GET OUT OF THE 210’s

AGLake

HI THERE , MFP COMMUNITY !
So you know what to do , follow your favourite MFP food and nutrition programme, record everything in the diary, write your food and exercise notes, weigh yourself regularly, share and communicate with your MFP friends.
Here’s the added new thing here : How to get out of the 210’s range of weight: give yourself the mini-goal, a few times, to lose one or two pounds to get out of where you are now. If you get out of your ‘current’ weight status a few times in a row, all of a sudden you’ll be below 210 .
So have a lovely week, MFP Health, Wellness and Weight-loss Community ! 👍✌️

AGLake

And so how are you doing with these mini-goals ? What do you think about this ? 👍✌️

AGLake

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

cmriverside

This seems like an awfully specific question directed to only people in the 210 pounds range?

As far as eating back exercise calories - it probably isn't too terribly important at 210 pounds - but as you approach a healthier weight it's really really important to figure out how you're going to account for exercise.

Myfitnesspal calculates your weight loss calories with the proviso that you are going to enter any purposeful Exercise into the Exercise section and eat more calories to support that extra additional calorie need.

You can read how it works, here:
https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

...and here:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

AnnPT77

AGLake wrote: »

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

It seems to me that anyone who does a meaningful amount of exercise needs to fuel that exercise, whether they weigh 210 pounds or 97 pounds. It needn't be 8 hours of exercise to matter: A person can burn hundreds of calories in an hour. I ate all my exercise calories pretty close to every day while losing from class 1 obese (so a little below 210, but not much) to a healthy weight, and have done so for 7+ years at a healthy weight since then.

If I didn't eat back my exercise calories - somehow - I'd keep losing weight pretty fast, and that's not suitable for me since I'm currently at a reasonable body weight (BMI 22, mid-normal range). I'm extremely gratefully that I learned and practiced how to estimate exercise calories while I was still losing weight: It helped to have the cushion of a calorie deficit while I was in the learning process so was more likely to make errors. By the time I got to goal weight, I had a lot of confidence in my practices.

For me, the MFP approach of estimating exercise separately works extremely well: My exercise is seasonal and much of it weather-dependent, so there's some unpredictability. Also, even though I'm not remotely a professional athlete - just a li'l ol' retired lady, age 67, working out for an hour-ish or so most days - it's not unusual for my exercise calories to be several hundred calories, like 20%+ of my daily calorie needs. That's not a thing to ignore! I was this active when I was still obese, BTW (had been this active for a dozen years while overweight/obese - exercise isn't a guarantee of weight loss).

For other people, with a more consistent exercise schedule/volume, it can make sense to average in exercise calorie needs and just manage weight loss rate via calorie intake alone. (Folks who do that should give a think about how they'll adjust when some unfortunate future thing keeps them from exercising, such as an injury or surgical recovery, or even a big ramp-up in time needs for job or family care.)

Fast weight loss isn't necessarily a good thing. If it goes too fast, bad things can happen. Sure, that includes more potential for deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the weight-loss action, even giving up altogether if it seems too hard. (Sometimes slow loss that's more doable can get us to goal weight in less calendar time than some extreme plan to "lose weight fast" that goes in fits and starts.)

On top of that, too fast loss increases health risks: Fatigue and weakness are the minor end of that, along with appearance issues like thinning hair or brittle nails. But the risks include gallbladder problems, unnecessarily much muscle loss alongside fat loss, immune system suppression, and worse.

Will bad things for sure happen? No, of course not. But the odds of problems increase as the loss rate gets faster. It's a question of how much risk you want to tolerate. In that, health history and other demands in one's life need to be considered. Weight loss is a physical stressor, and all the stresses in our lives - physical and psychological - are cumulative. I don't think anyone should turn all the dials to the maximum setting: It won't end well, IMO.

For me, getting and staying healthy (or at least heathier) was my main reason for losing weight in the first place. Why would I shoot myself in the foot by not accounting for my substantial amount of exercise while I lost weight, thus increasing my health risks?

