Is It Possible to Have a Negative Net Calorie Count Daily?
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Sorry to hear that Christine.christinev297 wrote: »My scale broke,so will be getting a new one next week...
You can't compare across scales as there often is variation.
Out of four scales I've used during the past 12 months (3 at my place and 1 at my parent's place) I've seen a variation of up to 0.3lbs between them. The seriously out of whack fourth one is actually off by 1.5lbs to 1.8lbs depending on which other scale it is compared to.0 -
Forgive my ignorance. I can get up to 130 and maybe faster, but I know i would not be doing that consistantly. I tested my comfortable rate and came up with 127 steps in a minute.
I am pretty sure that I didn't mention anything about "ignorance". I believe you said you didn't have a pedometer and I said that you were short of measurement devices.
127 steps a minute is pretty darn fast. Our muscles unfortunately do adapt and we burn less as we walk more. At the same time because our weight reduces and our fitness increases we are also able to do more!
Noooo, I did not mean it to come off that way
I just felt confused and you are making sense. I appreciate what I learned from you today, big time 
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I use a heart rate monitor to measure formal exercise (treadmill, trampoline, and cycling). The numbers are lower than the corresponding MFP estimates for my gender, age, height, and weight, but they are not half. But as others have said, you do need to net your required calories. I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.0
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...while only eating 1200 calories and netting NEGATIVE to boot!SherryTeach wrote: »I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.
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...while only eating 1200 calories and netting NEGATIVE to boot!SherryTeach wrote: »I'm still a little stunned at working our for four hours a day.
2 hours of swimming! Without rest.
OP are you training for something? Swimming makes me ravenous. I've done 1 1/2 workouts, but not a steady swim (it was really fun when I got my Garmin and actually tracked how much swimming vs rest I do during some workouts). Even the Ironman triathletes I swim with don't usually do continuous 2 hour swims.0 -
FitBit is ****ing evil. Those steps (even assuming its accurate) corresponds to roughly 15km. At 180 pounds, 15km of walking nets you 500 calories.
Except that fitbit is not giving her 1170 calories just for those steps. If she is set to sedentary, it is giving her a large adjustment based on the fact that her TDEE is higher with all those steps. Fitbit estimates TDEE, and not just exercise sessions. That number is based on her whole day and includes BMR, etc.
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I guess it's possible to be in the negative everyday...but why would you want to do that to your body?!0
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FitBit is ****ing evil. Those steps (even assuming its accurate) corresponds to roughly 15km. At 180 pounds, 15km of walking nets you 500 calories.
Except that fitbit is not giving her 1170 calories just for those steps. If she is set to sedentary, it is giving her a large adjustment based on the fact that her TDEE is higher with all those steps. Fitbit estimates TDEE, and not just exercise sessions. That number is based on her whole day and includes BMR, etc.
I just upped it back up to Lightly Active, so who knows what will happen now...
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Hey Christine, based on Lightly Active and your activity level you should still be losing!christinev297 wrote: »I just upped it back up to Lightly Active, so who knows what will happen now...
I just run your numbers and if you are at or below 140lbs with your 5ft 8" height you are at a BMI of 21.3 or less, and already in the 10th percentile for your age group. i.e. 90% of women your age and height weigh more than you!
I realize that you are still having fun on your way to your goal; but, lest we forget, the most important phase of your weight loss is just around the corner: maintenance!
I mean the fun and games of getting there are good, but maintenance is where it will all pay off, or not, and let's face it, for most of us it won't pay off and we'll be back for more rounds of this!
While I am far from the point of having to worry about it; I figured that I should look into this ahead of time!
Basically I keep hearing about something called reverse dieting. People apparently implement this in an attempt to both find their correct maintenance level and, possibly, in order to mitigate the effects of adaptive thermogenesis and to slowly boost their basal metabolic rate closer to where it should be, so that they can eat the most amount of food (and fuel their workouts) without re-gaining fat.
Now my understanding of how this works is that people gradually up their calories 100 or 200 at a time in an attempt to only let their weight bump up a little bit over the first few months of maintenance (and something about strength related exercises which I do not yet do
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But, often during this process they continue to lose weight, and often overshoot their goal on the way down, before coming back up to it.
A quick estimate based on your walking is that you may still be at a 1000 Cal, or even larger, deficit, so if you go through this whole process of upping your calories (or reducing your walking) a little bit at a time (and waiting a week or two to see results)... you may be looking at a good 2 to 3 month long process.
At 131lbs you will be in the 4th percentile for your age group with a BMI of 19.9. Are you leaving yourself enough time to enter maintenance the way you would like to, or do you have a different plan for entering maintenance?
If that's the case, what do the Maintenance Group mavens think about your plan compared to the reverse dieting approach?
Inquiring minds and all that
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lemonsnowdrop wrote: »It's not that I'm not eating or anything. I consumed maybe 1200 calories yesterday (my goal is 1430), but I did a TON of exercise that burned all of those calories off and then some.
I have a really hard time believing you burned 1400 calories in one day, unless your session was like five hours long.
a lot of people overestimate their calories burned...lol so i agree with you.
Also, it can really depend on the type of exercise and how rigorous the training was.
Moreover, calories burned are just estimates...so I don't really focus on calories burned after exercise...
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christinev297 wrote: »
I'm actually having really good success with Fitbit and eating the exercise calories back. Been at a consistent loss since I got it.0 -
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christinev297 wrote: »
26000 steps for me would be about 10.5 miles (I test it against various treadmill mileage counts every so often) - I don't think the calorie burn is that far off, actually.
