Body Composition/Weight loss
DiamndMnd
Posts: 67 Member
Hi all. I've been working out 4-5 times a week since July 1st and have been logging what I'm eating. I try for a nutrient dense diet, focusing on 1 ingredient foods as much as I can. I follow the 80/20 rule. I've noticed some nonphysical changes but my scale has barely moved. Has this been common for anyone else? I'm trying to build muscle as well so idk if I'm gaining that while I'm losing fat? Any tips to help tip the scale and lose a few pounds of fat?
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Replies
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Track your input calories and consume less.
And/Or
If you aren't getting many steps in, walk for an hour daily.0 -
Sadly, muscle gain is very slow, and even slower in the context of a calorie deficit. It's pretty much a given that no realistic rate of muscle gain will outpace any reasonably satisfying and observable rate of fat loss, so that they equalize on the scale. This is especially true for us women.
You're only about a month in. You're reaching the limits of this possibility, but you could still be seeing water retention from the new/increased exercise masking some fat loss on the scale.
You've said you're logging food, but what's your calorie goal for what current size/age? Are you using a food scale? Calories are the key for fat loss. Also, calorie logging can be a surprisingly subtle skill, with a learning curve.
Best wishes!1 -
I think you need to give it more time. Just stay consistent and be patient.0
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Sadly, muscle gain is very slow, and even slower in the context of a calorie deficit. It's pretty much a given that no realistic rate of muscle gain will outpace any reasonably satisfying and observable rate of fat loss, so that they equalize on the scale. This is especially true for us women.
You're only about a month in. You're reaching the limits of this possibility, but you could still be seeing water retention from the new/increased exercise masking some fat loss on the scale.
You've said you're logging food, but what's your calorie goal for what current size/age? Are you using a food scale? Calories are the key for fat loss. Also, calorie logging can be a surprisingly subtle skill, with a learning curve.
Best wishes!
I'm at 148lb/31yo and my calories
intake has been between 1500-2000 depending on what my exercise is that day. I do use a scale in the kitchen when playing my foods.0 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »Track your input calories and consume less.
And/Or
If you aren't getting many steps in, walk for an hour daily.
I'm doing the top thing. Sticking between 1500-2000 cals a day. Also walking daily. My average is 7k steps a day.0 -
Technically, you're not, because you aren't losing weight, which means you're at maintenance calories. You may be improving body comp as you surmised, which you could maybe confirm with measurements and progress pics, but if your goal is to lose total weight, you'll need to be below maintenance. 7K steps is good. A little more would help a bit.I'm doing the top thing. Sticking between 1500-2000 cals a day. Also walking daily. My average is 7k steps a day.1 -
You have to keep in mind that recomp is a months and years endeavor, not days and weeks. Under optimal, perfect circumstances, adding 2 pounds of muscle a month is about the max possible for men to gain. Half that for women. Since you seem to be eating at maintenance, fat loss won't really be significant. So yeah, if you gained half a pound or a pound of muscle and loss would be about the same amount at the most (without an overall calorie deficit), then you won't see much scale movement.1 -
Muscle gain does take time, and happens slower in a calorie deficit (maybe not at all depending on the size of the deficit, among other factors).
Even under ideal conditions, a pound a month of muscle gain would be a really good result for a woman. Ideal conditions include relative youth, good nutrition (especially but not exclusively ample protein), a well-designed weight lifting program faithfully performed, favorable genetics, newness to weight lifting, a calorie surplus (weight gain), and probably some things I'm forgetting. You're not in ideal conditions, which doesn't mean it can't happen, but we'd expect it to be slower.
Body REcomposition (strict-ish definition) is gaining muscle, losing fat, but staying around the same body weight. Some have assumed that's what you're shooting for, but I'm not sure. That is also slow. The stuff in the previous paragraph would still apply, but part of the fuel for muscle gains would come from body fat (no calorie surplus).
If your goal is to lose some body fat faster than muscle gains can realistically happen, that's all about calorie levels, specifically a calorie deficit. It sounds like this IS your goal, if I read you correctly.
Some women would lose fine on 1500-2000 calories, but quite a few wouldn't. It depends on your size (height/weight), age, daily life activity, and exercise (mostly). You didn't mention your height, but if I assume average height (5'4"), a TDEE calculator suggests your calorie needs to maintain weight (at age 31, 148 pounds) might be 1800-2200-ish depending on exercise and other activity.
