Why do so many people ignore calories burned with exercise in CICO?

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Replies

  • Cryptonomnomicon
    Cryptonomnomicon Posts: 848 Member
    edited March 2015
    sandryc79 wrote: »
    Am I the only person who is not even sure what the OP is trying to say?

    ovVWAAX.jpg

    OP is angry that people don't always agree with her or that they are not concise enough with their advice to others. That is my take on it besides stating the painfully obvious that exercise contributes to calories burnt.

  • Ang108
    Ang108 Posts: 1,711 Member
    nannersp61 wrote: »
    I want to add a point about calories in. A few weeks ago I noticed I was not losing weight. I was eating between 1200 to 1500 a day and exercising 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours every day. Averaging 10,000 to 12,000 steps a day. I talked to my health coach about it. She suggested that because of all the exercise I was doing that I was not eating enough food. Specifically, I needed to double my protein intake, up my carbs and watch my sodium to keep it under 2200 a day. I did that and lo and behold, the pounds began coming off, easily! I am no longer having rebound weight gain after a loss. So, consider the kinds of foods you are eating and the effect exercise is having on your body. Sometimes exercising for more than two hours begins to tell your body that you are in starvation mode so it shuts off your metabolism and holds back on releasing fat. Eat more of the right kinds of food and you will begin to see progress again.

    No, no, no.......

  • Cryptonomnomicon
    Cryptonomnomicon Posts: 848 Member
    edited March 2015
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  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    i believe the advice that people are always given is that you do not need exercise to create a calorie deficit and lose weight, because you can do that just by eating less..however, exercise can assist in increasing your deficit..

    I think OP is still made that her "everyone needs to stop making excuses and exercise" thread went down in flames….
  • Debmal77
    Debmal77 Posts: 4,770 Member
    MrM27 wrote: »
    It's becoming clear the thread is designed to entice an argument instead of really seeking an explanation.

    I believe you may be right.
  • CherokeeBabe
    CherokeeBabe Posts: 1,704 Member

    Well, yes. It DOES happen when you're just laying around on the sofa watching television. Unless you're a zombie. I don't want any zombies on this forum.

    I vote 'Yes' for Zombies on the forum.
  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
    ndj1979 wrote: »
    i believe the advice that people are always given is that you do not need exercise to create a calorie deficit and lose weight, because you can do that just by eating less..however, exercise can assist in increasing your deficit..

    I think OP is still made that her "everyone needs to stop making excuses and exercise" thread went down in flames….

    Oh. I missed that one.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,593 Member
    I don't get it. Writer says, "I'm exercising 4,000 calories a day and eating 2,000 calories but I'm not losing weight" and the answer is almost always CICO. Then there's the accusations that the poster is not logging calories accurately, not weighing the food, and that even though they claim to exercise, it's always "CICO". Huh? Is not burning calories by exercising calories out?

    How can you say that you don't have to burn calories to have the CO part of CICO? Do you think it happens when we just lay around on the sofa watching television? EXERCISE burns calories and is part of the CALORIES OUT! Whoever is guilty, stop saying that exercise doesn't contribute, because it does. To those who cannot exercise for health reasons, I am not talking about you, even though I have a friend here who has everything against her yet she is still excelling.

    Okay, off my soapbox.

    1. Yes, exercise is part of calories out.
    2. But people tend to significantly overestimate the number of calories they burn through exercise.

    I know your "4000 calories" is a gross exaggeration for effect, but unfortunately it is not far from the truth. I have heard people gasp out at the top of 3 flights of stairs, "I must have burned at least 1000 calories there!" Um. No. Not even close.

    So if you think your exercise should be burning enough calories that you should be losing weight ... and your not losing weight. There's a good chance you're either calculating your calories consumed incorrectly (calories in) or calculating your calories burned incorrectly (calories out) ... or both.

    Simple as that.
  • LiftAllThePizzas
    LiftAllThePizzas Posts: 17,857 Member
    edited March 2015
    .
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    Exercise helps the deficit, but it's unnecessary to weight loss.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    I don't get OP's' point either. I lost all my weight without a minute of exercise. And on the odd occasion I do, do something physical I don't eat back the calories I burned. I treat those as a bonus.
  • SergeantSausage
    SergeantSausage Posts: 1,673 Member
    But what is the answer then?
    If someone is burning 4000 calories in exercise and eating only 2000 and not losing weight, where is the problem?

    Learning to count.



  • isulo_kura
    isulo_kura Posts: 818 Member
    sandryc79 wrote: »
    Am I the only person who is not even sure what the OP is trying to say?

    I just don't get where people who say it doesn't matter if you exercise and those calories don't really count.

    Please direct us to a thread where someone actually says this.
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    I don't get it. Writer says, "I'm exercising 4,000 calories a day and eating 2,000 calories but I'm not losing weight" and the answer is almost always CICO. Then there's the accusations that the poster is not logging calories accurately, not weighing the food, and that even though they claim to exercise, it's always "CICO". Huh? Is not burning calories by exercising calories out?

