An exhausting day of concentration has a surprising effect on the amount of calories you should eat

A long, hard day of concentration at work doesn’t influence the amount of calories you lose as much as you’d think.

You know those days at work… those days when the clock strikes and you feel as though you’ve mentally run a marathon but haven’t even left your desk? Whether they come around seldom or often, there’s no doubt that some days can leave you feeling physically drained through sheer concentration alone. On those days, you may find yourselves questioning whether such elongated mental workouts reflect in the number of calories you burn, but the science on that is likely to surprise you.

How many more calories do you burn from concentration?

A lot of intense thinking feels far more draining than kicking back on the sofa or watching some reality TV.

The act of thinking alone can leave you wanting to go to bed early from exhaustion, but as it turns out, you only burn slightly more calories after a day of concentration than you would simply relaxing and being at ease.

Exercising your brain has huge benefits for improving your ability to focus and retain memory. However, the benefits don’t extend to burning enough calories to lose weight.

Healthline reports that the body burns energy when you’re largely inactive through things like breathing, blood flow, body temperature, and digestion, which use calories. The increase in calorie burn through intense thought is very small.

For example, to lose just one pound you’d need to burn 3,500 calories. A 155-pound person burns roughly 42 calories after half an hour’s reading. On the other hand, BBC Science Focus acknowledges that by sleeping all day your brain would still burn at least 240 calories. The brain’s daily consumption is 400-500 calories—20% of your total energy requirements—and experiments have shown that abstract problem-solving raises the brain’s metabolic requirements but the amount you burn is unlikely to result in more than five calories an hour.

Taking this into account, a hard day’s concentration at the office, working from home, etc. shouldn’t actually influence the amount of food you regularly eat to receive the appropriate amount of calorie intake, despite whether you feel far hungrier after a mental workout than a lazy day.

Although it’s imperative to note that the number of calories you need per day is unique to your body and the amount of exercise you do, most male adults need between 2,2000-3,000 calories per day, whereas most female adults need 1,600–2,200 calories per day.

Valuable ways to exercise your brain

Your brain’s workout may not burn enough calories to solely help weight loss, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve some exercise to help enhance cognitive functions.

Here are some ways you can help keep your brain happy and healthy:

It’s always important to keep your brain active. After all, a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.