Burning too many calories

CLICit

I have some time on my hands lately and find I'm bored so I workout about 2 hours per day. I have trouble keeping up with the calories or having the appetite to, if I'm not hungry should I try to keep up with the app or follow my hunger? I'm trying to lose 2 lbs per week at a base of 1200 cals unless I workout, then more. But some days I don't feel like I need more, I'm just not extra hungry even if I burnt 1000 calories in the gym. I also get full now with my 300-400 cal high protein meals. I lost 5lbs last week which isn't good, I don't want to lose muscle potentially. But I also like the easy weight loss. It's a bit of a pickle 🤔 I'm doing what I did before when I was smaller (by 55 lbs). I ate almost exactly the same and worked out about the same.

riffraff2112

Do you lift weights or just cardio? 2 hours of cardio a day, especially if its intense may not be conducive to maintaining the muscle you have. What is your plan for the next few months? lose more weight..add some muscle...? Answers will kind of depend on your answers.
You have definitely done some awesome work, so the dedication is there. congrats.

Burning 1000 cals at the gym is going to make it difficult to eat back (you would have to double your normal caloric intake so I can see why that may be difficult). I would never recommend eating less than 1200 cals but trying to eat back an extra 1000 (assuming that is accurate but you did say 2 hours so it is possible even with inflated gym machine numbers) is going to be tough.

kshama2001

What's your Now picture, left or right?

Your goal shouldn't be 2 pounds per week unless you have over 60 pounds to lose. Two hours a day of exercise isn't excessive, but you need to eat more to properly fuel it. Some people find calorie dense foods like nuts, peanut butter, cheese, pizza, and ice cream an easy way to eat more.



Don't get too bogged down on weekly weights - look at your trends over time. Since I retain water when I ovulate and premenstrually, I compare my weight to the same point in my cycle last month, rather than looking at last week.

CLICit

Unfortunately my before photo is the left, current is right. It's a 1 year difference and 2 injuries (herniated disc then sprained ankle) with food to cope with depression the ensued.

riffraff2112 wrote: »

Do you lift weights or just cardio? 2 hours of cardio a day, especially if its intense may not be conducive to maintaining the muscle you have. What is your plan for the next few months? lose more weight..add some muscle...? Answers will kind of depend on your answers.
You have definitely done some awesome work, so the dedication is there. congrats.

Burning 1000 cals at the gym is going to make it difficult to eat back (you would have to double your normal caloric intake so I can see why that may be difficult). I would never recommend eating less than 1200 cals but trying to eat back an extra 1000 (assuming that is accurate but you did say 2 hours so it is possible even with inflated gym machine numbers) is going to be tough.

Hi Riffraff2112; I lift and do cardio, cardio (stair master for 30 mins and jogging for 1 hr) and weights for 30 minutes. I need to lose the weight I've gained and I'd like to maintain the muscle I still have.

kshama2001 wrote: »

What's your Now picture, left or right?

Your goal shouldn't be 2 pounds per week unless you have over 60 pounds to lose. Two hours a day of exercise isn't excessive, but you need to eat more to properly fuel it. Some people find calorie dense foods like nuts, peanut butter, cheese, pizza, and ice cream an easy way to eat more.



Don't get too bogged down on weekly weights - look at your trends over time. Since I retain water when I ovulate and premenstrually, I compare my weight to the same point in my cycle last month, rather than looking at last week.

Oh really? I wasn't aware of that. I can probably do more peanut butter and yoghurt smoothies. Start adding more carbs back into my routine as well. Smart to compare weights monthly too, how true.

I wonder how accurate fitbits are for calculating calorie output? I know they're more conservative than the machines but this is what I'm basing it on without my hunger matching up.

NovusDies

I can eat a high volume of low calorie food and stuff my hunger in a box for the rest of the day but still not eat enough total calories. After a few days of not eating enough I will find myself in the kitchen late in the evening eating and sometimes quite a bit of food. The other options is to find myself with a terrible headache and an extremely diminished ability to exercise further.

I just went through some of this last month when I was kind of stubborn about accepting that my activity level had increased as much as it had.

So basically hunger signals are not always the best guide because they can be shut off until you end up hitting the wall or going nutso and eating all the foods. YMMV

AnnPT77

CLICit wrote: »

Unfortunately my before photo is the left, current is right. It's a 1 year difference and 2 injuries (herniated disc then sprained ankle) with food to cope with depression the ensued.

riffraff2112 wrote: »

Do you lift weights or just cardio? 2 hours of cardio a day, especially if its intense may not be conducive to maintaining the muscle you have. What is your plan for the next few months? lose more weight..add some muscle...? Answers will kind of depend on your answers.
You have definitely done some awesome work, so the dedication is there. congrats.

Burning 1000 cals at the gym is going to make it difficult to eat back (you would have to double your normal caloric intake so I can see why that may be difficult). I would never recommend eating less than 1200 cals but trying to eat back an extra 1000 (assuming that is accurate but you did say 2 hours so it is possible even with inflated gym machine numbers) is going to be tough.

Hi Riffraff2112; I lift and do cardio, cardio (stair master for 30 mins and jogging for 1 hr) and weights for 30 minutes. I need to lose the weight I've gained and I'd like to maintain the muscle I still have.

kshama2001 wrote: »

What's your Now picture, left or right?

Your goal shouldn't be 2 pounds per week unless you have over 60 pounds to lose. Two hours a day of exercise isn't excessive, but you need to eat more to properly fuel it. Some people find calorie dense foods like nuts, peanut butter, cheese, pizza, and ice cream an easy way to eat more.



Don't get too bogged down on weekly weights - look at your trends over time. Since I retain water when I ovulate and premenstrually, I compare my weight to the same point in my cycle last month, rather than looking at last week.

Oh really? I wasn't aware of that. I can probably do more peanut butter and yoghurt smoothies. Start adding more carbs back into my routine as well. Smart to compare weights monthly too, how true.

I wonder how accurate fitbits are for calculating calorie output? I know they're more conservative than the machines but this is what I'm basing it on without my hunger matching up.

Good-quality fitness trackers estimate calorie expenditure reasonably closely for a large fraction of people, somewhat off (high or low) for a few, and substantially off for a a very, very few. This is because they're giving you a research-based estimate, kind of like a TDEE calculator does, it's just that it's more real-time personalized.

The device measures a variety of things **, then uses those measurments plus your personal characteristics and some research data to estimate your calorie expenditure. In no literal sense do they "measure" calorie burn. If you're close to the average of populations in the research studies, the estimate will be close to accurate for you (true for many people). The more atypical you are (in a variety of ways, known and unknown), the further off they'll be.

** Depends on the model, but can include arm movements, GPS distance/speed, heart rate, altitude, etc.

Your best bet is to monitor your eating and scale weight for a couple of months, and compare the results to what your tracker says. That's about the only way to know where you fall.

I have a good-quality tracker (a Garmin, not a Fitbit). It's the very same model that's accurate for many people, based on what folks say here on MFP. It's howlingly incorrect for me, somewhere in the range of 20-30% low, based on comparison with almost 5 years of careful MFP logging data. (MFP's calorie estimates for me are similarly far off.) I'm one of the weird people, not typical of the population in the research data. I don't know why (and don't really care), but it's true. (I still find it very useful . . . for fitness, tracking, i.e. values it actually measures rather than estimates.)

Your Fitbit is likely to be fairly close for you on calories, but there's only one way to find out: Experimentation.