"Eating back" Exercise Calories - Simple breakdown

Maybe off topic but, What are your thoughts on using weekly calories and implementing a calorie shift (zig / zag) approach. I have been reading more on this and it just seems to make sense.

I plan to be doing this but concentrating just on the carb numbers and zig zagging them. I think it's good for the body, so long as there numbers are high enough to sustain normal life expenditure without exercise. Just like with exercise, you body will get used to the same thing over and over and adapt to it. Keep it guessing (in a healthy way) and I think the results will be good!

You lose more weight in your second example. You would also likely lose more muscle.

The scenario someone should choose is based on what goal they're looking for. Weight at the cost of fat and muscle, or weight at the cost of fat and a little muscle. There's no wrong way.

This is a dangerous mentality. More calories cut does not equal more weight lost. There is a certain amount of calories your body needs to run. Me for example, my BMR right now is like 2750, with a sedentary lifestyle, take that by 1.2 and it gives you my daily caloric burn just living a sedentary daily lifestyle, about 3300 calories my body uses daily to get me from point a to point b day to day. 2lb/week is the max recommended weight loss goal, thats cutting 1,000 calories a day below your total needed per day. hence my 2300 calorie daily goal. Do not go around telling people "well if you cut 1,000 calories thats good, but if you can cut 2500 calories THATS EVEN BETTER" because its a lie. too much of a deficit is a bad thing, if you maintain too high of a calorie deficit your body WILL recognize it as a food shortage and go into storage mode and quit burning and your weight loss will come to a screeching halt, or at least slow way down. (realize this doesnt happen overnight. its not like having a big deficit a couple of days is going to make a difference. this will happen if you make it a habit) its like a wood burning stove, if you wanna keep the burn going you need to keep adding fuel. I repeat, DO NOT think " the more calories i cut the more weight i will lose" its not true

My past with eating very low calorie diets and being anorexic would disagree with that "cutting more calories won't help you lose weight". You might stall, but at some point you've been at a deficit for awhile, you're burning more calories than you take in. Something on your body has to go. At some point, it'll be fat. I would rather argue eating too little is unhealthy for organ function and if you have too large of a deficit, you run a lot of health risks.

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"Interesting. It's strange how 3rd world poverty stricken countries don't have higher obesity rates with this logic. Wouldn't you agree?"

I don't think you can compare the two. The people in those countries that suffer from impoverishment are, more than likely, consistently lacking proper nourishment. Also, these people aren't eating like you and I in that they aren't ending the day with 1,500 calorie deficiency; they're barely getting any quality food at all. This is why bulimics and anorexics can lose so much weight in such a brief amount of time. However, neither the folks suffering from intentional eating disorders or the people you referenced in third world countries (who are impoverished) are healthy.

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"Interesting. It's strange how 3rd world poverty stricken countries don't have higher obesity rates with this logic. Wouldn't you agree?"

I don't think you can compare the two. The people in those countries that suffer from impoverishment are, more than likely, consistently lacking proper nourishment. Also, these people aren't eating like you and I in that they aren't ending the day with 1,500 calorie deficiency; they're barely getting any quality food at all. This is why bulimics and anorexics can lose so much weight in such a brief amount of time. However, neither the folks suffering from intentional eating disorders or the people you referenced in third world countries (who are impoverished) are healthy.

You can compare the two.

A lot of people have a misunderstanding of what BMR is. BMR is simply the energy your body will expend if you sat in bed all day. BMR is essentially TDEE for a person who almost never moves around. If you are a couch potato and eat at BMR, you'll maintain weight. If you're a couch potato and eat under BMR, you'll lose weight.

This is what BMR is NOT: a magic number that puts your body into 'starvation mode' that causes you to retain body mass despite the fact you are expending more energy throughout the day than your body needs. If you are a person who works a desk job and does no other physical activity throughout the week, it is likely that your TDEE-500 or TDEE-20% (whichever method you prefer) would go under your BMR. That is completely okay as long as your body gets the nutrients it needs to survive, which is surprisingly little. In fact, BMR has very little relevance when it comes to weightloss if you are using the TDEE method.

There's really no reason to even think about BMR. It's just another term for the same thing -- the energy you expend throughout the day. It's only relevance is saying 'huh, that's cool, if I did nothing all day I'd use up XXXX calories to just exist." But you don't just do nothing all day, do you?

Put another way: If you take two people, one who is extremely sedentary and one who is active, both at 20% bf. Let's say the sedentary person's TDEE is BMR + 100 = 1600 cal, and the active person's TDEE is BMR + 800 = 2500 cal. Both of those numbers represent the amount of energy those people will expend in a day. If person A eats 1100 cal/day (or even 1280 under the 20% formula) and person B eats 2100 cal/day to lose 1 lb/week, it is the same net effect on their bodies -- their bodies need to break down stored energy to make up a 500 cal deficit. Person A's body will not go into 'starvation mode' while person B loses a pound a week; the body has no calorie counter. It only knows if it has enough, too much, or too little and either uses excess energy stores for deficits or stores excess energy in surplus. It doesn't know if 'enough' is 1100, 1200, 1600, or 2100 calories. It just knows whether or not it needs more energy, and if it does there is a hierarchy of compounds it looks to get that energy from via various negative feedback mechanisms.

Now, with 1100 (or 1280) calories it's likely that person A will have to pay much closer attention to his/her nutrition intake and possibly take a multi-vitamin, whereas it will be much easier for person B to get all of their required nutrients, vitamins, and minerals from food.

So there you have it. There is no magic number for starvation mode. The studies conducted had people eat nothing or next to nothing but water for 6 months or more at a time. This was long enough for their bodies to utilize all of their stored fat as a result of severe calorie deficits. So the people in third world countries that look emaciated have starved to the point that their fat stores were used up. THAT is starvation mode. If you're 20, 30, 40% body fat, you've got quite a while before you hit that point.

I'm confused about activity levels. Sure cardio burns x amount of calories, but if I lift heavy weights for 45 minutes 3 days but then I'm sedentary the rest of the day would I be considered sedentary because weightlifting hardly burns any calories?

So there you have it. There is no magic number for starvation mode. The studies conducted had people eat nothing or next to nothing but water for 6 months or more at a time. This was long enough for their bodies to utilize all of their stored fat as a result of severe calorie deficits. So the people in third world countries that look emaciated have starved to the point that their fat stores were used up. THAT is starvation mode. If you're 20, 30, 40% body fat, you've got quite a while before you hit that point.

Agree with this ^^^^^

OMG.....I have been doing weight watchers program for 6 months and have not lost but 3-5 pounds. Some of my friends said that I need to eat more due to my exercise requirements therefore I have been double logging in both WW and MFP. To think about increasing my caloric intake scares the crap out of me but so does going on and on not losing weight. I keep thinking something is wrong with me and maybe I am not exercising enough or eating too much although the "program" says I am..........