How to Burn 5,000 Calories per Day

5,000 calories per day is a lot of calories and burning that amount every single day is no small feat. I read a great response to the question of how to burn 5,000 calories per day over on Quora and thought I would share some of the highlights (and surprises) here.

The author of the original Quora response is Alex Lightman.

First of all, his top recommendation is to get plenty of sleep on a consistent basis. At least 8 hours per night. I agree. Too many people overlook the benefits of sleep.

Alex recommends a fitness tracking device, such as a Fitbit Surge, but I'm not a fan of wearing a fitness device, even though I used to be. I think a simple plan with consistent exercises is the best and you don't really need a device for those.

The go-to exercise he recommends is walking (note: not running) on a treadmill. I trained exclusively on a treadmill for a recent half marathon recently because of the foul weather where I live and I agree that a treadmill is a great way to consistently exercise. Alex recommends walking at an incline (he does 6%) and at a brisk walking pace (he does 4 mph). At that rate, he burns 1,000 calories per hour, which is fantastic.

I don't think I could do five hours on a treadmill, though.

His other recommendations are to lift weights at a moderate level, focusing more on doing many repetitions instead of total weight.

He also recommends squats, which are my favorite exercise as well. They're awesome for exercising the lower body, where most of your muscle mass is located.

He estimates you can burn 1 to 5 calories per squat (I think it's closer to the lower end of this, and might even be less than one). But if you do a lot of squats you can burn calories very efficiently. I can do two hundred squats in less than 10 minutes, even with short rests. In one hour, that's 1,200 squats. If you believe each squat is a calorie, you could burn 5,000 calories with just an hour of squats (with rest, which you will need).

Another exercise he recommends is rowing. I've seen a few people do rowing in the gym but have not tried it myself.

So for me, it's all about treadmill and squats. I'm going to set up a routine and try to report back on my progress.

P.S. Livestrong has a good calories burned per squat calculation. They claim you can calculate calories burned per minute by multiplying your weight (in pounds) by .096. So if you weigh 120 pounds, you would burn 11.52 calories per minute of doing squats. This sounds more reasonable than the estimate above. But it also means more hours of squats to burn 5K calories!