You (or anyone else) can do what works for you. But you asked what we think. The above is what I think. I think it's not very good advice to generically suggest that only professional athletes need to plan in exercise calories, even though how to handle it is a personal choice.

littlegreenparrot1

I think that's quite dismissive of 'ordinary people ' to be honest.

I'm an ordinary person with a full time job. I'm doing intentional exercise before and after work. Running about whilst at work. And doing at least a couple of hours Saturday and Sunday.

That stuff needs fuelling properly or I would be very grumpy with everyone, and would end up being ravenous and scoffing everything. Which would end up being much more than if I think about it and eat a bit more in the first place.

PAV8888

If you can (that's a definite*if* but *can* is also a big and loaded word) you should consider that the smaller the proportion of your deficit the easier on the body.

I got to MFP 8.5 years ago and already weight reduced during the preceding 10 montha. I got here at about 240lbs and 172.25 cm (you can convert online I'm sure, it's between 5ft 7 and 5ft 8) at age 48

At the end of 365 days, I averaged 17,970 steps of walking type activities a day, had eaten an average of 2560 Cal each and every logged day (even logging all you can eat buffet meals as best as I could), and gone from 240.6lbs to 168.1, i.e. an effective deficit of 695 Cal a day.

No plan other than to keep as close as I could to posting my daily/weekly deficit, log my food carefully and for quite a few months in the beginning before opening my mouth up put it in logged with verified entries to the gram (yes, many times I ate an apple or two to survive logging and then postponed the logged meal for later since I was no longer hungry. Doing so actually helped me slowly become more aware of my personal hunger cues). Then review logs and keep on making choices that best allowed me to stick to the deficit plan while believing that they were ones I would be able to keep making indefinitely at maintenance.

Do we really think that I got to be above 280 by walking to the grocery store or the McDonald's drive through? Increasing my activity and reducing less active aspects of my daily life was a deliberate choice. Not all at once. Not without trials and changes. But a deliberate choice that I would seek more movement and drop or reduce lack of movement where I could. And that no aspect of my life was off limits for review.

Not saying that people can't succeed without doing this. Not saying that everyone can physically or financially/time of life do this. But it's not all of nothing 100% success or 100% failure either.

You can always move in a direction you choose to by making choices that head towards there.

About the only thing you need to do is drop the sacred cows. Some of the things that have led us to become *and remain* morbidity obese for extended lengths of time can and should be examined for change. And their current importance in our lives can definitely mutate over time

And you can bet your sweet patooties that I eat every one of the carefully logged calories I spend--even if I am not a professional athlete! 🤪

vivmom2014

I don't want to even hear of not eating back my exercise calories!! Knowing that I will earn those extra calories can serve as motivation to get moving, if I'm not already motivated. Seeing the goal bump up a bit after adding in my exercise is always a win. And I pretty much eat back 100% of earned extra calories.

JBanx256

AGLake wrote: »

It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

Simply stated, I think you are flat-out wrong.

As someone who is NOT a professional athlete and does NOT spend 8 hours/day training, I meet your criteria as someone who you say should not eat back exercise calories. This is me, yesterday morning, 151.4 lbs (5'4"):



If I did NOT eat back exercise calories, I'd be losing weight at a rate of, ballpark, for the sake of argument, let's call it a pound/week (realistically, it'd be more than that, but I'm taking a reduction in NEAT etc into consideration, and hey, its' a nice round number so let's roll with that). Do you believe I NEED to be losing weight, especially at that rate? I mean, I'm not a skeleton by any means, but I don't truly believe that would be advantageous, in terms of aesthetics (which I know is a personal preference; your opinion may not align with mine on that), health, or performance.

Health-wise, not eating back my exercise calories would have me running into REDS (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport - you can Google the symptoms associated with the condition) and particularly as a woman, would quickly have me in the territory of the Female Athlete Triad. I've been at those bodyfat levels before and I can assure you, it's not pleasant, healthy (my doctor about hit the roof when he saw my bloodwork when I was nearing the of a cut), or sustainable.