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Thanks guys xx :bigsmile:0
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I just can't even
and that's just after reading the OP
I assume the actual advice has been covered off0 -
From what I've heard now, exercise seems to only count for about half of what it's truly logged in to MFP as.
I think it's very individual. I've heard this a lot on the boards, but in my experience, and the reports from some people on my friends list has been that when I did start using an HRM I found that the MFP numbers actually weren't too far off.0 -
lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
4 hours of exercise could definitely result in a 1400 calorie lost. She's only burning 350 calories an hour. I use a Polar fit hrm and can burn over 1,000 in 2 hours if I do two high intense cardio classes at my gym back to back. I don't dare try to do this every day, I wouldn't be able to sustain it. But it's possible. I personally wouldn't work out for 4 hours but her scenario could be a true issue.0 -
lemonsnowdrop wrote: »
4 hours of exercise could definitely result in a 1400 calorie lost. She's only burning 350 calories an hour. I use a Polar fit hrm and can burn over 1,000 in 2 hours if I do two high intense cardio classes at my gym back to back. I don't dare try to do this every day, I wouldn't be able to sustain it. But it's possible. I personally wouldn't work out for 4 hours but her scenario could be a true issue.
OP said they really do 4 continuous hours of high intensity work. So maybe. I was just skeptical that anyone could do that much work at that high intensity for that long. Idk.
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People have fast days for various reasons so, of course it's possible. Is it sustainable? No.0
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I occasionally have this happen on a Sunday when I tend to do a long bike ride (road cycling - vigorous effort) and then come home and do a lot of gardening. I eat around 1500 cals but burn around 1700 so end up -200. This is not sustainable on a regular basis though... As long as you feel fine and are eating a healthy balanced diet you will be fine just not EVERYDAY!!!0
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I think it's certainly possible to do it on occasion (or at least moderate intensity sufficient to burn 1400 calories). I mean, people run marathons, go for day long hikes, climb mountains, do century rides, etc.
What I found problematic about the OP was whether it was possible/sustainable to do that every day while eating so few calories. Or whether it's realistic to do 4 hours of somewhat intense exercise a day (although people who have active jobs probably do something similar or more--they simply don't eat 1200 calories while doing it, if they are smart).
So for the record, no.
(I also think it's easy to overestimate swimming calories, since the higher calorie entries are for a kind of swimming that most people who just swim recreationally and don't have some kind of competitive swimming background probably don't do, and it's easy to ignore time out for stops. But this is simply why I used to cut my swimming calories way down before I switched to TDEE. Also, I'm another who gets quite hungry from swimming!)0 -
stephanieluvspb wrote: »
That's funny, after high school swim practice we'd always go get DQ Blizzards. Only in Minnesota do you see kids with wet hair in freezing temperatures eating ice cream outside lol.0 -
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I suppose it could happen every once in a blue moon but I would not do it on purpose. You could eventually get dietary deficiencies, lose hair, etc.0
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Huh. I can honestly say that I've never gone into the negative. Definitely doesn't seem like a good idea to do it often.0
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deleted because I can't explain myself0
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I'm about 5'8" and 205 pounds if that helps at all. Thank you to everyone for informing me!
Similar size here, and I have logged many 900-1400 calorie burn days... mostly from running and coaching. Tangent: You know there is a downside of weight loss? Burn rate drops for same apparent performance. It's a good problem to have. ;-)
Since I'm totally new to input calorie counting I can't say I've ever gone negative. This past week was net ~300 twice. I might be underestimating input by at times, but cals from exercise I feel confident about as I use a HRM and it's easy to expect a 10k to burn 800-900+ for my weight and pace, and I often have multi sport/activity days.
I'd not be too concerned about going negative once in awhile, as your fat stores are stores of energy after all.
I let my body tell me what to do. If its been, or will be, a big exercise effort day, I will be eating appropriately more, and I didn't need to count calories to know or do that.0 -
lemonsnowdrop wrote: »It's not that I'm not eating or anything. I consumed maybe 1200 calories yesterday (my goal is 1430), but I did a TON of exercise that burned all of those calories off and then some.
I have a really hard time believing you burned 1400 calories in one day, unless your session was like five hours long.
a lot of people overestimate their calories burned...lol so i agree with you.
Also, it can really depend on the type of exercise and how rigorous the training was.
Moreover, calories burned are just estimates...so I don't really focus on calories burned after exercise...
That's a problem here on the MFP app. I run on the elliptical for an hour and the machine at the gym tells me roughly 900 calories. That can't be right. Then MFP tells me that 1185 calories burned. WHAT? At the average of 5 calories per minute, that's only 300. There's a lot of discrepancies on both this app and the machines at the gym, so I never really know what I'm burning.0 -
theresaTerriM wrote: »...On October 13, 2013, I ate 3260 calories, but I burned 4284 (estimated by my Garmin Edge 800 GPS cycle computer, which uses heart rate, fitness level, speed, and altitude changes to estimate energy expenditure). That was on an 9-hour (moving time), 111.5-mile bike ride up and down the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. I just couldn't eat that much.
You're my new hero. I just got into cycling and only aspire to do that much! My fiance is a cycling freak, and I don't know if he could even do that ride. Wow.
Aw, shucks! It was the Great River Ride out of Westfield, Mass., following the three branches of the Westfield River. Absolutely beautiful scenery, with the foliage at its height.
If you're in good health and have patience, you can work up to a ride like that. It's mostly about three things: (1) building the endurance to exert yourself at a moderate level all day, (2) learning how to eat and drink enough calories on the bike (200-300 calories/hour) to keep your blood sugar up and prevent a bonk, and (3) accustoming your butt, feet, arms, hands, and neck to spending that much time on a bike!0
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