How to create a calorie defecit

jadu1536

I did some weight lifting this morning and am about to do a spinning class on Peloton now, but I went over a little for calories with lunch. It's much easier to eat calories then it is to burn them somehow.

Strudders67

Of course. That's why so many of us have ended up using MFP! Enjoy your spinning class.

lgfrie

To add to that, unless & until one really nails down how many calories are truly burned from a particular exercise, a food calorie not put in your mouth is a real calorie saved, whereas an exercise calorie is a theoretical construct that's probably overstated.

If you eat 100 calories less than maintenance, you will lose 100/3500ths of a pound, end of story.

If you do what you think is 100 calories of exercise, it could really be any number, from something like 100 cals to a negligible figure.

Part of the problem is machines/apps/websites wildly overstating exercise calories. The other problem is the ole' gross vs net exercise thing. We typically burn 70-100 calories per hour just existing (i.e. if your TDEE is 2400 per day, that's 100 per hour). If that 100 an hour is counted in the exercise estimate too, that means it was double-counted - first, in the assumed 2400 you're entitled to per day to break even, and then a second time in the exercise estimate.

So if you award yourself 300 for an hour of exercise, is that 300 "real" calories to add to the deficit or eat back, 200 because the machine/app/website wildly overstated things, or 100-130 calories because the estimate was too high and it was also based on gross, not net, calories. In many cases, the latter. So you eat those cals back and the weight loss mysteriously slows.

Much easier to control it at the food intake stage.

sijomial

Q - "How to create a calorie deficit"
A - Eat less, move more or a bit of both. Remembering move more isn't just organised exercise but also part of everyday life which you can also influence.

Definitely easier to eat calories than to burn them, but can also be fun to burn them with exercise plus the health and fitness benefits of course which is what exercise is really for - I stayed chubby but a fit and frequent exerciser for 20 years because I didn't get my intake in check.

The "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)" category in the CV part of your diary should be a pretty reasonable / usable estimate for most people. Reasonable is good enough for purpose especially as it's not something you can measure. (Don't use a HRM to estimate though as that unsuitable and likely to give an unreasonable high estimate.)

Do you get a power output figure (watts) with your Peloton?
If you do that should allow you to get a very accurate net calorie estimate. Check the machine/software isn't playing games with the numbers by multiplying average watts X 3.6 for an hour. e.g. 200w average power output for an hour would be 720 net calories.