And as someone who actually cares about my performance in the gym, FOOD IS FUEL. This morning I pulled a PR 400-pound deadlift (YAY ME! Yes, I'm stoked, although I saw my life flash before my eyes, but that's a story for another day....). Would that have been possible if I were in the kind of deficit that you're saying I SHOULD be running? Doubtful, to say the least. Again, I've been in some pretty gnarly deficits and I know from experience that my performance suffers terribly beyond a certain point.

So, TL;DR? I absolutely eat back exercise calories, and for good reasons. If you don't feel it's necessary FOR YOU, then by all means, nix them. But to say that EVERYONE besides professionals who train 8 hrs/day shouldn't? Naaaaaah. Sorry, ya lost me there.

Oh, and I also like to eat. So there's that as well.

cmriverside

Aww! @JBanx256, lookit you~~!! Woohoo on that PR!! Congrats!


@AnnPT77 - without going into a novel of explanation...the reason I said she probably didn't need to worry as much at 210 than at - say - 140, is that the fuel is already on-board, so to speak. All that bodyfat is serving to offset the additional calorie needs to a certain degree. And just to be clear, I ate every goshdarned exercise calorie I earned when I was 210, as well! I strongly disagree that anyone other than professional athletes can disregard exercise calories. Just last week the exercise calories I earned were about 2000 calories. I can not afford to lose much more weight and that 2000 calories is huge! I would be miserable without them. That's only a little over 300 calories added for each of six days of my 90 minutes walk.

I could have probably skipped that extra amount on some days of my weight loss. I didn't, but as Banx said, that's a story for another day that I'm sure I've already told.

DFW_Tom

AGLake wrote: »

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

I just about completely agree with the above, with the caveat that the definition of "professional athlete" include those average people who also routinely train/exercise to meet performance goals and are already at maintenance weight. For someone like me, who's BMI is over 30 until they weigh less than 209, an occasional trip to the gym doesn't much matter because not that much weight gets burned off. The extra exercise and intentional activity (in an effort to build muscle and increase endurance) can even be counter productive if fatigue leaves the person to reduce the number of calories they would have normally burned off in normal activities for the rest of the day. This is especially true for those of us who then increase their calorie intake as a reward for a good workout but are too tired to do anything other than watch March Madness the rest of the day while munching on unhealthy snacks.

The person who follows a set exercise/training routine week after week will account for the energy used because those calories are part of their normal, weekly energy expenditure and eating plan. They will need to decide how much of those expended calories to eat back to fit into their personal fitness plan. The workout doesn't need to a professional and last 8 hours a day for this to be important, it just needs to be routine. I would also think that if the average person suddenly runs a 10K or bikes a 50 mile race, those extra calories burned would need to be replaced as soon as they gather enough energy to bring a food laden fork up to their mouth.

kshama2001

AGLake wrote: »

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

In 2021, I lost close to 40 pounds while shooting to burn 400-500 calories via exercise each day, and ate almost all of them back.

If you use MFP to set your calorie goal, exercise, but don't eat back any exercise calories, you are not using MFP the way it was designed.

https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625391-How-does-MyFitnessPal-calculate-my-initial-goals-

Unlike other sites which use TDEE calculators, MFP uses the NEAT method (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and as such this system is designed for exercise calories to be eaten back. However, many consider the burns given by MFP to be inflated for them and only eat a percentage, such as 50%, back. Others are able to lose weight while eating 100% of their exercise calories.

Rockmama1111

AGLake wrote: »

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

I don’t think of it as I need to eat back exercise calories, it’s I get to. No activity means I can’t have cookies or I won’t lose weight. Activity means I can have cookies and still lose weight.

AGLake

April 2, 2023
Ok, folks . I lost a bit and managed to get out of the 210 - 220# range .
I will now be struggling to get out of the 200 - 210# range . I have less than 8 lbs to go to get outta here.
Have a lovely week ! 👍✌️🐣