 minutes cardio and 20 minutes floor is good for a rebeginning. Now I just ned to stick with it. I excercised again today 30/20 and now i feel exhausted!

One more big thing to learn to do is eat a recovery meal right after a workout.  It helps restore glycogen so that your subsequent workouts don't feel awful because you're so depleted.  Once I started doing that, my Thursday workouts were just as good as the Monday ones.  I often will eat a PB&J sand after my workouts as my recovery meal/breakfast.

Linn

well be\read does not do well with me I purched isopure liquid protein drinks 0 carbs 0 sugar 40 grams of protein and the whole bottle is only 160 calories. I just need to know what i am doing is good for a beginning. I am only at 3.5 and 4 mph for 1/2 hour with increments on the incline flucuating between 2 -6%

I didn't start doing recovery calories until I was exercising for more than an hour. Even then I don't necessarily do a lot. Maybe 2-3 of my protein muffins for a total of about 150 calories.

Your recovery calories should be either 4:1 or 3:1 carbs to protein though. (Different people advocate different amounts and based on the same research as far as I can tell.) Sometimes I do 2:1 and that seems to work fine.

I figure I am burning 300 calories an hour on average so I try not to consume more than that in pre-, post- and during workout fuels.

I started with 30 min. of running or biking and gradually worked my way up to 45 min. 4-5x a week. Then I started serious training for triathlons and my workout times really took off. That's when I started to worry about nutrition surrounding my workouts.