What Deficit is Better - Food, Exercise or Both

BetesBitch

What deficit is better to have? deficit in food, exercise or both. If your answer is both, do you figure 50/50 or something else? What I currently try to do is a 500 calorie deficit each day and a exercise deficit of 200-300 4 times a week.

sengalissa

Does not matter. Hoe do you count if one particular calorie you burned came from being alive or from exercising?

Being in calorie deficit leaves me hungry. Lifting makes me hungrier. Running makes me less hungry.

CA_Underdog

Does not matter.

Agreed that a deficit is a deficit from a short-term weight loss perspective.

However, I would argue that long-term, physical training has the potential to help you either maintain or add muscle, and that muscle will turn you into a better fat-burning machine. It also can make you fitter and more toned. You can train as much as your body, schedule, and enjoyment dictate. Which usually isn't much!

Thus, I vote "Training deficits" so long as you don't overdo.

MeanderingMammal

What deficit is better to have? deficit in food, exercise or both. If your answer is both, do you figure 50/50 or something else? What I currently try to do is a 500 calorie deficit each day and a exercise deficit of 200-300 4 times a week.

Suspect you're overthinking it. The main thing is to have a calorie deficit, doesn't matter how you got there.

Assuming that you're using MFP as it's designed to be used there is already a calorie deficit built into the figures to support your loss goal rate, so you should in principle eat back the calories that you expend in training. So if you run for half an hour you'll burn c 400 cals, eat an additional 400 cals to balance it out.

In practice many don't eat back all the cals expended, to account for errors.

LongIsland27itl

Why do you complicate things so much, you're worrying about splitting deficits when you can't even maintain a slight one for more than a couple of days. First things first.