cals consumes vs burned?

lane220
lane220 Posts: 11 Member
edited December 25 in Health and Weight Loss
Hey everyone. It’s come to my attn that I may not be doing what I should be to reach my goals. In short, I log every single thing I eat down to the salt and pepper. I also use an Apple Watch to track my fitness. I did the math today for the past 15 days to make this easier to get help from you all. In the past 15 days, I have consumed approximately 18,000 calories (excluding one cheat day), and I have burned approximately 20,000 calories in 15 days (also excluding that cheat day). My typical daily goal has been to exercise off more than I eat. I typically eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day, some a littttle more if I get snacky. I average burning about 1,100 to 1,300 calories a day through exercise alone. For the record, no, I don’t ever feel exhausted or overly tired. I actually feel perfectly fine, multiple workouts a day and 8 hr/5 days a week job. It hasn’t been a problem, I love exercising. But someone told me if I eat 1,200 and burn 1,500, then i’m doing it wrong. I truly thought the whole point of diet and exercise to lose weight was to burn more than you consume, so that’s why my daily goal is to exercise off more than I eat that day. Then again, in my 15 day calculations with 18k consumed and 20k burned, that still isn’t even a 3,500 deficit, so have I even been losing weight? Sorry for any confusion or repetition, i’m just really set on my goals and it’s kinda discouraging thinking I could be doing nothing good for myself and I didn’t even know about it. Any and all help is appreciated

Replies

  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,097 Member
    lane220 wrote: »
    Hey everyone. It’s come to my attn that I may not be doing what I should be to reach my goals. In short, I log every single thing I eat down to the salt and pepper. I also use an Apple Watch to track my fitness. I did the math today for the past 15 days to make this easier to get help from you all. In the past 15 days, I have consumed approximately 18,000 calories (excluding one cheat day), and I have burned approximately 20,000 calories in 15 days (also excluding that cheat day). My typical daily goal has been to exercise off more than I eat. I typically eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories a day, some a littttle more if I get snacky. I average burning about 1,100 to 1,300 calories a day through exercise alone. For the record, no, I don’t ever feel exhausted or overly tired. I actually feel perfectly fine, multiple workouts a day and 8 hr/5 days a week job. It hasn’t been a problem, I love exercising. But someone told me if I eat 1,200 and burn 1,500, then i’m doing it wrong. I truly thought the whole point of diet and exercise to lose weight was to burn more than you consume, so that’s why my daily goal is to exercise off more than I eat that day. Then again, in my 15 day calculations with 18k consumed and 20k burned, that still isn’t even a 3,500 deficit, so have I even been losing weight? Sorry for any confusion or repetition, i’m just really set on my goals and it’s kinda discouraging thinking I could be doing nothing good for myself and I didn’t even know about it. Any and all help is appreciated

    Well, have you been losing weight? It seems like a question you should be able to answer better than us.

    Are you using a scale to weigh yourself? Are you using a scale to weigh your food?

    We've got a lot of missing data here. How many calories in the cheat day? Just because you don't log them doesn't mean they don't exist.

    And as pointed out by @HeidiCooksSupper, you're completely ignoring your non-exercise calories, which are probably somewhere in the 1500 to 2000 calorie range (but without other missing data, like your height, weight, body composition, and daily activity -- do you work at a desk, or in a job that has you standing and walking a good part of the day, or lifting and carrying things? -- that's just a guess).

    Could you describe your exercise? With multiple daily workouts, 1,100 to 1,300 isn't as unlikely as it normally sounds, but unless you're in extremely good condition, that's likely more than two hours of working close to your limits at fairly intensive cardio.

    Doing that five days a week on less than 1500 calories a day is highly inadvisable and I'm very surprised that you don't ever feel exhausted or overly tired. Many people undercount their calorie intakes and overcount their exercise calories, so if you're not tired and not losing weight (based on a scale, not based on a mathematical formula that is meaningless without good data), I would consider the possibility that there's something wrong with your Apple Watch or your food logging.
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
    Without your stats or other lifestyle info (like what kind of job, do you spend your free time chasing after kids, do you breastfeed etc), we can’t really go into details or educated guesses about you, so I’ll use myself as an example.

    I’m 28 years old, female, 5’8 and 214lbs. I work a desk job.

    It’s 9AM and I haven’t got out of bed yet, and my calorie burn for the day since midnight is 650 calories (Fitbit, tends to be accurate for me). This is what I burned in my sleep and going to the bathroom once. If I spent the whole day like this, I would burn roughly 1750 calories in a day of laying in bed. Since I don’t really do that, my daily burns tend to vary from 2100 (couch potato day) to 3000 (lots of overall activity or a longer cardio workout) averaging maybe 2500. I only do intentional exercise 2-3 times per week, totaling maybe 1000 calories per week. That 1000 is included in the above daily burns.

    Averaging 2500 per day means 17500 calories burned per week. That’s 16500 without my intentional exercise calories, so the overwhelming majority of all of my calories burned.

    Still, the biggest indicator of whether what you’re doing is working, is whether you get results.
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