    How can you say that you don't have to burn calories to have the CO part of CICO? Do you think it happens when we just lay around on the sofa watching television? EXERCISE burns calories and is part of the CALORIES OUT! Whoever is guilty, stop saying that exercise doesn't contribute, because it does. To those who cannot exercise for health reasons, I am not talking about you, even though I have a friend here who has everything against her yet she is still excelling.

    Okay, off my soapbox.

    I'm trying to analyze what you just said.

    If a poster comes and says that they're not losing weight no one ever discounts exercise. Often times, people ask if they need to exercise to lose weight, and people answer no, and that's true. Saying that exercise isn't NEEDED to lose weight and that is true. Exercise adds to CO. Yes. But it's not the only thing that creates a deficit.

    What is a more likely scenario is that a poster not losing weight is likely overestimating the calories they burn through exercise and eating too many back AND not accurately logging their food at the same time.

    More often than not, at least in diary analysis the threads I've participated in, they are making common errors in not weighing their food, choosing generic data base entries and overestimating exercise burns.

    No one EVER says exercise doesn't contribute to the CICO equation. I'm not sure what you're on about here.

  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    I don't get it. Writer says, "I'm exercising 4,000 calories a day and eating 2,000 calories but I'm not losing weight" and the answer is almost always CICO. Then there's the accusations that the poster is not logging calories accurately, not weighing the food, and that even though they claim to exercise, it's always "CICO". Huh? Is not burning calories by exercising calories out?

    How can you say that you don't have to burn calories to have the CO part of CICO? Do you think it happens when we just lay around on the sofa watching television? EXERCISE burns calories and is part of the CALORIES OUT! Whoever is guilty, stop saying that exercise doesn't contribute, because it does. To those who cannot exercise for health reasons, I am not talking about you, even though I have a friend here who has everything against her yet she is still excelling.

    Okay, off my soapbox.

    1. Yes, exercise is part of calories out.
    2. But people tend to significantly overestimate the number of calories they burn through exercise.

    I know your "4000 calories" is a gross exaggeration for effect, but unfortunately it is not far from the truth. I have heard people gasp out at the top of 3 flights of stairs, "I must have burned at least 1000 calories there!" Um. No. Not even close.

    So if you think your exercise should be burning enough calories that you should be losing weight ... and your not losing weight. There's a good chance you're either calculating your calories consumed incorrectly (calories in) or calculating your calories burned incorrectly (calories out) ... or both.

    Simple as that.

    3. It's far easier eating a few hundred calories less than burning a few hundred calories more every day.
    4. Even when tracking burned calories from exercise with something like a HRM, it's extremely inaccurate
    5. Therefore, unless you're doing intense hourlong workouts daily/almost daily, you should simply care for exercise for your health, not to create a deficit. Maybe adjust your intake if the scale moves faster than it should.
  • Cranquistador
    Cranquistador Posts: 39,744 Member
    annoyed.gif
    ^
  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
    I'm not sure exactly what the OP is trying to say... but I generally ignore calories burned in exercise.

    But I ignore them not because they don't matter, but because they matter a lot less than some people think and don't enter into my calculations much.

    Consider - For example, 3 sessions per week of light cardio are going to burn 500 cals each. That's a reasonable exercise schedule and much better than most overweight people. If that was my schedule then exercise would correspond to 1500 cals burned out of 16800. And, in reality, those three exercise hours are actually much smaller burns if you subtracted the 150-200 cals per hour you where going to burn anyway.

    That's less than 9% and corresponds to one large meal, if I'm not careful. The core message is that, next to watching your intake, it doesn't matter much.
    But the other part is that, in terms of activity, if you change your overall lifestyle to spend more time being active - exercise is just a small part of your day. A more active lifestyle is more effective than a few hours of exercise.

    Exercise matters immensely, just a lot less, for weight-loss, than some people think.

    In terms of equations - it might not matter at all.

    If you consider that you have a relatively constant exercise level and include it in your TDEE and then modulate your consumption - you'll see weight loss. The fixed TDEE method that many of us use ignores individual exercise burns (we don't calculate the thermogenic effect of food either) - it isn't that exercise doesn't matter, it is that calculating the effect isn't necessary.

    Weight loss cals = TDEE - Calories consumed

    (obviously TDEE wraps in all thermogenic effects like exercise)

    It's relatively difficult to out-exercise a poor diet.



  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    My question is who is they?

    Who are the people ignoring calories burned with exercise in CICO?
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    I don't get OP's' point either. I lost all my weight without a minute of exercise. And on the odd occasion I do, do something physical I don't eat back the calories I burned. I treat those as a bonus.

    you did it wrong and ignored CICO ….apparently ...
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    i dont see what the problem is.

    if you dont want to see/ eat them - dont log the exercise, or log it as 1 cal (if you just want a record of you doing the exercise). unlink all your gadgets.

    problem solved.....
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    edited March 2015
    I'm not sure exactly what the OP is trying to say... but I generally ignore calories burned in exercise.