If that's true, and you're statistically average (<== important), and your logging is perfect, you may have only a 200-300 calorie daily deficit on average. That would be about half a pound a week of fat loss. From my personal experience, fat loss that slow can take more than a month at times to show up clearly on the body weight scale. It did for me, even when I was using a weight trending app, not just looking at daily weights.
If that set of speculations were all true, and half a pound a week is what you're aiming for, it might be a good idea to apply patience for another full menstrual cycle (if you have those) to compare body weight at the same relative point in 3 different cycles. (Two might work if targeting a faster weight loss rate.) Say maybe 8 weeks or so total, if no cycles.
Unless you're quite petite, your current weight isn't severely overweight. Given that assumption, and the fact that you want to have some hope of gaining muscle while losing fat, half a pound a week would be reasonable.
If you're wanting to lose fat (weight) faster than that, or you haven't lost weight in the timespans I mentioned above, I'd agree that it'd be time to cut calories a bit further (no matter what MFP, another calculator, a trainer, or even a fitness tracker says). Use the assumption that 500 calories per day is a pound a week (and apply arithmetic for fractional pounds).
I'm assuming your base calorie goal is 1500. That would be a bit above your estimated BMR (again assuming 5'4"), which is probably reasonable in your context.
I have to say, the thing that raises the biggest question in my mind is that you say you eat up to 2000 on exercise days. Maybe that's an exceptionally large day, I don't know. But I'm wondering what you're doing and for how long that it earns 500 net calories? You imply that you're strength training, which is worth doing for many reasons, but it isn't a great calorie burner. Walking is good, but also not huge calories.
500 total calories is far from impossible, but it's on the higher side for what many people commonly do. Depending on the source of that estimate, it could be on the high side. It's possible to get workable exercise estimates, but some sources do over-estimate.
I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to be helpful, but also frank and clear. I want you to succeed, because both weight loss and fitness improvement have been powerful quality of life improvements for me, and I want that for you (for everyone!). That puts me in "question everything" mode, as I hope you can understand.
Best wishes!
1 -
Retroguy2000 wrote: »
Technically, you're not, because you aren't losing weight, which means you're at maintenance calories. You may be improving body comp as you surmised, which you could maybe confirm with measurements and progress pics, but if your goal is to lose total weight, you'll need to be below maintenance. 7K steps is good. A little more would help a bit.I'm doing the top thing. Sticking between 1500-2000 cals a day. Also walking daily. My average is 7k steps a day.
Yeah, I guess you're right - maybe my current calories are more maintenance than deficit. I just want my weight loss portion of this journey to be sustainable. I don't want to go down super low in cals each day and lose a few pounds just to gain it back.0 -
Muscle gain does take time, and happens slower in a calorie deficit (maybe not at all depending on the size of the deficit, among other factors).
Even under ideal conditions, a pound a month of muscle gain would be a really good result for a woman. Ideal conditions include relative youth, good nutrition (especially but not exclusively ample protein), a well-designed weight lifting program faithfully performed, favorable genetics, newness to weight lifting, a calorie surplus (weight gain), and probably some things I'm forgetting. You're not in ideal conditions, which doesn't mean it can't happen, but we'd expect it to be slower.
Body REcomposition (strict-ish definition) is gaining muscle, losing fat, but staying around the same body weight. Some have assumed that's what you're shooting for, but I'm not sure. That is also slow. The stuff in the previous paragraph would still apply, but part of the fuel for muscle gains would come from body fat (no calorie surplus).
If your goal is to lose some body fat faster than muscle gains can realistically happen, that's all about calorie levels, specifically a calorie deficit. It sounds like this IS your goal, if I read you correctly.
Some women would lose fine on 1500-2000 calories, but quite a few wouldn't. It depends on your size (height/weight), age, daily life activity, and exercise (mostly). You didn't mention your height, but if I assume average height (5'4"), a TDEE calculator suggests your calorie needs to maintain weight (at age 31, 148 pounds) might be 1800-2200-ish depending on exercise and other activity.
If that's true, and you're statistically average (<== important), and your logging is perfect, you may have only a 200-300 calorie daily deficit on average. That would be about half a pound a week of fat loss. From my personal experience, fat loss that slow can take more than a month at times to show up clearly on the body weight scale. It did for me, even when I was using a weight trending app, not just looking at daily weights.
