Trying to lose weight

thatgirl0131

Any help would appreciate. Trying to lose weight. This app says to eat 1,200 calories a day. I’m burning about 1,000 a day with cardio and weight training. Shouldn’t I be eating less calories to drop the weight??

apullum

If you are using MFP’s calorie goal, then you are intended to eat back all exercise calories assuming they are calculated correctly. Your MFP calorie goal already has a deficit built in, and you are not intended to use exercise to create a larger deficit.

However, 1200 is very low unless one is a short, sedentary, and/or older woman with very little weight to lose. In addition, that’s a really high calorie burn, and it could be overstated.

What is your height, current weight, and goal weight? Exactly what are you doing at the gym, and for how long?

riffraff2112

no. If you are burning 1000 calories a day because of exercise and weight training you have earned another 1000 calories to eat (if you so wish). Where did you arrive at 1200 calories as recommended? That is usually considered the minimum and doesn't include extra calories burned through exercise. It may be right for you nut I can't tell without more information.

thatgirl0131

I’m 5’2 183lbs 36 years old. Trying to get back down to my weight of 130. I burn about 800 calories in the gym with cardio and weight training. The other 2-300 is from finishing my daily activities. So I should stay at 1,200 or eat less since I’m only burning max 1,000?

thatgirl0131

I do 40min cardio and weight training usually takes anywhere from 30-50min.

Cat_A_89

Im also 5'2 and currently around 172/174 from a starting weight of 225. I workout 40ish mins 6 days a week and eat no less than 1350 on a low day. Normally I eat around 1400/1500 a day and have been losing steadily. I wouldnt recommend eating 1200 especially if you workout for long periods of time. You shouldn't be trying to burn all the calories you eat. Your body needs fuel just to be alive.

Nony_Mouse

thatgirl0131 wrote: »

I’m 5’2 183lbs 36 years old. Trying to get back down to my weight of 130. I burn about 800 calories in the gym with cardio and weight training. The other 2-300 is from finishing my daily activities. So I should stay at 1,200 or eat less since I’m only burning max 1,000?

You're forgetting about all the calories you burn just by being alive. The calories you burn exercising are in addition to that.

I highly doubt you are burning 800 cals from your exercise though, so I'd suggest you start by eating half of that in addition to the 1200 MFP gives you. Do that for 4-6 weeks, then have a look at your weight loss trend to see how quickly you are losing (a trending app such as Happy Scale, Libra, or Trendweight is very useful for this). If you're losing too quickly, eat more, if too slowly eat less. You should be aiming to lose 1 lb per week (so if you chose 2 lbs when you entered your stats and goal into MFP, you should change that).

ElizabethKalmbach

I, too, very much doubt that you're burning 800 calories in 30-50 minutes.... BUT, here are some of the rough stats for a person of your stature, according to a BMR calculator:

*To *just* be alive and have a heart rate and breathe and stuff, you need a minimum of 1473 calories per day.
*If you just sat around and watched TV and went to the bathroom, you'd need about 1768 calories to do that and be alive.
*Since you're reporting a lightly active to active lifestyle, you'd need about 2026(30 minutes of exercise 3 days/week)-2158(30 minutes of exercise 4-5 days/week) calories a day just to keep up with that.

So that's where you need to eat every day to *maintain* 183 lbs.

You want to burn more than you take in, though. One pound is 3,500 calories. So if you eat 3,500 less calories in a week than you burn (-500 calories per day from 2026-2158 calories, depending on how many days a week you work out) you should be eating about 1526-1658 calories per day.

If you picked "sedentary" in the activity calculator, and then added your gym time back in, MFP would start you with 1768 calories and subtract the 500 calories per day from that (with a minimum recommendation of 1200) and then add any reported exercise calories to that number as a "bonus."

If you go with the *half* the estimated calories that Nony_mouse recommended you should be in the neighborhood of 1600 calories that were calculated by the BMR/TDEE calculator I used.

Hopefully that explanation of the math will help you make sense of what MFP is doing in the background.

