Decreasing exercise while trying to maintain weight
Kirstyw4
Posts: 20 Member
Since trying to lose weight, i have been working out alot (around 2-2.5hrs daily to be precise).Now that im under my goal weight,im satisfied with my weight and only want to maintain & tone now. I have alot of medical issues,including joint problems (all the working out probably hasn't helped 🤦♀️), so now im happy with my weight, i want to scale back my workouts from 6 to 3 days a week and 1 hr each. Its a big drop though and i fear it will result in weight gain 😕 anyone any advice on this? Thanks
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Replies
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Assuming you've been eating your exercise calories, obviously dropping your exercise will reduce the number of calories required in order to stay at maintenance, so make sure you factor that in.
You may find a gradual reduction easier to do whilst you figure out how to adjust your meals / portion sizes. Perhaps cut out half an hour a day, for a week or so. Then change from 6 days to 5 days for a week or so. Then cut another half an hour. Then reduce the number of days from 5 to 4 etc. If you make each step a week or two at a time, it won't be such a huge drop in calories.9 -
Ive actually still been having less than my maintanaince cals so hoping thos will help. I planned to cut down from 6 to 5 days then 2hrs to 1.5 hrs for a week then to 1 hr per day for a week then reduce days. So would be gradual0
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Check out Sydney cummings her workouts are awesome and not that long! I have reeeeealy gotten more strength and toned doing her workouts! Find something you really like exercise is good for us if done properly 💪0
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It will only result in weight gain if you keep eating as if you were doing them.
MFP was trying to teach a life lesson about weight management, sounds like you weren't following it though.
When you do more you eat more.
When you do less you eat less.
In a diet a tad less in either case.
When you say eating a tad less than maintenance - you realize you didn't actually share if you had been correctly eating more with exercise.
Also, if eating a tad less than your maintenance, you mean you barely had a deficit?
Or you didn't count exercise and that created your deficit, and you ate close to maintenance?
Because maintenance means level that causes neither fat gain or loss.
You eat what you burn. That is maintenance.
Did you log your workouts when done, and correctly eat more when you did them?
How much deficit do you think you were using near the end?
How much weight were you losing weekly for last 4 weeks still in diet?
You've thrown yourself a bad curve ball if you weren't eating more to the new goal MFP gave you to eat.
It means you have no actual numbers to work with, and never did really.
Which should make this very interesting.
Are you planning on logging food still?4 -
How have you been accounting for the calories burned through exercising to date?
MFP method? TDEE? Fitness tracker?
I've always eaten back my exercise calories so when I went from being a very high exerciser to being injured for a while I didn't have any exercise calories to add to my base calories and it worked out fine.3 -
Mfp says maintainance cals is around 1800 but i only tend to have around 1,000-1,200. Non workout days i tend to burn around 1,400-1,500 cals and on workout days i can burn anything from 1,700+ by the end of the day1
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Since trying to lose weight, i have been working out alot (around 2-2.5hrs daily to be precise).Now that im under my goal weight,im satisfied with my weight and only want to maintain & tone now. I have alot of medical issues,including joint problems (all the working out probably hasn't helped 🤦♀️), so now im happy with my weight, i want to scale back my workouts from 6 to 3 days a week and 1 hr each. Its a big drop though and i fear it will result in weight gain 😕 anyone any advice on this? Thanks
Sadly the reality is you will have to decrease your calories to compensate for the decreased activity...2 -
Since trying to lose weight, i have been working out alot (around 2-2.5hrs daily to be precise).Now that im under my goal weight,im satisfied with my weight and only want to maintain & tone now. I have alot of medical issues,including joint problems (all the working out probably hasn't helped 🤦♀️), so now im happy with my weight, i want to scale back my workouts from 6 to 3 days a week and 1 hr each. Its a big drop though and i fear it will result in weight gain 😕 anyone any advice on this? Thanks
Sadly the reality is you will have to decrease your calories to compensate for the decreased activity...
