Calorie deficit and exercising
sadia_tubassum
Posts: 1 Member
Hi , I’ve been logging my food for about 4 weeks now. My question is . Do I need to increase my food if I’m exercising ? I work out 5 days a week and I’m having around 1200 calories . I don’t log my workouts . I have lost 5 pounds but had no loss last week. I’m wondering if that means I need to up my calories so my body can cope or If I should carry on with 1200. If I’m losing 200 calories at th gym will my body struggle at 1000? And go in to starvation mode?
1
Replies
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Starvation mode isn't a real thing, if by "starvation mode" you mean your body stopping weight loss if you eat too little. If that were real, no one would ever starve to death, or they'd be fat when they did. Sadly, thousands of people worldwide regularly die of starvation, and they're emaciated when it happens, other than maybe some distended belly from ill health bloating.
What can happen, speaking very generally, is that if you persistently do too much while eating too few calories to support it, is that you'll get fatigued, move less, and maybe lose weight slower than you'd expect at that calorie level. The reasons can be so subtle you might not notice: Even fidgety people have been found in research to burn up to a few hundred calories more daily than otherwise similar very placid people. Would you notice if you fidgeted less? I wouldn't.
A key problem you're having seems to be that you're thinking you'll lose the same amount of weight every week at the same calorie intake, doing the same things. You won't. That's not how it works. Even if fat loss is happening at the same gradual rate every week, your scale will have ups and downs day to day and week to week.
Why? Mostly changes in water retention, but also some changes in how much food waste is still in your system on its way to the exit. Bodies can be 60%+ water. Part of how a healthy body stays healthy is hanging onto or releasing water to do things like heal sore muscles, digest certain foods, balance out electrolytes, and much, much more. When that water is retained, the scale will be up, even if you've lost fat. In the long view - like 4-6 weeks - that will average out, and you'll see fat loss in that long term average weight trend, not the day to day or week to week shorter term weight changes.
It's common to drop a chunk of water weight at the start of a new diet (less food being digested means less water needed to digest/metabolize it). The next couple of weeks, that may rebalance up a little again, hide fat loss on the scale. Starting new exercise, or doing more, tends to add water weight for muscle repair. Guess what else can increase water weight? Stress. Stress from eating too little, stress from feeling stressed about no weight loss, stress from extreme exercise, all kinds of stress add up.
Mostly, IMO, what you need here is patience. One week on a new routine doesn't tell the story. When you switch to a new routine, 4-6 weeks on that routine probably will. (If you happen to be an adult woman not yet in menopause, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, because hormonal water weight can be that weird).
While you're waiting, read this thread, because it will be reassuring:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1
For sure read the article linked in the first post of that thread.
Should you eat more if you exercise? Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
If you're trying for aggressively fast weight loss (which the 1200 calorie thing makes me suspect you might be), and you add a lot of new exercise without eating more, that's very high stress, and can lead to things like fatigue, weaknesses and hair thinning at the minor end, all the way up to major health compromises on the major end, things like gallbladder problems or compromised immune system. Is it guaranteed that bad things will happen? No. But you're increasing risks.
At the other end of the options scale, if you're trying to lose weight very slowly (like half a pound a week) and do not very much of not very intense exercise, and your life otherwise isn't super-stressful, it's probably fine to let the exercise calories make you lose weight a little faster.
Anything in between those extremes is a matter of how much risk you like to take with your health and energy level. For myself, I ate back all my carefully-estimated exercise calories all the way through losing from obese to a healthy weight, and have continued eating them all in the 7ish years of maintaining a healthy weight since.
I hope that addresses your questions, to some extent. I wish you the best in your pursuit of weight loss!
