Nutritional scientists break down energy consumption into three components. The largest is Resting Energy Expenditure (REE), which I’ve examined in detail in the previous post. It accounts for 60-80% of our daily energy consumption. REE is the energy consumed at rest, when there’s no physical activity going on. Another 5-10% is used for digestion. The rest of our energy consumption is due to physical activity. These proportions can vary: if you’re a rider in the Tour de France, your daily physical activity will probably exceed your REE several times over.… Read the rest “Human Energy: The Body in motion”
calories used work done during exercise
The Inefficiency of Humans
The material in this post has been upgraded and expanded in two posts, which describe human energy efficiency at rest and during vigorous exercise.
I first posted “The Inefficiency of Humans” in January 2017. It’s about the reasons that our energy metabolism provides only about 20-25% of the energy we consume as food for muscular work. I referred to this as our “inefficiency”, although it isn’t really that. The explanation and conclusions remain largely unchanged, but since then I’ve learned more about how energy metabolism is measured, so I’ve rewritten the post as this 2.0 version.… Read the rest “The Inefficiency of Humans”