Will I still lose weight if...

marinebiologist_girl

I'm contemplating taking a day off, but that'll mean that my net calories for the day more than double. They'll still be under my limit if I eat as I have been eating, but... Really making me quite edgy so I might not take the day off after all. It's only 11am. So... asking advice.

Will I still lose weight if I take a day off the gym and stay under my limit?

NoxDineen

Yes, take a rest day. How much do you usually net?

marinebiologist_girl

I'm eating under a 1,200 net by a fair limit because when I'm tired and exercised out I'm REALLY not hungry. Which is bad, I know...

My diary/exercise is open but I do try to exercise off at least 600 calories, 900 on a longer day.

SpazzyMal

You're netting less than a 1,000 calories most days. Follow what MFP tells you to and actually eat back your exercise calories. MFP puts in a deficit automatically. You're adding a deficit on top of a deficit and taking in too few calories to be healthy. Let me put it this way, with hypothetical numbers:

Lets say you set MFP to lose 2 pounds a week and it gives you 1,500 calories to do that.
Hypothetically with NO exercise, you should lose 2 pounds a week eating that amount.
Then you exercise 500 calories, which means MFP wants you to eat 2,000 that day.
But you don't eat your 500 exercise calories, which means you're only really taking in 1,000 that day.
In the long term, this will be bad for you.

In the meantime, taking a day off is likely not going to hurt your weight loss efforts in the long term. You might see a spike for the next few days, but that is likely just water weight reacting to the weird day and it will go back down.

But I would definitely suggest eating your exercise calories, because this off day isn't the thing you should really be worrying about, but rather the long-term damage you could be doing by eating so little is what you should be monitoring.

marinebiologist_girl

So I should be forcing myself to eat? As stated, I know it's bad, but I'm not that hungry by the time it comes around. I'll do my best, then.

What about today? I shouldn't put on too much? I'm aiming to weigh myself every Monday instead of every day.

NoxDineen

Eating under 1200 will mess with long term sustainable weight loss a lot more than missing a day at the gym.

I really encourage you to read a bit about metabolism, muscle maintenance & growth, and proper nutrition as it relates to fitness and fat loss. You're a science student so you have the advantage of a strong knowledge base in this area already.

I'm definitely no expert, and ro be totally honest the last week of my own food diary is pretty bad, but it looks like you're not getting enough protein, and you're not eating enough or frequently enough. Something I need to do more of is focus on strength training, which is tough since there's no immediate satisfaction of calories burned on my HRM.

I'm curious where you get the calories burned from? They seem really high vs mine for similar activities (but I may have borked my HRM on an obstacle race recently).

As for "forcing yourself to eat" you just have ro eat smarter. Iceberg lettuce has no calories, and no nutritional value. Eat a handful of almonds, peanut butter on a slice of whole wheat toast, have a soy milk/whey shake.

I don't mean to sound preachy, it's just that I was anorexic and now I eat quite a bit, work out reasonably and have weight falling off me while I feel stronger and healthier than I ever have. I'd like ro see more women feel like this.

mcrowe1016

There is a lot of talk on this website about "starving yourself will cause your body to go into starvation mode and you will stop losing weight and permanently damage your metabolism"

I am not sure if I believe this. What I do know is that a steep deficit like you are doing will lead to A LOT of MUSCLE loss along with fat loss. You want to keep as much muscle as possible because it will allow you to have a slightly higher metabolism and it looks awesome (strength training also helps with the looking awesome part).

Eating healthy and working out are habits you want to have for the rest of your life and not just for before you go back to school. Working out intensely every day is not sustainable.

AND, your muscles need a break. Rest days are recommended by almost everyone.

In conclusion, net at least 1200 calories, if for no other reason than to make sure you keep as much muscle as possible (It is not hard, there are 50000000000000 threads on here telling how to eat more) and take your rest day.

marinebiologist_girl

Well I have been informed I'm going to the gym anyway but I'll have a shorter workout today and I'll eat a proper lunch before, is that good? I've just had breakfast.

Also, I'm working out my calories (except for the swimming) by reading what the machines at the gym tell me. For the swimming I'm using MFP's estimates.

SpazzyMal

If you have to "force" yourself to eat a little bit, then... well, yes. Your body quickly acclimates to it and it wont seem like so much after a week or two. But really, like NoxDineen said, you mostly just have to be smarter about what you eat to get some more calories while also not sacrificing quality. Have some fun with recipes!

As for going off machines, I believe they actually tend to estimate calories burned a bit too high, but it's hard to know exactly without a HRM.

marinebiologist_girl

Sorry this took so long to reply to had a hundred and one other projects to work on this week.

I've got a students recipe book back home but it's currently on the other side of the Atlantic. I THINK it tells you calories etc so that could be fun to much about with. Living with friends next semester.