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Exercise doesn’t really burn that many calories in a big picture of things. Some people like myself don’t even track exercise, we just figure it in or normal daily TDEE. Don’t worry about starvation mode. That’s right up there with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.4
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »Exercise doesn’t really burn that many calories in a big picture of things. Some people like myself don’t even track exercise, we just figure it in or normal daily TDEE. Don’t worry about starvation mode. That’s right up there with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
You don't know what kind of exercise TO is doing and how much. She's already at the bare minimum of calories. Even if she just exercised for 200 calories each days, then she's only getting the nutrition of 1000 calories. Now tell me again why you think this is good in any way for her with regards to nutrition, health, energy, stress on her body and perseverance without ending up in a binge/restrict cycle.2 -
Hi, I'm new! 🙂 Great advice above. I personally think you'll feel better and have more energy at the full, real 1200 a day. That's definitely what I would do. You are at the low end of recommended calories and then going below that with exercise otherwise, I think. Maybe try it out and see what you think.1
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If you're on a 1200 calorie diet, I'd eat at LEAST half of the calories you burn working out if you're measuring it accurately.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Losing 5 lbs in 4 weeks including some early water loss is a pound a week which, depending on her fat amount is a good rate of loss. She says “ about” 1,200 cals a day. That means probably more and is that certain days or is that every day?tomcustombuilder wrote: »Exercise doesn’t really burn that many calories in a big picture of things. Some people like myself don’t even track exercise, we just figure it in or normal daily TDEE. Don’t worry about starvation mode. That’s right up there with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
You don't know what kind of exercise TO is doing and how much. She's already at the bare minimum of calories. Even if she just exercised for 200 calories each days, then she's only getting the nutrition of 1000 calories. Now tell me again why you think this is good in any way for her with regards to nutrition, health, energy, stress on her body and perseverance without ending up in a binge/restrict cycle.
“ Working out” can be many things and some women I see “ working out” they’d be lucky if they’re burning 100 calories.
No loss for a week is no sign that calories need to come up.
If OP is feeling overly tired during the day and moves less, poor sleep and compromised exercise energy that would be a sign of needing more calories.
If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
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tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.1 -
MFP is set up for you to eat back your cardio calories...so the easy answer is yes - you should eat more if you are working out.
But, this all depends on your own deficit....how many calories is your *current* deficit? I'm always suspicious honestly when people say MFP gave them 1200 calories for the day, just because a lot of people can still be in a deficit eating MORE than that....and then if you are working out on top of that, it's likely you risk just not eating enough in general.
I don't think your workouts will continue to feel very good or productive if you aren't fueling them properly. You lose weight in the kitchen, not in the gym.2 -
I log my workout calories but I only eat back up to half of them if I feel I need to. If you feel hungry or low energy eat a healthy snack like banana.
But it also helps me feel better if I log them in a day I do want to indulge and I eat them all back haha0 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.
That is not true. Losing 1 lb per week is just fine. If I input 170 lb female, 53 years old, little exercise, it gives me 1200 calories. Just because the calculator gives 1200 calories, don't assume they're doing it wrong.0 -
tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.
No! That's kind of absurd isn't it? What you're saying is that the calculator is wrong, period. It gives me 1200 calories if I tell it I am 5'2" tall and weigh 170 lbs and exercise little. It's a math problem that you disagree with the answer to.0 -
LiveOnceBeHappy wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.
That is not true. Losing 1 lb per week is just fine. If I input 170 lb female, 53 years old, little exercise, it gives me 1200 calories. Just because the calculator gives 1200 calories, don't assume they're doing it wrong.
That would be 1200 plus exercise, if following the MFP instructions, just to be clear.
1 -
The math with all things diet related on a calculator is nothing but a starting point and all of it will depend on how accurate your counting/tracking is.
Your body doesn’t know numbers. It knows if it’s being given energy to either gain mass lose mass or maintain mass.0 -
LiveOnceBeHappy wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.
No! That's kind of absurd isn't it? What you're saying is that the calculator is wrong, period. It gives me 1200 calories if I tell it I am 5'2" tall and weigh 170 lbs and exercise little. It's a math problem that you disagree with the answer to.
No, I'm saying that if you chose a goal that is too aggressive then MFP will always default to 1200, regardless of whether this will result in the chosen weight loss goal or not. Say your maintenance calories are 1800/day. You want to lose 2lbs per week. 2lbs means eating 7000 calories less per week, or 1000 per week. 1800-1000 = 800 calories. MFP will not give you 800 calories to work with, but 1200. Which means, in an ideal world the weekly loss will not be 2lbs but just above 1lbs (4200 calorie deficit per week instead of 7000). And yes, despite this you should eat back your exercise calories, or a good estimate of it because eating so little long-term is not healthy.1 -
LiveOnceBeHappy wrote: »tomcustombuilder wrote: »If OP would list age, height and weight it would help with the conversation
This!
