Work-Out Calories – My Experiment

carissalynn82

I am one of those people who like to be given a good reason for why I should do or not do certain things. When I heard so many people saying that you have to eat your work-out calories I really wondered why. Nothing I read convinced me one way or another, so I decided to experiment and see what worked for me.

I work out for an hour 5 days a week and was eating about 1,300-1,400 calories a day. In a month I only lost 7 pounds and was pretty dissatisfied with that. Two weeks ago I reduced my caloric intake to 1,200 a day. On the first day I was just fine, but by day two I began to feel tired. I tried to maintain my usual hour long work out, but found it was very difficult and so I ended each work out at about 35 minutes. By day four I was nearly falling asleep at my desk! On day 5 I was so tired and weak I was unable to work out and in the afternoon I began to feel extremely hungry. I stopped and got a donut on the way home and then ate Chinese take out for dinner! :devil: I felt much better after eating that night. And so ended week 1 of the experiment.

For week 2 I increased my caloric intake to 1,400-1,500 a day. The difference was incredible! I had much more energy and was easily able to complete my hour long work outs each day.

The interesting thing is that there was absolutely no difference in weight loss between the two weeks. Both weeks I lost 1.5 pounds. The main difference was in how I felt.

I’m now at 10 pounds lost and am happy to have learned what works for me!

SHBoss1673

FYI, 7 lbs in a month is EXCELLENT weight loss for anyone. That's almost 2 lbs a week.

kholmes

Question - So for the first month you were eating your daily required calories without workout calories and then the first week you were eating less than your required daily calories and the second week you were eating your daily calories plus workout calories? Is that correct?

Thanks for sharing.

carissalynn82

I rarely eat ALL of my work out calories. The first month I lost 7 pounds by eating 1,300-1,400 calories, which would only be 100-200 of my work out calories. I work out for an hour and burn around 500 calories.
The first week of the experiment I ate NONE of my work out calories. That's why I felt so bad. Then the second week I ate most of my work out calories, not quite all of them though.

klaflamme

Interesting experiment - it makes sense. Thanks for sharing.

thennig

Thanks for that I have been struggling with this for well as far as I could think back I am trying to lose weight quickly but healthy but when I did the 1200 cal and working out a hour and a half burning 600 calories a session i was exhausted and grumpy and always wanted to eat bad. So I am gonna try your way so wish me luck:happy:

kholmes

Thanks for the info. I am going to look closely at my history and start noting my mood and see if anything changes.