    But I ignore them not because they don't matter, but because they matter a lot less than some people think and don't enter into my calculations much.

    Consider - For example, 3 sessions per week of light cardio are going to burn 500 cals each. That's a reasonable exercise schedule and much better than most overweight people. If that was my schedule then exercise would correspond to 1500 cals burned out of 16800. And, in reality, those three exercise hours are actually much smaller burns if you subtracted the 150-200 cals per hour you where going to burn anyway.

    That's less than 9% and corresponds to one large meal, if I'm not careful. The core message is that, next to watching your intake, it doesn't matter much.
    But the other part is that, in terms of activity, if you change your overall lifestyle to spend more time being active - exercise is just a small part of your day. A more active lifestyle is more effective than a few hours of exercise.

    Exercise matters immensely, just a lot less, for weight-loss, than some people think.

    In terms of equations - it might not matter at all.

    If you consider that you have a relatively constant exercise level and include it in your TDEE and then modulate your consumption - you'll see weight loss. The fixed TDEE method that many of us use ignores individual exercise burns (we don't calculate the thermogenic effect of food either) - it isn't that exercise doesn't matter, it is that calculating the effect isn't necessary.

    Weight loss cals = TDEE - Calories consumed

    (obviously TDEE wraps in all thermogenic effects like exercise)

    It's relatively difficult to out-exercise a poor diet.



    Since I think this is a very sensible post and I value your input, what are your recommendations for a person who doesn't use the TDEE method... say for a person like me whose health is dodgy enough not to be able to be consistently active. I'm in a good spell now, so consistent exercise has again become a thing. But I was recently down for a good month and a half and exercised very rarely during that time. I don't do TDEE method for that very reason.

    I also took pains to use online calculators to estimate net burns for my cardio and still pretty much ignore it anyway, but I'm asking just to have the knowledge.

  • spicy618
    spicy618 Posts: 2,114 Member
    I don't get OP's' point either. I lost all my weight without a minute of exercise. And on the odd occasion I do, do something physical I don't eat back the calories I burned. I treat those as a bonus.


    I've noticed, OP reads things differently than the majority. OP then gets an attitude when corrected. Don't know if english is the second language.

  • 999tigger
    999tigger Posts: 5,235 Member
    OP could have helped herself simply with a simple clarififcation of what she was trying to say.
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  • rjmudlax13
    rjmudlax13 Posts: 900 Member
    sandryc79 wrote: »
    Am I the only person who is not even sure what the OP is trying to say?

    I just don't get where people who say it doesn't matter if you exercise and those calories don't really count.

    Who is saying this? Can you give me one example?

  • sgthaggard
    sgthaggard Posts: 581 Member
    edited March 2015
    999tigger wrote: »
    Some people manage to dismiss exercise altogether and the contribution it can make towards burning calories and potential deficit.

    They first focus on consuming less because thats easier for most people to do than burn the equivalent. I think I get your point OP in that exercise can still make a significant contribution in terms of calories burned towards helping you stay in deficit. You are annoyed because people dismiss it?
    The ever-popular "exercise for fitness, diet for weight loss" makes me a bit nuts.

    I get that a lot of people overestimate their burn. I see it daily amongst my friends. But that's really not a reason to discount it's effect on weight loss.

    I ran 5k yesterday. That allowed me to have a sizeable dinner with hundreds of calories to spare. Throughout this whole process, exercise has allowed me to eat at a reasonable level so that I don't feel deprived and I don't feel like giving up.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    sandryc79 wrote: »
    Am I the only person who is not even sure what the OP is trying to say?

    No. +1
  • ncboiler89
    ncboiler89 Posts: 2,408 Member
    CoolRider_ wrote: »
    Nobody here is burning 4000 calories a day.

    I don't think the numbers were meant to be literal.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    I don't get it. Writer says, "I'm exercising 4,000 calories a day and eating 2,000 calories but I'm not losing weight" and the answer is almost always CICO. Then there's the accusations that the poster is not logging calories accurately, not weighing the food, and that even though they claim to exercise, it's always "CICO". Huh? Is not burning calories by exercising calories out?

    How can you say that you don't have to burn calories to have the CO part of CICO? Do you think it happens when we just lay around on the sofa watching television? EXERCISE burns calories and is part of the CALORIES OUT! Whoever is guilty, stop saying that exercise doesn't contribute, because it does. To those who cannot exercise for health reasons, I am not talking about you, even though I have a friend here who has everything against her yet she is still excelling.

    Okay, off my soapbox.

    Haven't read the replies but most often than not, people who post those things are vastly overestimating their exercise burns (I see things on my feed that make me shake my head) and underestimating how much they are eating.

    Ok I guess I don't see your point.
This discussion has been closed.