Balancing exercise vs hunger and calories? (is my math off?)

janejellyroll

collectingblues wrote: »

cbelc2 wrote: »

As a quick quite, a dietitian taught me that if you remove the last number on your calorie intake, that’s the weight you are shooting at. So 1400 will take you to 140, the high end of your normal BMI. I’m 5’8” and (cough) 203 lbs. I’m eating 1200-1500 calories per day to get down to 150. I need to get at least 40 lbs off. I also saw on line that walking 10000 steps per day will burn roughly 3000 calories per week. I noticed, in myself, that when I did intensive training -with a trainer- I gained weight initially and then lost it rapidly.

I'm glad my dietitian isn't an idiot.

My TDEE is 2200. Your metric would have me eating 1150. Sports performance would suffer, and considering my dietitian already side eyes my 1500, I'm pretty sure she'd throttle me.

Yeah, my TDEE is 2,100 and that metric would have me eating 1,100. I'd be a wreck.

kenyonhaff

Hunger is a tricky thing, because it's a signal that is not always accurate. If you poke around the message boards you'll easily find posts of people who aren't hungry, those that are clearly taking in enough calories and are feeling hungry.

sgt1372

OP: I exercise more to eat more and to avoid getting hungry.

This can be done successfully while attempting to lose or maintain weight (as I did and continue to do) BUT you need to sure that the food/exercise cals are logged accurately.

If you are not losing weight, then something is off. If, as you say, you are logging all of your food accurately, then the problem is with the exercise cals which are probably overstated. So, you need to either eat less or exercise more.

However, if you are hungry eating at your current level, eating less will only make that problem worse. Exercising less will not make you less hungry if you are not getting enough to eat in the 1st place and 100-200 cals of exercise is really not much to begin with.

So, it seems like the solution would be to BOTH eat and exercise MORE and you need to make sure that the exercise cals are being measured and logged accurately, which will take some trial and error.

BTW: Just as an example, I am a man currently maintaining my weight at 156 (after losing 40# over the past 21 months) on only 1650 cals/day and I get hungry if I only eat that little each day.

So, what I have been doing is eating about 2200-2300 cals and burning about 550-650 cals a day by lifting and/or rowing, which allows me to maintain my weight w/o getting hungry.

I weigh myself and, log all my food/exercise daily, have a very accurate monitor on my rower and have been lifting long enough to know how not overestimate the cals for that activity.

So, while it may not be easy, there's no reason why you should not be able to get your weight loss effort back on track if you can get log your food/exercise with the necessary accuracy.

Good luck!

Francl27

cbelc2 wrote: »

As a quick quite, a dietitian taught me that if you remove the last number on your calorie intake, that’s the weight you are shooting at. So 1400 will take you to 140, the high end of your normal BMI. I’m 5’8” and (cough) 203 lbs. I’m eating 1200-1500 calories per day to get down to 150. I need to get at least 40 lbs off. I also saw on line that walking 10000 steps per day will burn roughly 3000 calories per week. I noticed, in myself, that when I did intensive training -with a trainer- I gained weight initially and then lost it rapidly.

That might work if everyone was completely sedentary...

netitheyeti

sgt1372 wrote: »

OP: I exercise more to eat more and to avoid getting hungry.

This can be done successfully while attempting to lose or maintain weight (as I did and continue to do) BUT you need to sure that the food/exercise cals are logged accurately.

If you are not losing weight, then something is off. If, as you say, you are logging all of your food accurately, then the problem is with the exercise cals which are probably overstated. So, you need to either eat less or exercise more.

However, if you are hungry eating at your current level, eating less will only make that problem worse. Exercising less will not make you less hungry if you are not getting enough to eat in the 1st place and 100-200 cals of exercise is really not much to begin with.

So, it seems like the solution would be to BOTH eat and exercise MORE and you need to make sure that the exercise cals are being measured and logged accurately, which will take some trial and error.

BTW: Just as an example, I am a man currently maintaining my weight at 156 (after losing 40# over the past 21 months) on only 1650 cals/day and I get hungry if I only eat that little each day.

So, what I have been doing is eating about 2200-2300 cals and burning about 550-650 cals a day by lifting and/or rowing, which allows me to maintain my weight w/o getting hungry.

I weigh myself and, log all my food/exercise daily, have a very accurate monitor on my rower and have been lifting long enough to know how not overestimate the cals for that activity.