While true, maybe you won't have to decrease too much. It boils down to the change in calories burned in exercise (and non exercise activity).
If you are doing 2+hrs cardio daily, well, that is going to be a considerable number of calories. Condolences.
If most of that time is strength training, the calorie cut may be less than you fear.
Most strength training involves relatively small movements of focused muscle groups for a brief spurts of time. It burns considerably fewer calories than cardio which involves large muscle groups continuously for longer periods. Another factor that can work in your favor is non-exercise activity. Some people unconsciously respond to increased cardio by moving less the rest of the day and, likewise, to decreased cardio by moving more. Either way, this unconscious response lessens the caloric impact of the exercise change.
I hope your really enjoy the change in your routine and it is worth the caloric adjustment you have to make to maintain. FWIW, a career change had a huge impact on my daily activity many years ago, and once I figured that out I had to decrease caloric intake. It was really worth it!2 -
Mfp says maintainance cals is around 1800 but i only tend to have around 1,000-1,200. Non workout days i tend to burn around 1,400-1,500 cals and on workout days i can burn anything from 1,700+ by the end of the day
MFP would actually be saying your maintenance is 1800 + exercise calories, so 1800 would be only for a day without exercise.
Your numbers seem badly off.
Are you saying that when you go to your goal set up and with a correct activity setting for your lifestyle (which excludes purposeful exercise) and select "maintain current weight" the number you get is 1800cals?
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Mfp says maintainance cals is around 1800 but i only tend to have around 1,000-1,200. Non workout days i tend to burn around 1,400-1,500 cals and on workout days i can burn anything from 1,700+ by the end of the day
Yeah, what sijomial said.
DO NOT cut calories!!! You're already grossly under-eating.
I would suggest going immediately to 1800-2000 and one hour of moderate exercise five or six days a week, and eat a bit more on those exercise days. Probably 1800-2000 on the rest day and 2000-2200 on exercise days.
Yes, there may be a slight couple of pound increase on the scale but you say yourself that you are under your goal. Any slight increase will drop back off in a week.
It all sounds very disordered. Have you talked to any professionals about this?4 -
Im not actually cutting cals tbh its just what i eat. I put in that i am mostly active as at the moment i workout 1.5/2 hrs a day mon-fri (occasional sat) and i also have 13 month old so doing alot of running after him (minus the running though lol more like hobbling ) for the info i put in it comes up 1820 for maintaining 🤷♀️ At the moment im just cutting a Sat (or trying anyway lol) so will be 1.5/2hrs Mon-Fri)0
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Im not actually cutting cals tbh its just what i eat. I put in that i am mostly active as at the moment i workout 1.5/2 hrs a day mon-fri (occasional sat) and i also have 13 month old so doing alot of running after him (minus the running though lol more like hobbling ) for the info i put in it comes up 1820 for maintaining 🤷♀️ At the moment im just cutting a Sat (or trying anyway lol) so will be 1.5/2hrs Mon-Fri)
That didn't actually answer the question.
You do realise that the activity setting has absolutely nothing to do with your exercise?
That 1.5 to 2hrs of exercise is in addition to your base calorie goal.
Have you been logging and eating back your exercise calories or not?
Your diary is private so the information you give in this thread is all people have to go on to try to assist you.
At the moment there is an enormous discrepancy between what appears to be a need for 1820 + exercise calories and you saying you are eating 1000 - 1200 when trying to maintain. That doesn't make any sense as it seems there are missing pieces to this jigsaw.
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Since trying to lose weight, i have been working out alot (around 2-2.5hrs daily to be precise).Now that im under my goal weight,im satisfied with my weight and only want to maintain & tone now. I have alot of medical issues,including joint problems (all the working out probably hasn't helped 🤦♀️), so now im happy with my weight, i want to scale back my workouts from 6 to 3 days a week and 1 hr each. Its a big drop though and i fear it will result in weight gain 😕 anyone any advice on this? Thanks
Sadly the reality is you will have to decrease your calories to compensate for the decreased activity...
