Burning Calories

twon070377

I work out four days a week for 45 minutes. I burn about 250-600 calories a day. How much exercise do I need to lose weight? I am 265 pounds and have noticed I am losing 2 pounds a week. Should I be losing more or is that possible?

lmf1012

1-2lbs a week is the general consensus of healthy weight loss so you’re doing quite well at 2. I would think more about the level of exercise that will be sustainable versus trying to speed up weight loss.

KelpieLass

You don't need to do any exercise to lose weight. You just need a calorie deficit that is sustainable for you. Exercise helps you look/feel better and will slightly increase your calorie deficit, but it's food that will make the biggest difference to your weight loss. And don't assume that the calorie burns on the machines/trackers you use are accurate. They often way over estimate your actual burn. But 2lbs a week is awesome. Looks like you're on the right track.

AnnPT77

Many people around here think you should target no more than 0.5-1% of your current body weight as weekly loss, with a bias toward the lower end of that (especially if not severely obese to the point of obesity being a health risk in itself . . . and in that case, losing weight might best be under close medical monitoring in the first place). Since you're female (according to your MFP profile), you may be OK with losing 2 pounds a week for a while, if you're somewhere in a range of normal height.

At root, weight loss is not about exercise: It's about the balance between calories eaten and calories expended (in all ways: exercise, yes; but also job, home chores, non-exercise hobbies, and the simple facts of being alive which burns calories in itself).

You can use exercise to increase calorie expenditure, but losing weight too fast is a health risk whether it comes from significantly increased exercise, significantly reduced food intake, or a combination. Moreover, significantly underfueling exercise can short-change the very useful fitness benefits exercise might otherwise bring.

It's a balancing act.

Much of the time, I do quite a lot of exercise, up to 2.5 hours a day sometimes (I'm retired, and it's fun). But my weight stays steady, because that's what I want. If I wanted to weigh less while doing that amount of exercise, I'd need to eat less, since exercising more would throw my life out of balance.

BTW: Is the 250-600 calories extra just from 45 minutes of exercise, or is it the all-day activity calories from a fitness tracker? 600 calories would be an unusually high number of calories for 45 minutes of exercise. 250 or so could be realistic, depending on the exercise.