So, while it may not be easy, there's no reason why you should not be able to get your weight loss effort back on track if you can get log your food/exercise with the necessary accuracy.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply

My issue with doing more exercise is, at the moment, I'm not sure how much more I can do (at my current capabilities) as I'm already usually pretty much dead (literally lying in a pool of sweat, with noodle arms/legs) after the 40-50 minutes that I do in the afternoon - mfp says I'd need to be going pretty hard with stuff like jumping jacks, jump rope etc for basically a full hour to get closer to 500+ish calories burned and I'm not sure I can do that much, unless I maybe broke it into 2x30+ min per day? I'm relying on stuff I can do at home - I have some basic equipment but I do know it's not the same as a proper gym.. I'm a 27yo woman, 5'2-5'3 and around 145lbs, aiming for roughly 120-125lbs

I feel like I'm still getting used to having recently increased it from 3-4x30 min per week to about 5-6x40 min per week, with some yoga thrown in... I didn't really change my intake when I changed my routine and I haven't noticed any changes in the rate of my weight loss so far even though it should be about 2x the exercise I did the previous 3 months
That's what confuses me - I'm not currently eating back the calories mfp says i'm burning - mainly because I don't trust the numbers not to be inflated and because (due to the changes I've made) I've been waiting to see how my body responds.. I was loosely monitoring my intake even before I tried to switch to trying to lose weight again back in november (my weight was fairly stable) and I know I was eating roughly 500 calories more than I eat now - while not working out at all
To be honest though, I AM aware it's only been about 3 weeks since my routine changed and I might need more time

(I did at one point manage to slowly lose weight on 1600-1700 calories a day, when I was 21, and got to 110lbs or so.. BUT I was also working out about 1.5-2h a day 5-6 days a week - doing Insanity DVDs in addition to cycling and other stuff - I was unemployed and not going to university at the time, I don't think I have the time to do 2h a day atm, and I'm not sure I'm fit enough to do it without feeling burned out)

Crafty_camper123

I know you are aiming for 1300-1400ish calories every day, and logging meticulously. But, are there days where you have eaten at or above maintenance, followed by days where you are at or below goal? The reason I ask, is because I am also running into this problem. The last month I lost only 1 lb. Same basic stats as you. I had days where I was under goal, and days where I was at or over maintenance. I just used the reports function to take an average calorie intake for the last 30 days. I found out my average daily intake was actually just shy of maintenance, hence why I didn't lose as much as I would like. Perhaps taking your 30 day average may help add some insight to where you're at? The other possibility is that your body is in re-comp. It seems you are losing inches while holding onto the weight. I would suspect if your daily average is below maintenance, you'll see a drop once your body gets used to the new exercise routine. I should note that I am merely speculating, I don't know a whole lot about re-comp. I have just ran into similar plateaus where my body is getting thinner and fitter, but the weight is staying the same.

netitheyeti

Crafty_camper123 wrote: »

I know you are aiming for 1300-1400ish calories every day, and logging meticulously. But, are there days where you have eaten at or above maintenance, followed by days where you are at or below goal? The reason I ask, is because I am also running into this problem. The last month I lost only 1 lb. Same basic stats as you. I had days where I was under goal, and days where I was at or over maintenance. I just used the reports function to take an average calorie intake for the last 30 days. I found out my average daily intake was actually just shy of maintenance, hence why I didn't lose as much as I would like. Perhaps taking your 30 day average may help add some insight to where you're at? The other possibility is that your body is in re-comp. It seems you are losing inches while holding onto the weight. I would suspect if your daily average is below maintenance, you'll see a drop once your body gets used to the new exercise routine. I should note that I am merely speculating, I don't know a whole lot about re-comp. I have just ran into similar plateaus where my body is getting thinner and fitter, but the weight is staying the same.

I usually have a day or two where I don't go for a deficit around that time of the month (I tend to get really hungry the day before my period starts - I find it easier to eat maintenance than risk basically inhaling a chocolate bar later in the day), but I think I've had ... maybe 1 day this past month where I might have gone over maintenance? (a day out with family when my mom was in hospital for surgery, I was too stressed out to really monitor my food)
I had one day last week where I didn't feel hungry and ended the day with something like 900-1000 calories, I ate more the next day but it was around 1700 so in theory should have evened out to 1300ish per day for the 2 days

For example, this is this past week for me, in the app:


I guess I might need to just give it more time since I DID notice a bit of a change in how my clothes fit while my weight's been almost the same, I just don't like not knowing if i'm doing something wrong

Crafty_camper123

It sounds like to me you're on the right track then. Especially because you are noticing small changes. Those small changes add up. Are you taking measurements? If not measure now, and then measure again after one month. If the weight loss is stalling out, but your measurements are getting smaller I would be willing to bet that you are gaining muscle mass and losing fat. (More experienced people, please correct me if I am wrong here.)