While true, maybe you won't have to decrease too much. It boils down to the change in calories burned in exercise (and non exercise activity).
If you are doing 2+hrs cardio daily, well, that is going to be a considerable number of calories. Condolences.
If most of that time is strength training, the calorie cut may be less than you fear.
Most strength training involves relatively small movements of focused muscle groups for a brief spurts of time. It burns considerably fewer calories than cardio which involves large muscle groups continuously for longer periods. Another factor that can work in your favor is non-exercise activity. Some people unconsciously respond to increased cardio by moving less the rest of the day and, likewise, to decreased cardio by moving more. Either way, this unconscious response lessens the caloric impact of the exercise change.
I hope your really enjoy the change in your routine and it is worth the caloric adjustment you have to make to maintain. FWIW, a career change had a huge impact on my daily activity many years ago, and once I figured that out I had to decrease caloric intake. It was really worth it!
I don't necessarily disagree with you. OP said she exercised 2 - 2.5 hours per day so it sounds pretty significant.
If it has already been stared I apologize but OP, what does your 2 - 2.5 hours of daily exercise look like? What do you do?1 -
Firstly although i dont think you mean to be, your coming across a bit abruptly. I am not reall 1000% sure, i assumed i was'nt eating back the cals i burnt as for example yesterday i think i had eaten roughly 1,200 cals but burnt 2,233 cals and today so far ive had about 700 (aftet dinnet expected 1070 cals) and so far burnt 1400 cals0
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Im not actually cutting cals tbh its just what i eat. I put in that i am mostly active as at the moment i workout 1.5/2 hrs a day mon-fri (occasional sat) and i also have 13 month old so doing alot of running after him (minus the running though lol more like hobbling ) for the info i put in it comes up 1820 for maintaining 🤷♀️ At the moment im just cutting a Sat (or trying anyway lol) so will be 1.5/2hrs Mon-Fri)
Look at that setup again - while there are goals for exercise there, the options for daily activity have nothing to do with exercise.
Eating goals, and exercise goals - the math doesn't mix between them. Eating Diary, and Exercise Diary - that's where the figures show up.
You are Lightly-Active as a mother with a household to take care of then, possibly more if you just attempt extra movement (steps) outside of workouts.
Now set it to maintain - what is base calorie goal to eat with no exercise logged?
That is correct setup.
Then your comments to others about the exercise being done.
Which I'll comment with the deficit it appears you've been attempting (unless food logging is just terrible) will have resulted in workouts that are nowhere nearly as good as they could have been - you likely have no idea the improvements that could have been had from good workouts.5 -
On Myfitnesspal, you're meant to set your Activity Level without purposeful exercise. So, choose "Lightly Active."
Then set it to "Maintain."
When you do purposeful exercise, go to the Exercise tab and add it. You will be given 200-500 more calories. Eat those IN ADDITION TO your base calories.
Are you using some sort of fitness tracker? Like Fitbit? You're meant to EAT the calories, not UNDER them.
You're gonna crash and let me tell you - it's not pretty. I under ate for several months and then my hair started falling out, I was always tired, sleepy, irritable, depressed. My nails cracked and my skin was dry. I started catching colds and viruses (I'm sure you don't want that with a baby.)
Eat.
You are currently eating at a huge deficit and it will catch up to you in the way of poor health. Sooner rather than later.4 -
Simple... adjust calories, trend weight, watch progress, adjust as needed. Weight goes up over a few weeks, decrease calories. Goes down, increase. I would tell you that if you have not been paying attention to dietary quality during this cut, I would now. Try and get the most satiety and satisfaction our of what you are eating. Jmho....1
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(Tip - using reply button makes it clearer which part of the thread you are responding to....)Firstly although i dont think you mean to be, your coming across a bit abruptly. I am not reall 1000% sure, i assumed i was'nt eating back the cals i burnt as for example yesterday i think i had eaten roughly 1,200 cals but burnt 2,233 cals and today so far ive had about 700 (aftet dinnet expected 1070 cals) and so far burnt 1400 cals
I'm trying to help you but your answers are very, very vague. Without clear information all people can get is that you think you are eating 1,000 cals under your maintenance calories when you are trying to maintain weight. You must see that doesn't make sense as presented? Someone aiming to lose 2lbs a week would do that.