Muscleflex79

thatgirl0131 wrote: »

I do 40min cardio and weight training usually takes anywhere from 30-50min.

just about impossible that you are burning 800 calories doing this! where are you getting these numbers???

thatgirl0131

@Nony_Mouse I’m going off my Apple Watch to get the amount of calories burned at the gym. Thought it was supposed to be pretty accurate. My heart rate usually stays at a consistent above 160 when I’m weight training. My partner usually has me doing high reps with no rest in between the different sets of exercises. So yeah I burn around 600 during my weight training and the rest I burn in my cardio after.

Terytha

Smart watches are only sort of accurate for steady cardio. They're essentially useless for burn during weight training. Even for cardio, they've been known to overestimate calories burned by up to 20%. I'd take whatever total your watch gives you and assume you're burning maybe 30-40% of that.

Shortgirlrunning

If you are actually doing what you say you are: eating 1200 calories and burning 1000 at the gym. It’s dangerously unhealthy. You need to eat back those exercise calories because 1200 is the absolute bare minimum you should be eating and that’s if you were just laying around on the couch all day. So with these numbers (assuming they are true) you need at be eating at least 2200 calories.

Shortgirlrunning

Also a quick google search shows that, no, the Apple Watch is not all that accurate at tracking calorie burn. It seems can be up to 40% off. So start by eating back half the number of calories it’s telling you that you burned. (That’s what I do with my Garmin Forerunner and it seems to work well).

lgfrie

According to the trusty TDEE calculator (tdeecalculator.net) you are burning 2250 calories per day just by continuing to be alive (breathing, digesting food, thinking thoughts, the 200-300 calories you estimate you're getting by general life activities, etc). So if you did no gym-type exercise at all, and ate 1250 calories per day, you'd lose 2 lbs per week. (A 1000 calorie daily deficit translates into 2 pounds lost per week, since a pound of fat is 3500 calories and there are 7 days in a week). 2 lbs a week is doable but pretty hard to keep up for lengthy periods of time - you'd probably be better off at 1500 calories of food per day, which would get you 1.5 lbs per week lost.

If you work out, especially vigorously and a lot like you are, you're really supposed to eat part or all of the calories from that workout back.

40 minutes of cardio & weight training isn't burning 800 calories, there's no way. While you're trying to figure out what the real numbers are, given all the differences between how different devices measure calories and so forth, I suggest you put a stake in the ground and just declare for now that your 40 minutes burns 300 calories. Honestly you could do worse than just assuming 7.5 calories per minute for general cardio and lifting time. It won't be precisely accurate, but it won't be off by orders of magnitude, either.

So the idea is to add the 300 calories from the exercise, or most of the 300, or part of the 300, to the 1500 you're supposed to eat to lose 1.5 lbs per week, and then you'll still lose 1.5 pounds per week but you'll get lots more food and it'll be an easier, more pleasant ride to your goal weight.

In short, given all the info you've provided, you should probably be eating ~ 1800 calories per day to lose 1.5 pounds per week, or if you really wanted to push it, ~ 1550 calories per day to lose 2 lbs per week. Unless you stop working out for some reason, it'd be ill advised to eat less than the 1550.

thatgirl0131

Ahhh thank you all for the helpful tips and advice. Yeah I use my Apple Watch. That sucks it’s not accurate. The only time I’m really moving is in the gym. The remainder of the day I’m literally sitting or just small house stuff. Thank u all for the tips!!!!

AnnPT77

thatgirl0131 wrote: »

Ahhh thank you all for the helpful tips and advice. Yeah I use my Apple Watch. That sucks it’s not accurate. The only time I’m really moving is in the gym. The remainder of the day I’m literally sitting or just small house stuff. Thank u all for the tips!!!!

The key factor is that heart rate is not a measure of calorie burn, but a thing that's loosely correlated to it in certain circumstances (where oxygen demand is the main reason for heart rate increase, and intensity is fairly consistent).

But heart rate increases for various reasons: Warm environment, dehydration, strong emotion (like fear), physical strain, and internal body pressure. As I understand it, the latter two come into play big time during strength training, and account for the majority of the heart rate increase. In that scenario, heart rate doesn't correlate with work performed (in pretty much the physics sense of "work"), so is a poor basis for estimating calorie expenditure.

