We burn calories all the time. But how and why does it happen?
How did you all do in anatomy in school because I have a little lesson for you.
Adenosine tri phosphate (ATP) is your body’s way of storing and using energy.
ATP has 3 phosphates (hence tri). When a cell needs energy one of the phosphate molecules from ATP is released, this turns the ATP into adenosine diphosphate (ADP).
ADP is left floating around to find another phosphate molecule to turn back into ATP so it can be used for energy again. This process repeats all the time in order to keep your body working, whether this is for aerobic exercise, digestion, breathing etc. Because your body needs so much ATP it has many ways to make it and different types of exercise requires a different process.
The energy release from ATP can be measured in calories.
There are 7.3 calories in one mole of ATP.
So every time your body uses 1 mole of ATP you burn 7.3 calories. Just to put that into perspective there are approximately 16.7 micromoles consumed by ATP in moving 1 gram of muscle for 1 seconds. This is why having a good amount of lean muscle is important as it will require more ATP molecules to use it.