If that set of speculations were all true, and half a pound a week is what you're aiming for, it might be a good idea to apply patience for another full menstrual cycle (if you have those) to compare body weight at the same relative point in 3 different cycles. (Two might work if targeting a faster weight loss rate.) Say maybe 8 weeks or so total, if no cycles.
Unless you're quite petite, your current weight isn't severely overweight. Given that assumption, and the fact that you want to have some hope of gaining muscle while losing fat, half a pound a week would be reasonable.
If you're wanting to lose fat (weight) faster than that, or you haven't lost weight in the timespans I mentioned above, I'd agree that it'd be time to cut calories a bit further (no matter what MFP, another calculator, a trainer, or even a fitness tracker says). Use the assumption that 500 calories per day is a pound a week (and apply arithmetic for fractional pounds).
I'm assuming your base calorie goal is 1500. That would be a bit above your estimated BMR (again assuming 5'4"), which is probably reasonable in your context.
I have to say, the thing that raises the biggest question in my mind is that you say you eat up to 2000 on exercise days. Maybe that's an exceptionally large day, I don't know. But I'm wondering what you're doing and for how long that it earns 500 net calories? You imply that you're strength training, which is worth doing for many reasons, but it isn't a great calorie burner. Walking is good, but also not huge calories.
500 total calories is far from impossible, but it's on the higher side for what many people commonly do. Depending on the source of that estimate, it could be on the high side. It's possible to get workable exercise estimates, but some sources do over-estimate.
I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to be helpful, but also frank and clear. I want you to succeed, because both weight loss and fitness improvement have been powerful quality of life improvements for me, and I want that for you (for everyone!). That puts me in "question everything" mode, as I hope you can understand.
Best wishes!
I appreciate all of this. I don't want to go too low in cals each day. I want this to be sustainable for me where I'm not gaining back what I've lost. My main goal is to just feel good and feel strong which is why I'm also doing a weightlifting program. After that, I'd like to lost a few pounds in my stomach and gain muscle. I'm okay with this process taking longer. I guess I just figured the scale would've moved a little more than it has after consistently working out and eating decent for the last month.
My base is 1500 a day. I also don't want to mess up my currently metabolism by dropping super low in cals. Years ago I tried doing 1200 a day and it just wasn't feasible for me. I was miserable and hungry. It didn't feel good for me. But 1500 is manageable esp since I've put a bigger focus on protein centered meals for B/L/D. I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.0 -
Muscle gain does take time, and happens slower in a calorie deficit (maybe not at all depending on the size of the deficit, among other factors).
Even under ideal conditions, a pound a month of muscle gain would be a really good result for a woman. Ideal conditions include relative youth, good nutrition (especially but not exclusively ample protein), a well-designed weight lifting program faithfully performed, favorable genetics, newness to weight lifting, a calorie surplus (weight gain), and probably some things I'm forgetting. You're not in ideal conditions, which doesn't mean it can't happen, but we'd expect it to be slower.
Body REcomposition (strict-ish definition) is gaining muscle, losing fat, but staying around the same body weight. Some have assumed that's what you're shooting for, but I'm not sure. That is also slow. The stuff in the previous paragraph would still apply, but part of the fuel for muscle gains would come from body fat (no calorie surplus).
If your goal is to lose some body fat faster than muscle gains can realistically happen, that's all about calorie levels, specifically a calorie deficit. It sounds like this IS your goal, if I read you correctly.
Some women would lose fine on 1500-2000 calories, but quite a few wouldn't. It depends on your size (height/weight), age, daily life activity, and exercise (mostly). You didn't mention your height, but if I assume average height (5'4"), a TDEE calculator suggests your calorie needs to maintain weight (at age 31, 148 pounds) might be 1800-2200-ish depending on exercise and other activity.
If that's true, and you're statistically average (<== important), and your logging is perfect, you may have only a 200-300 calorie daily deficit on average. That would be about half a pound a week of fat loss. From my personal experience, fat loss that slow can take more than a month at times to show up clearly on the body weight scale. It did for me, even when I was using a weight trending app, not just looking at daily weights.
If that set of speculations were all true, and half a pound a week is what you're aiming for, it might be a good idea to apply patience for another full menstrual cycle (if you have those) to compare body weight at the same relative point in 3 different cycles. (Two might work if targeting a faster weight loss rate.) Say maybe 8 weeks or so total, if no cycles.
Unless you're quite petite, your current weight isn't severely overweight. Given that assumption, and the fact that you want to have some hope of gaining muscle while losing fat, half a pound a week would be reasonable.
If you're wanting to lose fat (weight) faster than that, or you haven't lost weight in the timespans I mentioned above, I'd agree that it'd be time to cut calories a bit further (no matter what MFP, another calculator, a trainer, or even a fitness tracker says). Use the assumption that 500 calories per day is a pound a week (and apply arithmetic for fractional pounds).
I'm assuming your base calorie goal is 1500. That would be a bit above your estimated BMR (again assuming 5'4"), which is probably reasonable in your context.
I have to say, the thing that raises the biggest question in my mind is that you say you eat up to 2000 on exercise days. Maybe that's an exceptionally large day, I don't know. But I'm wondering what you're doing and for how long that it earns 500 net calories? You imply that you're strength training, which is worth doing for many reasons, but it isn't a great calorie burner. Walking is good, but also not huge calories.
500 total calories is far from impossible, but it's on the higher side for what many people commonly do. Depending on the source of that estimate, it could be on the high side. It's possible to get workable exercise estimates, but some sources do over-estimate.
I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to be helpful, but also frank and clear. I want you to succeed, because both weight loss and fitness improvement have been powerful quality of life improvements for me, and I want that for you (for everyone!). That puts me in "question everything" mode, as I hope you can understand.
Best wishes!
I appreciate all of this. I don't want to go too low in cals each day. I want this to be sustainable for me where I'm not gaining back what I've lost. My main goal is to just feel good and feel strong which is why I'm also doing a weightlifting program. After that, I'd like to lost a few pounds in my stomach and gain muscle. I'm okay with this process taking longer. I guess I just figured the scale would've moved a little more than it has after consistently working out and eating decent for the last month.
My base is 1500 a day. I also don't want to mess up my currently metabolism by dropping super low in cals. Years ago I tried doing 1200 a day and it just wasn't feasible for me. I was miserable and hungry. It didn't feel good for me. But 1500 is manageable esp since I've put a bigger focus on protein centered meals for B/L/D. I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.
That's reasonable. I think it's important to be clear-minded, though, that it's calorie balance that determines whether the scale goes up, down, or fluctuates in a steady range.
I wouldn't want to go as low as 1200, either; and I think that she who loses at a satisfying rate while eating the most calories, wins.
That's a path of thriving, compared with aggressively fast loss.
If you're satisfied with your current weight loss rate now, that's perfect. If you want it to go a little faster . . . well, there's some space between 1200 and 1500-2000. Only you can set your priorities.
Other options would be to increase activity a bit (exercise or daily life stuff) if that can be done without either increasing fatigue or calorie intake.
It's somewhat common IMO for people to underestimate the potential impact of pushing daily life activity a bit, and doing it consistently. There's a thread here where many MFP-ers shared their ideas for doing that, if the idea appeals to you:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p11 -
Muscle gain does take time, and happens slower in a calorie deficit (maybe not at all depending on the size of the deficit, among other factors).
Even under ideal conditions, a pound a month of muscle gain would be a really good result for a woman. Ideal conditions include relative youth, good nutrition (especially but not exclusively ample protein), a well-designed weight lifting program faithfully performed, favorable genetics, newness to weight lifting, a calorie surplus (weight gain), and probably some things I'm forgetting. You're not in ideal conditions, which doesn't mean it can't happen, but we'd expect it to be slower.
Body REcomposition (strict-ish definition) is gaining muscle, losing fat, but staying around the same body weight. Some have assumed that's what you're shooting for, but I'm not sure. That is also slow. The stuff in the previous paragraph would still apply, but part of the fuel for muscle gains would come from body fat (no calorie surplus).
If your goal is to lose some body fat faster than muscle gains can realistically happen, that's all about calorie levels, specifically a calorie deficit. It sounds like this IS your goal, if I read you correctly.
Some women would lose fine on 1500-2000 calories, but quite a few wouldn't. It depends on your size (height/weight), age, daily life activity, and exercise (mostly). You didn't mention your height, but if I assume average height (5'4"), a TDEE calculator suggests your calorie needs to maintain weight (at age 31, 148 pounds) might be 1800-2200-ish depending on exercise and other activity.
If that's true, and you're statistically average (<== important), and your logging is perfect, you may have only a 200-300 calorie daily deficit on average. That would be about half a pound a week of fat loss. From my personal experience, fat loss that slow can take more than a month at times to show up clearly on the body weight scale. It did for me, even when I was using a weight trending app, not just looking at daily weights.
If that set of speculations were all true, and half a pound a week is what you're aiming for, it might be a good idea to apply patience for another full menstrual cycle (if you have those) to compare body weight at the same relative point in 3 different cycles. (Two might work if targeting a faster weight loss rate.) Say maybe 8 weeks or so total, if no cycles.
Unless you're quite petite, your current weight isn't severely overweight. Given that assumption, and the fact that you want to have some hope of gaining muscle while losing fat, half a pound a week would be reasonable.
If you're wanting to lose fat (weight) faster than that, or you haven't lost weight in the timespans I mentioned above, I'd agree that it'd be time to cut calories a bit further (no matter what MFP, another calculator, a trainer, or even a fitness tracker says). Use the assumption that 500 calories per day is a pound a week (and apply arithmetic for fractional pounds).
I'm assuming your base calorie goal is 1500. That would be a bit above your estimated BMR (again assuming 5'4"), which is probably reasonable in your context.
I have to say, the thing that raises the biggest question in my mind is that you say you eat up to 2000 on exercise days. Maybe that's an exceptionally large day, I don't know. But I'm wondering what you're doing and for how long that it earns 500 net calories? You imply that you're strength training, which is worth doing for many reasons, but it isn't a great calorie burner. Walking is good, but also not huge calories.
500 total calories is far from impossible, but it's on the higher side for what many people commonly do. Depending on the source of that estimate, it could be on the high side. It's possible to get workable exercise estimates, but some sources do over-estimate.
I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to be helpful, but also frank and clear. I want you to succeed, because both weight loss and fitness improvement have been powerful quality of life improvements for me, and I want that for you (for everyone!). That puts me in "question everything" mode, as I hope you can understand.
Best wishes!
I appreciate all of this. I don't want to go too low in cals each day. I want this to be sustainable for me where I'm not gaining back what I've lost. My main goal is to just feel good and feel strong which is why I'm also doing a weightlifting program. After that, I'd like to lost a few pounds in my stomach and gain muscle. I'm okay with this process taking longer. I guess I just figured the scale would've moved a little more than it has after consistently working out and eating decent for the last month.
My base is 1500 a day. I also don't want to mess up my currently metabolism by dropping super low in cals. Years ago I tried doing 1200 a day and it just wasn't feasible for me. I was miserable and hungry. It didn't feel good for me. But 1500 is manageable esp since I've put a bigger focus on protein centered meals for B/L/D. I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.
That's reasonable. I think it's important to be clear-minded, though, that it's calorie balance that determines whether the scale goes up, down, or fluctuates in a steady range.
I wouldn't want to go as low as 1200, either; and I think that she who loses at a satisfying rate while eating the most calories, wins. That's a path of thriving, compared with aggressively fast loss.
If you're satisfied with your current weight loss rate now, that's perfect. If you want it to go a little faster . . . well, there's some space between 1200 and 1500-2000. Only you can set your priorities.
Other options would be to increase activity a bit (exercise or daily life stuff) if that can be done without either increasing fatigue or calorie intake.
It's somewhat common IMO for people to underestimate the potential impact of pushing daily life activity a bit, and doing it consistently. There's a thread here where many MFP-ers shared their ideas for doing that, if the idea appeals to you:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1
Def going to tighten my cals a bit. Thank you for the suggestions!1 -
I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.
I think of everything said, this is the key reason why you're not seeing the weight loss you anticipate. This sounds like on days you do not workout you eat more, and that when you do eat more you may jump from 1500 to 2000 calories, a huge increase.
To me, this sounds like you are sabotaging your efforts to lose weight by relaxing your eating standards on non-exercise days so much it offsets the gains made on exercise days.
Think of it this way: Let's say you eat at exactly maintenance each day. If you exercise 4 days a week and burn 300 calories each time, that's 1200 calories on the week. If you eat right on those days, but increase eating on the 3 rest days by 400 per day, that's 1200 calories above maintenance on the week. The additional food equals the additional exercise burn, and you're left with the maintenance, meaning you do not lose any weight that week, despite having 4 days of exercise and strict food monitoring.2 -
This content has been removed.
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I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.
I think of everything said, this is the key reason why you're not seeing the weight loss you anticipate. This sounds like on days you do not workout you eat more, and that when you do eat more you may jump from 1500 to 2000 calories, a huge increase.
To me, this sounds like you are sabotaging your efforts to lose weight by relaxing your eating standards on non-exercise days so much it offsets the gains made on exercise days.
Think of it this way: Let's say you eat at exactly maintenance each day. If you exercise 4 days a week and burn 300 calories each time, that's 1200 calories on the week. If you eat right on those days, but increase eating on the 3 rest days by 400 per day, that's 1200 calories above maintenance on the week. The additional food equals the additional exercise burn, and you're left with the maintenance, meaning you do not lose any weight that week, despite having 4 days of exercise and strict food monitoring.
Yeah I am realizing this LOL. I also realized that just because you workout and burn some calories it doesn't mean you get to eat them. That they're actually what help put you into a deficit. Common sense and something I should've realized before now. 😅0 -
I'm usually around that 1500-1600 a day. On days where it's a rest day or I eat a little more it's closer to 2. But rarely over that mark.
I think of everything said, this is the key reason why you're not seeing the weight loss you anticipate. This sounds like on days you do not workout you eat more, and that when you do eat more you may jump from 1500 to 2000 calories, a huge increase.
To me, this sounds like you are sabotaging your efforts to lose weight by relaxing your eating standards on non-exercise days so much it offsets the gains made on exercise days.
Think of it this way: Let's say you eat at exactly maintenance each day. If you exercise 4 days a week and burn 300 calories each time, that's 1200 calories on the week. If you eat right on those days, but increase eating on the 3 rest days by 400 per day, that's 1200 calories above maintenance on the week. The additional food equals the additional exercise burn, and you're left with the maintenance, meaning you do not lose any weight that week, despite having 4 days of exercise and strict food monitoring.
Yeah I am realizing this LOL. I also realized that just because you workout and burn some calories it doesn't mean you get to eat them. That they're actually what help put you into a deficit. Common sense and something I should've realized before now. 😅
Maybe not exactly. If your base calorie goal includes a deficit (so that you'd lose weight without exercise), then eating back a realistic estimate of exercise calories leaves you with the same calorie deficit and the same weight loss rate.
Simplistic example using round numbers:
Say my maintenance calories (TDEE) were 2000 every day without exercise. If I eat 1500 calories every day, I'd expect to lose roughly a pound a week, which I'd see on the scale in the average over a few weeks.
Now lets say that one week I do 300 calories of exercise all 7 days, and I keep it moderate enough that fatigue doesn't sap calories from the rest of my day because of extra rest needed.
That means that my maintenance calories those days are 2000+300 or 2300 for those 7 days. If I eat 1500+300=1800 calories for each of those 7 days, I still have the same 500 calorie deficit (2300-500=1800). I'd still expect to lose a pound of fat that week.
It isn't really that the exercise creates the deficit. The deficit can exist with or without exercise, but the calorie level differs between "with exercise" and "without exercise".
The deficit depends on the calories we burn in all ways, as compared with the total number of calories we eat. We burn calories just being alive, by doing daily life stuff (job, home chores, etc.), and by exercise. For most people, the exercise is the smallest of those 3 categories.
There are various ways to account for the calories, but I think it's important to understand what's behind any of those methods: The difference between total calories burned and total calories eaten.0 -
Here is a good article to help. It explains why each 3500 calories deficit does not translate into a lb. of weight loss. https://thestrongkitchen.com/blog/post/how-many-calories-does-it-take-to-build-a-pound-of-muscle0
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I don't think that helps at all. I mean it's interesting, but also not helpful.Here is a good article to help. It explains why each 3500 calories deficit does not translate into a lb. of weight loss. https://thestrongkitchen.com/blog/post/how-many-calories-does-it-take-to-build-a-pound-of-muscle
a) It's over-complicating the numerical amount of calories, and unless someone is getting a daily DEXA scan and doing a bunch of math every day they won't know their own exact number that week anyway, so it doesn't help at all.
b) You only know what deficit you're actually in by tracking your weight change over time. If you're losing a pound per week, it's much simpler to assume that's 3500 calories than doing daily DEXA scans and a ton of math to maybe work out it's actually 3400 for your situation, that week.1 -
You're a month and a half in. Trust the process, show up, work hard, eat well and get your sleep. Focus on the patience muscle...0
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