HELP PLEASE!!!

bonnykate

Okay, the first couple weeks it was whatever, I'll try again. Now I'm really getting bugged.

Who has lost weight eating the calories they've burned through exercise? Why does this work?

Why isn't it working for me?

bonnykate

Okay, the first couple weeks it was whatever, I'll try again. Now I'm really getting bugged.

Who has lost weight eating the calories they've burned through exercise? Why does this work?

Why isn't it working for me?

HealthyKt78

Funny you should ask. I just saw this on another site:


Mistake #2: Overreporting the "extra" calorie expenditure of exercise

Most people count the calories they spend exercising as "extra" calories. There is a difference between calories burned while exercising and "extra" calories burned exercising. Here is an example: you burn 300 calories on the treadmill instead of your usual activity (watching TV at home); in reality, you have to subtract the calories you would have spent watching TV from these 300 calories to calculate how many additional calories you burned. Let's say that watching TV, you would have burned 80 calories. In this specific case, you have expended 300 calories while exercising, and 220 "extra" calories.

Calorie counters mindlessly add the calories burned exercising as "extra" and in some cases, this practice can significantly influence the calorie calculations. Hence, calorie software counts the part of your usual activities that overlaps with the extra activities twice.

How to estimate the "extra" calories burned exercising?

In order to make the calculations more accurate, I shall first introduce the concept of MET values. MET values are a convenient way to calculate the calorie cost of activities. MET values are multiples of the resting energy expenditure per time. In plain English, a MET = 3 means burning 3 times more calories than resting. A MET = 1 signifies how many calories you burn at rest (your Resting Metabolic Rate or Basal Metabolic Rate). Whatever you do, you burn calories at a rate of at least MET = 1 with the only exception being sleeping which has MET = 0.9. During the day, most activities include sitting and walking which have MET values between 1.2 and 3. Your total daily energy expenditure is calculated by multiplying your Resting Metabolic Rate by the average MET of all your activities. Is your head spinning?

Let's use a real world example. Consider a female person with a Resting Metabolic Rate of 1200 calories a day. One day has 1440 minutes. Our example lady is burning 1200/1440 = 0.84 calories per minute at rest, which signifies a MET = 1. Let's say our example woman just returned from an aerobics class, where she exercised for 30 minutes. General aerobic class training has a MET = 6. Our example lady has just burned 30 (minutes) x 6 (MET) * 0.84 (calories per minute) = 151 calories while exercising. Suppose our lady would have chatted on the internet instead of exercising (MET = 1.5). In this example, the woman substituted chatting on the internet with aerobic exercising. Remember, that every time you do something you substitute one activity for another. In order to get the extra calories, we have to subtract 1.5 (chatting) from 6 (exercising). Now let's calculate the extra calories: 30 (minutes) * (6 - 1.5) (MET value) * 0.84 = 113 calories.

Let's consider what a standard calorie counter would have done. First, it will assume an average calorie burn rate of 1 calorie per minute. Then the counter will find that exercising for 30 minutes will yield 30 (minutes) * 6 (MET) * 1 (calories per minute) = 180 calories. The calorie counter will add these 180 calories to your daily expenditure without considering that a part of these 180 calories is already accounted by your usual activities.

Do you now see the difference between 113 calories and 180 calories? If that woman spends 5 hours a week in that aerobics class, the standard calorie counters will overreport her calorie output by: (180-113) * 10 = 670 calories a week. The woman will be fooled that her metabolic rate has dropped while she just overestimated her calorie expenditure. Enter weight loss plateau, wasted time and efforts. Do you have the time for trial and error calorie estimations?
END OF ARTICLE.







I'm very hesitant about eating my exercise calories, at least all of them. I mean I'm trying really hard to lose weight and I burned calories. Why would I want to take them back? Don't get me wrong, I eat at least 1200-1400 cals but considering my intake is suppose to be over 1800 i feel as if i haven't changed my eating habits when I eat that much and on days when I exercise, forget it. I would have to force myself to eat that much. It's too much food!! And when I eat that much I don't feel healthy and isn't that really the point of all this?

songbyrdsweet

You need to think of this in terms of months and years, not weeks. Weeks are piddly little things when you consider that we're on this planet for about 75 years if all goes well. It takes a month or more to see muscular changes--why would you expect anything different from changes in fatty tissue? It takes time to lose enough fat to show anything on the scale, especially when you are influencing blood sugar and water storage.

I have tried both eating and not eating my exercise calories, which makes about a 500-1000 calorie difference. If I don't eat them, I eat about 1400 calories a day. If I do, I eat 1800-2200 calories a day. No, I don't lose when I eat 1400 calories. I feel like crap and my athletic performance suffers. What's the point of eating that little if I can't perform?

That said, I do subtract my BMR calories from my exercise calories. Meaning, since I burn 54 cals/hour doing nothing, if I run for an hour and burn 600 cals according to my watch, I only record 546 calories so I don't re-count what I'd burn doing nothing. I also have a HRM and have had my BMR tested in a lab setting, which improves the accuracy of my figures.

ce_fit

When I was excercising more this past summer I ate my excercise calories. My weight loss was slow during this period. I started to eat only part of my excercise calories in September. Since then the weight has come off a little quicker.
I believe this supports the article posted by fatty78.