Steady decrease in calories

geicko

I've been exercising 6 days a week for almost a year now and estimated my exercise calories.

I got a heart rate monitor for Christimas ! Love the gadget, and realized I had been over-estimating what I burn during exercise.

Now... after 3 weeks of wearing my HRM, I can see that calories I burn are steadily decreasing even though I keep pushing myself, reach my target zone and maintain the same average heart rate. My 45 minutes cardio workout (Turbo Jam Cardio Party) for example, when from burning 350 calories 3 weeks ago to just over 280 this morning. I know my body becomes more efficient but since I eat my exercise calories, I've been eating less and less and I'm not sure this is right ! Note that I'm not trying to lose weight, just maintain and stay fit.

So I guess my question is if your body burns less over time, should you decrease your food intake accordingly, even through the exercise amount remains unchanged ?

erickirb

This does sound right to me and an HRM is a much better indicator of what you actually burn, and will decrease over time doing the same routine.

On a side note when adding your calories burned are you backing out the calories you would have burned at rest. Say in a half hour you burn 250 according to your HRM but over that time you may have burned 60 anyway, causing your net cals from exercise to be only 190 (250-60) as the 60 is already taken into account via your activity level

geicko

Are you serious ? So I should not plug in the numbers from my HRM before I lower them based on the duration of the exercice ???

Gosh, I used to eat about 2000 calories but at this rate I'll be barely eating 1200 by Spring !

:sad: