Worked With More Calories Than I Ate

BloodhoundBoss

Heyo,

I recently went down over 100pounds, from 315 to 195. A few weeks ago I just started my strength training journey but have a few questions.

1. Sometimes I eat sugar and I use it for energy. My treadmill tracks my carbs I used for energy based on the amount of calories it tracks (through distance and speed). However, sometimes I eat 20g of sugar a day but long jogs in or outdoor get me to 80 Carbs. Yesterday I did a few miles on the treadmill and it tracked 94.6 carbs.

My question is: if you eat a low calorie amount of food but perform a high calorie burning workout right after (which is also high carbs -> sugar), and there is a clear difference in your carb intake opposed to your outgoing carbs, should I eat additional sugar/carbs to balance out the carbs/sugar I used or leave as is?

AnnPT77

Are you trying to achieve ketosis or wanting to eat very low carb overall?

If not, I feel like there's no reason to overthink this. If you get overall reasonable nutrition across the day; don't feel weak, fatigued, faint or dizzy after the workout; and aren't cutting calories so aggressively far that that becomes an energy problem overall; . . . I don't think you need to do anything special. Our bodies, if healthy, are pretty good at balancing our nutritional intake with our energetic demands over a day.

It's calorie balance across time (the day, multiple days' average) that determines fat gain/loss. Nutrition is important, but micro-adjusting its timing mostly isn't, unless a person is an elite athlete trying to squeeze out a 0.005% advantage. Most of us regular duffers have other changes we could make that would have more useful impact than micro-managing nutrient intake around workouts, as long as our workout energy and energy afterwards is OK.

Just my opinion as a long term (20+ years) short-endurance athlete, though.

Best wishes!

BloodhoundBoss

I guess a more articulate way to ask the question is this: “If I workout using more carbs then what I ate earlier, should I calculate the workouts tracking of carbs into my diet?”

My daily macros are about 300g of carbs, 70g of fat, and about 200g of protein. When I workout and the treadmill records roughly 100g of carbs used as energy, then is my carbs to eat that daily then 400g?

Then if I ate sugar, would it be 25g of sugar from the 100g of carbs you used as energy? I guess what I’m really asking for sugar is what is a general rule of how much sugar, max, your body can eat while also being healthy?

I frequently overthink simple things. Thanks so much for your response!

AnnPT77

BloodhoundBoss wrote: »

I guess a more articulate way to ask the question is this: “If I workout using more carbs then what I ate earlier, should I calculate the workouts tracking of carbs into my diet?”

My daily macros are about 300g of carbs, 70g of fat, and about 200g of protein. When I workout and the treadmill records roughly 100g of carbs used as energy, then is my carbs to eat that daily then 400g?

Then if I ate sugar, would it be 25g of sugar from the 100g of carbs you used as energy? I guess what I’m really asking for sugar is what is a general rule of how much sugar, max, your body can eat while also being healthy?

I frequently overthink simple things. Thanks so much for your response!

My opinion/beliefs:

It's not essential to replace the exact nutrients immediately. Balance over time is more important. Eat nutritiously overall, notice how you feel before/after workouts to decide whether you need to time more nutrients around the workout, otherwise don't worry too much about it. (Worry is unhealthy, too, right? )

I think USDA/NIH, WHO, NHS, and other mainstream health/nutrition information sources suggest we limit added sugars to no more than 10% of calories. They're not concerned about inherent sugars (like in whole fruit, some veggies, etc.).

Personally, I don't worry much at all about getting supposedly bad things out of my eating, I worry about getting all the good things into my eating, while staying within my calorie goals. Therefore, I don't really worry about how much sugar I eat in total. I'm more concerned about reaching my personal goals for a certain minimum number of grams of protein and fats, and a really large volume of varied, colorful veggies and fruits. If I get in all the essential nutrition I need (including micros and some other personal quirky things), and hit close to my calorie goal, I'm happy. How much sugar was in the mix doesn't concern me explicitly at all, even if some of that sugar came from . . . gasp . . . candy or a cookie.

So: I think a healthy diet is one that delivers what we need to be near optimal for our goals in both nutrients and calories. When doing that, I don't think there is some arbitrary limit on sugar beyond which a body can't be healthy. If sugar drives out nutrition when a person tries to get appropriate calories, that's bad. If sugar drives calories way beyond reasonable when a person tries to get good nutrition, that's bad, too. If it does neither of those things, meh.

yirara

Ignore whatever the threadmill says. It's just an educated guess. There's no way a machine could know how much glycogen and fatty acids your body uses without an analysis of the air you inhale and exhale. And even the average exercise test with all this only approximates via the RER. It's not direct calorimetry though and easily disturbed, for example just by hyperventilating a bit because your mind thinks this test is so important. So basically, ignore this. Totally. Eat in a way in which you can fuel your exercise properly and eat enough to feel good enough to get through the day and exercise.

PAV8888

I am definitely confused why your treadmill is thinking in terms of carbs and fats. I bet it may even think it is really smart and is even trying to break your run into "fat burn/aerobic/anaerobic" thresholds.

Your HRM may have a hard time determining your "type of burn" and that's even with knowing your VO2 max which most do not (but they do try to estimate).

It is not that smart. AND, on top of that, what you've burned on your treadmill, other than maybe indicating sufficient calories that you would have to replenish... is irrelevant.

I mean if I err.... no-eating.... If I poo out 10g of fiber it doesn't mean that I immediately turn around and consume 10g of fiber to replenish that!

It doesn't have to be like for like. You're eating in your preferred/determined macro mix (your protein seems quite high but if you're happy with that you're happy with that). And you're burning an amount of calories.

As long as your calories out are less than the ones that are coming in... you will lose weight. So in terms of the treadmill, if you haven't accounted for the exercise elsewhere, then YES, burning an extra 400 Calories of energy means you should replenish that.

If you've already accounted for it... then it is just information you don't need to act upon.

Your general "accuracy" in terms of total calories in and out is "double checked" by your weight scale change over time.

Sincere congratulations on the 120lb drop by the way! Your current intake (you don't mention fiber which would probably cut it down a bit) but your current intake is at around 2630 Cal a day.

Good on you that you're managing to lose and maintain weight at that level of intake. Bet you're quite active.

Traditionally ANYTHING we intake counts. So 25g of sugar would be just about 100 Cal and would add about 25g of carbs to the count. But beyond how it adds up for total calories I, at least, count the macro nutrient count as a general "nice to have" guideline... not a goal in itself.

There are some WHO recommendations regarding added sugars. Their PRIMARY concern when initially writing the guidelines was teeth carries and the promotion of less obesity.

Since you're counting calories your obesity concern is not directly related to unknowingly consuming added sugar. And teeth carries may or may not be an issue for you. That said there is some general concern that added sugar is inflammatory or not well tolerated or what have you for people in general. There may be truth to that though individual response is... individual.

I personally ingest a large amount of added sugar and it has not directly affected my A1C or cholesterol or any other blood work related indicators since I lost weight. It was definitely affecting things before I lost weight. Thus I limit my calories but do not directly even look at sugar or added sugars which are well over 100g per day with probably more than 10% clearly from non intrinsic sources.