Include exercises calories or not

scottnelson401
scottnelson401 Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
When calculating calorie intake:
My metabolic resting rate is 2674 calories a day.
I am bicycling to and from work just under 1000 calories a day (calculated with heart rate monitor, power meter, speed and cadence data).
I weight train for about an hour a day around 300 calories.
Currently I am aiming to eat around 2674 calories a day. I am not losing weight but do see some fat loss but not much. I am wondering if I am in starvation mode and my body is holding onto the fat.
Question is should I include exercise calories and eat around 3600 calories a day? or up my calories by 250 or 500 and try that?
Thank you in advance.

Replies

  • Retroguy2000
    Retroguy2000 Posts: 1,775 Member
    edited December 2023
    You're not in "starvation mode".

    All of your numbers are estimates. It's entirely possible your additional calories burned from exercise are not 1,300. I stress additional, because you don't want to double count your estimated daily TDEE without exercise and the total calories burned during exercise. To clarify, if your RMR is ~100 per hour and your total calories burned doing some workout is estimated to be 300, assuming that's accurate then your additional calories burned is actually 200, which is what you'd enter into MFP. You may eat those back, or many people choose to eat back only a conservative estimate of exercise calories, or 50%, or some people eat back none, which is a mistake imo.

    Your RMR is an estimate too.

    It's possible you're having some recomp, but you probably aren't building much muscle while doing that much cardio and around maintenance calories.

    How long have you been tracking your data? Male, presumably. Ignore your first week of dieting since it includes a lot of water weight loss. After that, if you have a few weeks of data to look at, i.e. your total calorie intake and your weight change, that tells you your maintenance level better than any online calculator can. It's 3500 cals per pound of fat. So if you've taken in 2,700 per day average for the last few weeks and your weight is constant, voila that's your TDEE including all exercise. If you want to lose weight, you'll need to eat less or move more, in your case probably the former.
  • tomcustombuilder
    tomcustombuilder Posts: 2,131 Member
    After a month of a certain weekly calorie amount with sub par results you'll need to lower calories. There is no starvation mode.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,486 Member
    How far are you biking to/from work?
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,139 Member
    edited December 2023
    I would trust a power pedal more than anyone's food logging... or sometimes even their understanding of their current weight level trajectory

    The details don't matter as much as overall results.

    Sounds like recomposition/getting in shape is taking place with what the original poster is already doing.

    Is that not a good result?🤷‍♂️

    Unless this particular poster is feeling lightheaded or is cutting down on exercise intensity because of potentially eating too little (which is not what they're claiming is happening)... I don't see how increasing their intake of calories would help them lose weight faster.😵‍💫

    Mathematically all calories are of equal value regardless of origin. So all of them count. But logging errors and individual variation are much more likely than power pedals to introduce inaccuracies, your mileage may very of course! 🤔

Categories