Is a calorie burned a calorie burned?

you are strengthening different muscles so even though you're burning the same amount of calories, your body might look different depending on the type of exercises you're doing.

I am not an expert...but I think overall, no...but, it is important to incorporate both strength training and cardio. The more lean muscle you build, the more fat you burn

If I am wrong, no one flog me...it's just what I think. LOL

Yes. It's simple math. However, your body may burn more efficiently at different levels and there are some tests you can have done to determine that.....they are not cheap, but many gyms do them.

http://www.newleaffitness.com/

Insanity is more than calories in, calories out. You're working your anaerobic system which then will allow you to burn more calories when you become more fit. Insanity is also strgenth and explosive moves strength and explosive moves that will allow your body to build lean muscle over time and then you’ll be able to expend more calories by doing pretty much anything. Walking and doing Insanity are opposite ends of extremes. If you want to focus on calories, continue to walk, if you want to get stronger, faster and leaner, do Insanity.

For weight loss? Generally, yes. (Calories in - calories out)*3500 = 1 pound.

For other benefits? No. Higher-intensity exercise improves the efficiency of your cardiovascular system and improves overall health (but makes your body more efficient so a fixed amount of exercise burns FEWER calories, so you have to keep upping the effort to keep seeing the same benefit), and continuous light exercise burns calories while leaving you in the same general (slightly improved) health. Plus the type of exercise you choose will determine what muscles get the most work and therefore the most tone.

But ANYTHING is better than nothing.

A calorie is a unit of energy.
The large calorie, kilogram calorie, dietary calorie, nutritionist's calorie or food calorie (symbol: Cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. This is exactly 1,000 small calories or about 4.2 kilojoules.

This is the energy your body has burned. The food you eat is energy you take in. If you burn more than you take in, then some new equations come into play. Your body has some choices, and the choices are NOT binary. The energy has to come from somewhere, right? So, your body increases it's efficiency metabolizing the food you eat. At present, your body is probably not 100% efficient at getting every single calorie out of the food you eat. If you go under your calorie's required, - you metabolism will slow down so you can get every possible calorie out of what you have eaten.

Ideally, your body will start burning the fat stores. Each pound of fat has ~3,500 calories held in reserve.

As noticed, lean muscle burns fat - so increases your muscle mass is a way to increase the amount of calories you burn; and it also tends to flatter your figure. Lean arms, legs, a flat torso, defined back and tummy typically are considered "good".

If only it was as easy as I described.

The difference is when you exercise slower you burn a higher percentage of calories from fat. About 60 %. When you are at a higher intensity workout, you burn a higher percentage from carbs. About 65 %. So it depends on what you want to do. Do you want to burn more from fat or carbs. if you want some more info on this, go to Lance Armstrong's website, livestrong.com and it will tell you more.

I just finished participating in a research experiment about how many calories we burn etc. at App State's exercise science dept...what the person in charge of the experiment told was that calories burned come from different sources: carb stores in your body, then fat, then muscle, used up in this order. When we start to exercise, we first burn up the cals that are stored as carbs, then we switch to fat, but if we start to overexert, we start burning muscle, which isn't good.

Weight training is great because muscle burns more calories, even when not working out. However, when we are doing cardio, his research indicated that getting on a treadmill and simply staying within your target heart range (mine is 134-138 beats per minute) is the ideal to burn fat and not muscle protein. This makes you feel a little winded but not to an extreme so you can keep going. Also, his research indicated that the best bang for your buck is to work out early in the morning, around 6 or 7am and here is why: During this time, the body releases one last shot of human growth hormone, which is incredibly helpful for many things, including helping you hold on to muscle mass as we age. Working out also helps MAKE more human growth hormone, which is good, The other thing is that without eating right before exercise, the body quickly uses up any carbs it stored over night and starts to burn fat calories quicker, bypassing energy from food we might have consumed already that morning. As long as you stay within your target heart range, you will see more fat burned if you do this. After your workout, you can then get a good protein in to help you recover.

In the end, the amount of calories burned doesn't matter as much as WHERE they are coming from. I was on the experiment for four weeks....was asked NOT to count calories and to eat the way I normally ate, which was atrocious!! (going out to eat all the time) and had to go in to the lab to exercise/be monitored three mornings per week. I used a basic treadmill, no incline, to about 3mph..enough to keep me at 134-138 bpm (this is diff. for everyone based on BMI) for 30 minutes. I got my final weigh in last week and I was embarrassed because I thought I had gained weight! I ended up loosing 4lbs of fat!!!! (they have the fat measuring pod that is supposed to be the most accurate).

I finished the experiment last Thursday and Friday started monitoring what I ate in addition to my morning exercise and I have lost another 2lbs. I figured this weight loss will slow down a bit but even if I am dropping 1.5 lbs. per week, I will be ecstatic!! Iknow this was a long response but I hope it helps!!