1200 calories a day will be the end of me

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  • HeliumIsNoble
    HeliumIsNoble Posts: 1,213 Member
    Silentpadna wrote: »
    Teabythesea_ wrote: »

    Weight training actually burns fewer calories than cardio.

    Just a minor quibble here. This is true most of the time, but not always. In the context of the OP's exercise, it's most definitely true. However a lot depends on the intensity of each thing. For example, doing weight training with isolation exercises, like curls or leg extensions and such don't have a high burn rate because they don't engage the same systems as cardio. If you lift heavy weights and compound movements, it can be a very effective HIIT-style burn. If you are dead lifting and squatting heavy, these movements engage almost your entire body at once. It drives up heart rate and oxygen consumption in same way HIIT does, because unlike isolation exercises, the demands placed on the body are much greater.

    So when people talk about strength training and cardio, it's important to keep context in mind.

    Again, just a minor quibble, but there are times when the generalizations, while mostly true, in some cases are not true.
    That's interesting. Is that where the Strength Training entry in the database comes into its own?

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,225 Member
    Silentpadna wrote: »
    Teabythesea_ wrote: »

    Weight training actually burns fewer calories than cardio.

    Just a minor quibble here. This is true most of the time, but not always. In the context of the OP's exercise, it's most definitely true. However a lot depends on the intensity of each thing. For example, doing weight training with isolation exercises, like curls or leg extensions and such don't have a high burn rate because they don't engage the same systems as cardio. If you lift heavy weights and compound movements, it can be a very effective HIIT-style burn. If you are dead lifting and squatting heavy, these movements engage almost your entire body at once. It drives up heart rate and oxygen consumption in same way HIIT does, because unlike isolation exercises, the demands placed on the body are much greater.

    So when people talk about strength training and cardio, it's important to keep context in mind.

    Again, just a minor quibble, but there are times when the generalizations, while mostly true, in some cases are not true.

    I usually agree with you. This time, I don't. Strength training generally, and weight training specifically, is totally worth doing, but even heavy compounds are still not the biggest calorie burners (as compared with many common forms of cardio). Summary of research-derived MET values, see categories 02050-02052-02054:

    https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/Activity-Categories/conditioning-exercise

    (A number of cardio activities appear on other pages, because they fall in different major categories: The site is quite comprehensive).

    Fitness trackers and (especially) heart rate monitors are likely to give very inaccurate estimates for strength training activities - they often overstate by a lot.

    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698
  • Jenr0819
    Jenr0819 Posts: 8 Member
    Four years ago, I was so convinced peri-menopause was making me gain weight I asked my dr about it. I was convinced I needed hormones or medication to lose weight. He told me about MFP and told me to manually set it to 1500 calories/day. It’s more per day but I stuck with it. I lost 30 pounds! Unfortunately, I have gained it back and starting again today! I WILL LOSE THIS BY SUMMER!

  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 989 Member
    OP, I'm just over 5' although I weigh a little less than you. I too am allocated 1200 calories but, as I eat my exercise calories, I'm usually eating more than that. It's slow progress but my weight is going down and that's fine with me.

    My MFP setting is Sedentary as I'm desk based; my understanding is that that assumes you do about 3500 steps a day. I log my walk to and from work (using the setting for the appropriate speed) plus whatever I do in the gym, but I don't log the steps that I do in and around the office or home as they are my 3500 Sedentary steps.

    I think the exercise calories in MFP are fairly accurate for walking but my experience is that what MFP gives me for the elliptical is almost double what the machine says I've burned (and the machine knows the speed and intensity setting I did). I therefore only log just over half my exercise time on the elliptical.
  • pridesabtch
    pridesabtch Posts: 2,465 Member
    I'm 5'1" lightly active and MFP has me at 1280. Previously on MFP it had me at 1200, but I stuck to 1360 and was able to lose. I exercised a lot and did eat very high protein with little processed food but it's still a calorie balance. I ate back a reasonable portion of my exercise calories. Some days I'd have really big burns (100 mile bike ride chalks up like 3000 cal), but I'd rarely add more than 1000 to my diet (I always had a candy bar and usually a beer on ride says). More than that just didn't make sense. I went from 160 to 105, but that was with dedicated training for time trials and was never meant to be maintainable. Unfortunately, after the races ended, work got crappy and I went back up in weight. Anyway, here are some generic numbers you can use to log your exercise.

    Conservative calorie burn at our size...
    1 mile flattish= 100cal, sometimes you do it in 8min, some time in 20min, still ~100cal
    Hard core cardio = 7-8 cal per minute. For continuous effort.
    Weight lifting = maybe 2-3 cal per minute, this assumes like a minute rest between sets or exercises.

    Good luck!

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