I believe that some trackers that know what activity you're doing may be getting better about ignoring HR when you tell them the activity is strength training, and reverting to METS-based estimating, which is likely to be a bit more reliable in this case.

One option you have is to believe your tracker for steady-state cardio (maybe back out BMR for long duration sessions, which 40 minutes isn't), but use the MFP estimate for strength training (which is METS-based**, not something MFP just made up ). Classic strength training (reps/sets with rests between) would be the strength training entry under cardio in the MFP exercise database. What you describe (sounds like high-rep, less-resistance) would probably be closer to MFP's circuit training entry.

The other big deal as I understand it, not so relevant to weight training, is that HR lags oxygen demand and drifts upward over the course of a workout. When doing intense intervals, the peak heart rate is likely to occur during the rest/easy intervals after peak work; and for intervals of consistent activity (watts-verified, for example), the early intervals bring a lower HR than the later ones. In my understanding, the magnitude of this problem (for intervals) differs somewhat by fitness level, i.e., a highly-trained person's HR drops fast during the "easy" phase of the intervals, and a minimally-trained person's HR stays high - it's part of what being more highly trained means. A single tracker model is likely to give different calorie estimates for each of those people, even if they're the same size, and working at the same intensity.

This is an oldie but goodie (and if it differs from what I just typed, believe it, not me):

https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698

For those who don't know what METS-based estimating is, but are curious, read here:

https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/

StaciMarie2020

LIfe tip: look for little ways to add extra activity. Little ways to change habits. Like parking at the back of the lot (when safe to do so) instead of a close to the store spot when running errands. No drive thrus. Park and walk into the bank, for example. Walk out to get the mail instead of sending one of the kids out for it. That sort of stuff. It won't be enough to 'track' or 'earn' extra calories, but in the long run the little things do benefit us.

thatgirl0131 wrote: »

Ahhh thank you all for the helpful tips and advice. Yeah I use my Apple Watch. That sucks it’s not accurate. The only time I’m really moving is in the gym. The remainder of the day I’m literally sitting or just small house stuff. Thank u all for the tips!!!!

Nony_Mouse

thatgirl0131 wrote: »

Ahhh thank you all for the helpful tips and advice. Yeah I use my Apple Watch. That sucks it’s not accurate. The only time I’m really moving is in the gym. The remainder of the day I’m literally sitting or just small house stuff. Thank u all for the tips!!!!

Well, it may or may not be accurate, it varies from person to person. Yours sounds like it may well be inflated, particularly for your strength training. The way to test it is against your weight loss data, using the method I suggested above (track meticulously for 4-6 weeks, see how expected results compare to real world results). You can do that either eating back or the exercise cals, or just some of them, up to you. But the upshot either way is that you need to be eating more than 1200 cals a day.

Lobsterboxtops

If it helps...5’4 currently 159 44yo. I chose the 1lb per week sedentary (office job + being a self proclaimed slug) and my base calories are 1200. I exercise daily and burn ~200 calories. I’ve been averaging ~1400/1500 calories consumed per week. I’ve lost 7 lbs since the end of July at a nice steady rate.

I think your exercise calories are a bit high like others have said, I like to overestimate my calories consumed (if I can’t get an accurate weight) and underestimate my calories burned.

sijomial

I’m going off my Apple Watch
Which when synced directly with MyFitnessPal sends incorrect data.

to get the amount of calories burned at the gym. Thought it was supposed to be pretty accurate.
Watches can tell time accurately, some can count heartbeats accurately - but they do not directly measure energy (calories).

My heart rate usually stays at a consistent above 160 when I’m weight training.
Which is a really poor indication of actual calories when doing weight training.

My partner usually has me doing high reps with no rest in between the different sets of exercises.
Why? Does that match your fitness goals?

So yeah I burn around 600 during my weight training
No way.

and the rest I burn in my cardio after.
Maybe. Cardio is a huge range of different activities and intensities.