How much energy/calories does the brain use or need?

Despite the human brain only accounting for 2% of our body’s overall weight it uses 25% of all the glucose we take in.

So roughly if your overall daily requirement of calories was 2000 then your brain would need around 500 of those.

The brains requirements also account for 15% of the body’s heart work rate and 20% of it’s oxygen intake during everyday life.

These energy demands partly explain why the human body has a minimum amount of calories that it needs each day just to survive, even if it isn’t very physically active.

The average size human still burns around 60 calories per hour while asleep.

During extremely intense strenuous activities and exercise this can rise to over 1,000 calories per hour.

For medium intensity workouts you can expect to burn off around 500 calories in an hour.