If you actually burned 2,233 cals yesterday that would be your maintenance calorie goal for that day.
It appears you either don't understand how MyFitnessPal calorie goal is intended to work (that's very common!) or are doing something else but you aren't explaining what that something else is.
When people say "eat back exercise calories" they mean they log their exercise and the estimate of that calorie burn gets added to that day's base calorie allowance. Is that what you are doing / have been doing or not?
I'll ask the question about the activity setting in a different way to hopefully clarify things.....
When you went to your goal set up and selected your activity setting did you pick whatever category you picked partly because you exercise a lot?
(If you did that isn't how it works - it is everything EXCEPT exercise.)
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Thanks, im new to using this function 🤦♀️ anyway, just made changes and now says 1590 for maintaining cals 🤷♀️ no i picked it ad assumed that because im active most of the day whether its working out or tidying or running after my little one etc that it would come under the active one under lightly active. But have just changed to lightly active and its wentnto 1590 cals from the 18000
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How tall are you and what is your current weight?
I mean, both heybales and I are suggesting "Lightly Active" PLUS eating additional Exercise calories, which will likely be 300-ish more.
@psychod787 suggests using one setting and tracking for a period of time and adjusting. If you do that, give it a month.
We cannot possibly predict what is going to happen with you because we can't see your FOOD diary and we know so little about you.
It is, in fact, up to you to run the experiment.
IF you are using a Fitbit, then you use the synched calories and you do not add in your exercise manually. It sounds like you have a Fitbit, since you pulled out a number like "2233."
So if that's the case then we all will say, set your activity level and eat all the Fitbit calories. Here is the thread telling you how to set up your account and sync correctly if you are using a Fitbit:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10098937/faq-syncing-logging-food-amp-exercise-calorie-adjustments-activity-levels-accuracy/p1
heybales is the guy if you have questions about setting up your account and using Fitbit. He posted above.
SO bottom line: Set up correctly, run your experiment for 4-6 weeks, adjust at the end of that time when you have a good trending data set of numbers over time.3 -
Thanks, im 5ft 1 and 7st 13.5lbs. I have a fitbit but it wont sync to mfp (have had issues since i first set up mfp and think the only way to fix it is to make a new fitbit account which i dont want to do) I am not a huge eater tbh and 1000-1,200 is on avg just a usual daily intake. Sometimes a little less1
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Thanks, im 5ft 1 and 7st 13.5lbs. I have a fitbit but it wont sync to mfp (have had issues since i first set up mfp and think the only way to fix it is to make a new fitbit account which i dont want to do) I am not a huge eater tbh and 1000-1,200 is on avg just a usual daily intake. Sometimes a little less
So that is logged calories.
That may not be actually eaten calories.
How do you log your food, by weight, or by volume or servings per package?
Because calories is per gram weight, not volume measurements (except liquids).
If you are not logging everything you eat by weight, you are likely eating more.
Not enough to likely overcome a 50% deficit you seem to be mentioning (that is extreme BTW, no away around it), but still at this point an extreme amount less.
Body will adapt in negative ways.
Stress water weight will be added.
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I weigh the ingredients and search in the search bit. I then put the weight or amount in. If making a recipe will create the recipe in mfp, by putting in the ingredients (amount(tsp,tbsp,up,grams etc) to add up total cals and then put how many servings it has and then will put in whichever category (breakfast,lunch etc). I log everything, from breakfast,lunch,dinner,snacks & juice.0
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Something is badly out of kilter as there's no way you could be maintaining on such a tiny food allowance.
