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Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications

Product ID: HiMAP Pull-Out
Supplementary Print
High School

Want a Workout? Burning Calories

Author: James Sandefur, Carol Day, Rosalie Dance


In this article, we will investigate issues related to health and weight. Many people misunderstand weight gain and loss. In essence, if we consume more calories than we burn, we gain weight and if we burn more calories than we consume, we lose weight. Most people have fairly consistent eating habits, and their bodies adjust to an equilibrium weight, a weight at which they burn approximately the same number of calories each day that they consume.

Many factors affect the number of calories we burn each day, including our height, weight, age, and activity level. It should be fairly obvious that our weight affects the number of calories we burn since the calories burned is equivalent to energy expended and the more we weigh, the more energy we must expend just to move around. This means that as we lose weight, we will burn fewer calories at our regular activity level.

©2007 by COMAP, Inc.
Consortium 92
7 pages

Mathematics Topics:

Pre-Algebra , Algebra

Application Areas:

Life Sciences & Medicine , Nutrition

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