Calories for strength exercise and weight loss

ennailllieno1

Hi,
I'm a rock climber and I have no clue how many calories I burn/need after a session.
My goal is to increase lean muscle, strength, and lose fat.
How do I know how much to eat so that I'm able to perform but also not eating too much?
Thanks for the input.

L

Unknown

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Womona

I would invest in a good heart rate monitor that tells you how many calories you burned. I like the Polar OH1+. It’s accurate and goes around my arm instead of my chest. Knowing how many calories you burned instead of guesstimating will keep you on track. When you eat back your calories you know a true number instead of a wild guess which can hinder your weight loss.

AnnPT77

A heart rate monitor may not give a good calorie estimate for rock climbing. Heart rate increases for many reasons.

One of them is exertion that creates consistent oxygen demand - steady state cardio is a good example. In that case, the correlation with calorie burn can be pretty good (assuming the device knows your actual maximum heart rate rather than age-estimated, and has as assessment of your fitness level, among other things).

Another thing that raises heart rate is physical strain and internal body pressure, such as in strength training, especially above-the-head moves. It seems like there'd be a lot of that in rock climbing. I wouldn't expect a heart rate monitor to give a very reliable exercise calorie estimate for that.

OP, as long as you don't have a health-threatening amount of weight to lose, I think hobbitses suggestion of eating maintenance calories, working out normally, and monitoring for a month or so, is a good one. With a few weeks' trial, you'll have enough data to make a sensible personal calorie estimate and adjust accordingly.

Traditional strength training, such as weight lifting, would be a good contributor toward your goals, too.

Best wishes!

Silentpadna

ennailllieno1 wrote: »

Hi,
I'm a rock climber and I have no clue how many calories I burn/need after a session.
My goal is to increase lean muscle, strength, and lose fat.
How do I know how much to eat so that I'm able to perform but also not eating too much?
Thanks for the input.

L

It's difficult to both increase lean muscle (which relies on caloric surplus) and lose fat (which relies on a caloric deficit) at the same time, because obviously they oppose each other.

You can gain some strength, but ultimately if you are trying to lose fat, you'll need a deficit to do that. Further, your body will not burn fat efficiently (i.e. fat only) because it's not an all-or-nothing process.

So, except in rare cases (like those with a lot of fat to lose), it's normally not a process that can happen concurrently.

The suggestions to eat at maintenance and monitor as you go are probably best. Body recomposition would be the result, but understand it's a fairly slow process.