Am I doing something wrong?

pinkkittyayh

I attend crossfit 3-4x a week, along with at least a 3 mi walk 3x a week. Is crossfit really all I need or am I doing just fine?
I heard that the lifestyle changes you make need to be sustainable, so I am worried that I may gain back whatever I lost despite exercising regularly if I were to cut one day off of either activity.

Nony_Mouse

Weight loss/maintenance/gain comes down to calories in vs calories out. If you drop a workout, then you will need to lower your calories a bit to compensate. Likewise, if you injure yourself, or get sick, or busy, or anything else that reduces your activity level, you will need to reduce the number of calories you eat. You will only gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn through daily living and exercise.

livingleanlivingclean

Exercise is great for your health - your doing a mix of cardio and resistance, which is awesome.

Maintaining weight requires you to eat at maintenance level calories. Losing weight requires eating in a calorie deficit. Exercise, or lack of it, will alter your calorie requirements for maintenance/deficit calories.

spiro413x

Truthfully, gaining weight with legitimate muscle growth is a lot harder than what people think. You don't just accidently bulk up 50 pounds of muscle. That takes a long time and dedication. I wouldn't worry about it too much. What i would worry about is that you are eating enough to compensate for your high physical activity and not drastically under-eating and making yourself sick. Just count your calories. Eat most of your calories in lean meat and veggies. And you should be fine. And know that it's okay to take rest days.

squatsnotsquat

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Weight loss/maintenance/gain comes down to calories in vs calories out. If you drop a workout, then you will need to lower your calories a bit to compensate. Likewise, if you injure yourself, or get sick, or busy, or anything else that reduces your activity level, you will need to reduce the number of calories you eat. You will only gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn through daily living and exercise.

I second this. You'll be much better off watching what you eat than worrying about how much you exercise given that it's much easier to not eat 500 extra calories than burn off 500 extra calories through exercise-- weight is 80% diet, 20% exercise. Plenty of people maintain their weight with no exercise, but they're eating right. If all you've done to lose and maintain your weight is increase your exercise, you may be doing things the hard way and less sustainable way and may not be feeling as good as you could. But if you've also changed your eating habits, I wouldn't worry about cutting off a day of exercise at all. Walking honestly doesn't burn that many calories, plus it just increases your appetite to the point where you're eating back anything you burned or more, so you might as well just stick with crossfit.