If you made your diary public people could help you spot common mistakes.2 -
Im not yet, thats what im trying to do. Currently have been still slowly losing. But thats another reason im considering decreasing my workouts. Settings changed0
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Thanks, im 5ft 1 and 7st 13.5lbs. I have a fitbit but it wont sync to mfp (have had issues since i first set up mfp and think the only way to fix it is to make a new fitbit account which i dont want to do) I am not a huge eater tbh and 1000-1,200 is on avg just a usual daily intake. Sometimes a little less
What does the Fitbit report your daily burn is on average?
Or are the figures you've been mentioning already based on that?
In which case a few ways it can be inflated on it's calorie burn.
Step-based calories burn, actually distance based, can be very good estimate for daily life.
Unless your stride length is wrong, and you get lots of steps.
As shorter person, their formula for default stride length based on gender & height has better potential for being wrong, despite the normal reasons (long legs, short midriff, or opposite) that can occur.
How many steps you get on average, what daily distance?
Ever walked a known 1/2 to 1 mile and confirmed the Fitbit had it right?
Actually, the pace should be at midpoint from grocery store shuffle to exercise pace, so maybe at 1.8 mph pace is what should be tested.
If your HR is elevated due to meds or genetics, the Fitbit could be slipping into HR-based calorie burn when just barely above or still at daily activity level type stuff - that is an inflated calorie burn at the bottom of the aerobic range there, even if doing exercise.
If your exercise has been interval type stuff with HR all over the place up and down - that is inflated calorie burn.
So indeed you may not be burning as much as Fitbit is reporting.0 -
Im not sure how to find the avg on fit im afraid 🤷♀️ im just entering the figures in the morning post workput and the updating afternoon & evening. I do a mix of walking/aerobics style & toning workouts (stopped any hiit workouts)
I will just have to use trial & error i guess. Try decreasing exercise and if i gain a little then increase slightly .0 -
In which case keep in mind there should not be a goal weight number or you'll drive yourself batty reacting to water weight changes that are totally valid.
Maintenance weight range is what you want.
When you really come out of the diet you'll gain the few lbs of water weight that dropped off fast in first week of going into diet.
Just look at your Fitbit daily burn for a couple weeks and probably be useful to make note of them - spreadsheets can be found everywhere - pull an average.
Set eating goal to that and adjust as it moves enough to matter.
Get some measurements in since that is more useful than the figure of weight as to what may be happening.3 -
Measuring cucumber and lettuce by cups isn't particularly accurate but the calorie difference is going to be miniscule anyway.
Half a banana or half a plum is also not very accurate vs a weighed entry and may have bigger differences, although not hundreds of cals.
It may be more accurate to weigh potatoes before cooking them too, then choose an appropriate entry from the database. By selecting cooked entries, you don't know how long the original entry was cooked for or how much water was lost / absorbed.
With things out of a packet, if possible find an entry that has the nutritional info per 100g rather than using 1 turkey breast etc. and weigh them before cooking. Even those wafer thin slices of ham / chicken / turkey from Tesco don't all weigh the same, although as you're only eating one slice, the calorie difference will be negligible; the same is true for bread - not every slice weighs the same.
Also, look at ways to increase your protein, as that's quite low. You can add slices of ham to the baked beans, have a boiled egg (or two) with your breakfast etc.
In the meantime, please eat a bit more. If you're not particularly hungry, try some peanut butter (weighed) on a slice of bread or have a large a handful of almonds (weighed). You're still losing weight because you're not eating enough. It's possible that your exercise calories are overstated but, if you really are logging everything you consume, you are under-eating at the moment. 1200 cals is the minimum any female should be eating - and that's net of exercise. Go back and read cmriverside's post from earlier this evening. Under-eating will impact your muscles as well as your hair, nails etc. Your heart is a muscle. You have a young child and you need your strength.4 -
Thanks, the thing is i have a metabolic medical condition which causes slow metabolism. So i need to be careful with the amount i eat anyway. So its tough for me to be able to eat enough. I tend to either over eat or under eat. Never a happy balance 🤦♀️ will take all the advice on board though. Thanks again 😊0
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