If I do the same exercise all the time does it stop becoming useful for losing weight?

earlnabby

sheldonklein wrote: »

I believe the point is that if you walk a mile you will burn X calories, whether you walk it fast or slow.

That is pretty much how I understood it. I can burn (according to MFP) 120 calories walking one mile at 2 mph; 118 walking at 3 mph; 122 at 4 mph

Mr_Knight

LynseyJx wrote: »

If you do one exercise all the time does your body start just getting used to that and then it stops helping with weight loss?

If you mean does the body stop burning calories during the exercise - no.

Mr_Knight

stillnot2late wrote: »

I never understood that. If I burn 100 calories on my walk, and walk for a year, will that be less calories burned than 100 for the same type walk?

NO.

(Assuming you stay the same weight)

LynseyJx

sijomial wrote: »

LynseyJx wrote: »

Maybe I'm just being impatient, a lb is still losing even if it did take two weeks. And yep I thought you'd burn more calories if you pushed yourself a bit more

Not sure you have quite got it...
Walking for an hour at 2mph will burn "this amount of calories".
Push yourself a bit more and walk for an hour at 4mph and you will burn twice as many calories because you have gone double the distance.
It's the distance not the "pushing".

But thinking that exercise is the biggest factor in weight loss is a mistake. It helps but it's not the major player.

No I don't think I've quite got the whole weight loss thing because I'm not doing it very successfully at the moment lol. As for the distance thing though, I walked for over 8 miles the other day, I did 7 yesterday, I'm not sure I could fit in any more. I'm trying my best to make diet the more important part and there's only one day I haven't hit my calorie goal. Maybe I should eat less than 1555 calories a day, that's the amount I got on a BMR calculator. Perhaps I should go for 1200 calories a day instead like my fitness pal originally suggested.

bwogilvie

Azdak wrote: »

If, via training, your fitness level has improved, then a decrease in heart rate for a given exercise workload DOES NOT mean a decrease in calories burned. The drop in the number on the HRM means the HRM settings are now wrong.

@Azdak‌ is spot on here. As you train, your heart enlarges (specifically, the left ventricle), so it pumps more blood with each heartbeat. Your muscles get more capillaries, so they can extract more oxygen from the blood. Your muscles produce more mitochondria, so they can use more oxygen. The upshot is that you get the same amount of oxygen to the muscles with a much lower heartbeat.

In aerobic activities, calories consumed are proportional to the amount of oxygen consumed. That is correlated with heart rate, but the adaptations that I mentioned mean that the correlation is not perfect. My heart rate bicycling at 15 mph is now about 20 beats lower than it was back in 2008, but that doesn't mean that I am burning less energy (other than due to reduced weight). My resting heart rate has also dropped from over 60 to around 46, but that doesn't mean that my energy requirements at rest have also dropped equally, just that the old ticker doesn't need to pump as often to circulate the required amount of blood.

LynseyJx

What I've found from this is that I should just keep on doing what I'm doing and I'll still lose calories. I've taken my measurements and I've lost an inch round my waist So even though I only lost a lb losing an inch is fine by me and my fitness is improving too.