However, given that MFP seem to have given her 1200 calories means her chosen weight loss goal is too big to start with.
No! That's kind of absurd isn't it? What you're saying is that the calculator is wrong, period. It gives me 1200 calories if I tell it I am 5'2" tall and weigh 170 lbs and exercise little. It's a math problem that you disagree with the answer to.
So how many calories do you get when you chose you don't want to lose weight? I just used a random online calculator as most good ones are offline at the moment. For a sedentary lifestyle your stats give me roughly 1600 calories per day. If you wanted to lose 1lbs per week then you'd have to subtract 500 calories from that, giving you 1100 calories. MFP will not go below 1200, hence you won't lose 1lbs per week. And you really should not eat less than that. Or exercise yourself below that number as it makes no difference for your body if you undereat or you exercise yourself into 'undereating'.1 -
Starvation mode isn't a real thing, if by "starvation mode" you mean your body stopping weight loss if you eat too little. If that were real, no one would ever starve to death, or they'd be fat when they did. Sadly, thousands of people worldwide regularly die of starvation, and they're emaciated when it happens, other than maybe some distended belly from ill health bloating.
What can happen, speaking very generally, is that if you persistently do too much while eating too few calories to support it, is that you'll get fatigued, move less, and maybe lose weight slower than you'd expect at that calorie level. The reasons can be so subtle you might not notice: Even fidgety people have been found in research to burn up to a few hundred calories more daily than otherwise similar very placid people. Would you notice if you fidgeted less? I wouldn't.
A key problem you're having seems to be that you're thinking you'll lose the same amount of weight every week at the same calorie intake, doing the same things. You won't. That's not how it works. Even if fat loss is happening at the same gradual rate every week, your scale will have ups and downs day to day and week to week.
Why? Mostly changes in water retention, but also some changes in how much food waste is still in your system on its way to the exit. Bodies can be 60%+ water. Part of how a healthy body stays healthy is hanging onto or releasing water to do things like heal sore muscles, digest certain foods, balance out electrolytes, and much, much more. When that water is retained, the scale will be up, even if you've lost fat. In the long view - like 4-6 weeks - that will average out, and you'll see fat loss in that long term average weight trend, not the day to day or week to week shorter term weight changes.
It's common to drop a chunk of water weight at the start of a new diet (less food being digested means less water needed to digest/metabolize it). The next couple of weeks, that may rebalance up a little again, hide fat loss on the scale. Starting new exercise, or doing more, tends to add water weight for muscle repair. Guess what else can increase water weight? Stress. Stress from eating too little, stress from feeling stressed about no weight loss, stress from extreme exercise, all kinds of stress add up.
Mostly, IMO, what you need here is patience. One week on a new routine doesn't tell the story. When you switch to a new routine, 4-6 weeks on that routine probably will. (If you happen to be an adult woman not yet in menopause, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, because hormonal water weight can be that weird).
While you're waiting, read this thread, because it will be reassuring:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1
For sure read the article linked in the first post of that thread.
Should you eat more if you exercise? Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
If you're trying for aggressively fast weight loss (which the 1200 calorie thing makes me suspect you might be), and you add a lot of new exercise without eating more, that's very high stress, and can lead to things like fatigue, weaknesses and hair thinning at the minor end, all the way up to major health compromises on the major end, things like gallbladder problems or compromised immune system. Is it guaranteed that bad things will happen? No. But you're increasing risks.
At the other end of the options scale, if you're trying to lose weight very slowly (like half a pound a week) and do not very much of not very intense exercise, and your life otherwise isn't super-stressful, it's probably fine to let the exercise calories make you lose weight a little faster.
Anything in between those extremes is a matter of how much risk you like to take with your health and energy level. For myself, I ate back all my carefully-estimated exercise calories all the way through losing from obese to a healthy weight, and have continued eating them all in the 7ish years of maintaining a healthy weight since.
I hope that addresses your questions, to some extent. I wish you the best in your pursuit of weight loss!
This was such a good & motivating read, thank you. It can be so deflating when the scales go up not down, it's good to know to judge it on more of a month/bi-monthly basis.2 -
jenny_ormson1 wrote: »Starvation mode isn't a real thing, if by "starvation mode" you mean your body stopping weight loss if you eat too little. If that were real, no one would ever starve to death, or they'd be fat when they did. Sadly, thousands of people worldwide regularly die of starvation, and they're emaciated when it happens, other than maybe some distended belly from ill health bloating.
What can happen, speaking very generally, is that if you persistently do too much while eating too few calories to support it, is that you'll get fatigued, move less, and maybe lose weight slower than you'd expect at that calorie level. The reasons can be so subtle you might not notice: Even fidgety people have been found in research to burn up to a few hundred calories more daily than otherwise similar very placid people. Would you notice if you fidgeted less? I wouldn't.
A key problem you're having seems to be that you're thinking you'll lose the same amount of weight every week at the same calorie intake, doing the same things. You won't. That's not how it works. Even if fat loss is happening at the same gradual rate every week, your scale will have ups and downs day to day and week to week.
Why? Mostly changes in water retention, but also some changes in how much food waste is still in your system on its way to the exit. Bodies can be 60%+ water. Part of how a healthy body stays healthy is hanging onto or releasing water to do things like heal sore muscles, digest certain foods, balance out electrolytes, and much, much more. When that water is retained, the scale will be up, even if you've lost fat. In the long view - like 4-6 weeks - that will average out, and you'll see fat loss in that long term average weight trend, not the day to day or week to week shorter term weight changes.
It's common to drop a chunk of water weight at the start of a new diet (less food being digested means less water needed to digest/metabolize it). The next couple of weeks, that may rebalance up a little again, hide fat loss on the scale. Starting new exercise, or doing more, tends to add water weight for muscle repair. Guess what else can increase water weight? Stress. Stress from eating too little, stress from feeling stressed about no weight loss, stress from extreme exercise, all kinds of stress add up.
Mostly, IMO, what you need here is patience. One week on a new routine doesn't tell the story. When you switch to a new routine, 4-6 weeks on that routine probably will. (If you happen to be an adult woman not yet in menopause, compare body weight at the same relative point in at least two different cycles, because hormonal water weight can be that weird).
While you're waiting, read this thread, because it will be reassuring:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1
For sure read the article linked in the first post of that thread.
Should you eat more if you exercise? Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
If you're trying for aggressively fast weight loss (which the 1200 calorie thing makes me suspect you might be), and you add a lot of new exercise without eating more, that's very high stress, and can lead to things like fatigue, weaknesses and hair thinning at the minor end, all the way up to major health compromises on the major end, things like gallbladder problems or compromised immune system. Is it guaranteed that bad things will happen? No. But you're increasing risks.
At the other end of the options scale, if you're trying to lose weight very slowly (like half a pound a week) and do not very much of not very intense exercise, and your life otherwise isn't super-stressful, it's probably fine to let the exercise calories make you lose weight a little faster.
Anything in between those extremes is a matter of how much risk you like to take with your health and energy level. For myself, I ate back all my carefully-estimated exercise calories all the way through losing from obese to a healthy weight, and have continued eating them all in the 7ish years of maintaining a healthy weight since.
I hope that addresses your questions, to some extent. I wish you the best in your pursuit of weight loss!
This was such a good & motivating read, thank you. It can be so deflating when the scales go up not down, it's good to know to judge it on more of a month/bi-monthly basis.
Depending on how you take it it might be worth stepping on the scale every morning, naked, after having been to the loo and recording the weight in a weight trending app like happy scale or (whatever the Android equivalent is). This way you might get a good idea on how your body's ebb and flood work. Of course it requires not panicking when the weight goes up
From my own observations I know that my body stores quite a bit of water weight when working in an office, and this goes up throughout the week, and drops down again over the weekend, with Monday being the lowest day. Menstruation: Weight usually goes up when I stop with the pill and starts to drop again after some 4-5 days. Flights or longer train journeys are the worst as water weight just 'sticks' for up to 7 days after the fact: this is one of those "but I didn't overeat while being away!" moments and requires a lot of patience for me.
I do trust the process now.
Few things that might also influence scale but not body fat weight:
* late-night snack: weight might be higher because less food is digested until the morning weight-in
* not having poop'ed in a few days of course also adds weight as the stuff in your intestines has weight
* a higher sodium or higher carb meal the day before
* a new or more intense workout
* change in temperature even
* stress
* probably a ton of other things, especially if you're female because hormonal fluctuations.1
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