Is Burning off almost an entire day's worth of calories normal?

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Replies

  • 3dogsrunning
    3dogsrunning Posts: 27,167 Member
    I burnt all my days calories off (1200) running for 2 hours, but i don't eat my exercise calories back, i don't care what any one says - i burnt them off for a reason! but i ate my whole 1200 kcals afterwards :) So yes, it's possible to burn your days intake off during heavy exercise.

    It is not healthy to burn off all your calorie intake. You are starving your body. It is no different than just not eating.

    It is also very unwise if you have performance goals.
  • dolliesdaughter
    dolliesdaughter Posts: 544 Member
    edited January 2016
    That burn sounds a little high. Running 1 mile usually burns off 100 calories for the average person 500 for 45 minutes of Zumba, mmmmm unless you are extremely large sounds very high.

    My BMI puts me at the low end of overweigh, a less than 10 lbs I would be at a normal BMI.

    Any movement is good movement though.
  • lsutiger2112
    lsutiger2112 Posts: 17 Member
    I do track my workout calories just for info, but I never eat any of the extra calories I've earned, I stick to my regular goal. I just try to always eat the right thing.
  • marlies1964
    marlies1964 Posts: 3 Member
    a lot of the fitness calculators give you the amount of calories burned off if you were to do that exercise for an hour
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  • krysmuree
    krysmuree Posts: 326 Member
    I'm lucky to burn 500-600 while cross-training at a moderate to high pace in the gym (elliptical, stairmaster, so on) for an hour. I jog at a 15% incline for ten minutes on average and burn approximately 110 according to my HRM - but I don't hold on. That makes a big difference. As for Zumba, that sounds a little on the high side. I would take those estimations and cut a solid 20% out.
  • ASKyle
    ASKyle Posts: 1,475 Member
    Stop holding on to the treadmill- Walk at an incline and pace you can maintain with your legs.

    To give you an idea of why it's cheating- I recently did a hike with 2000ft of elevation gain over 2 miles (about 19% incline). It took WELL over an hour of huffing and puffing by an avid hiker that's 5'2" 130lbs. You can't count the calorie burn if you're holding on, because you're simply not really working that hard.
  • Dnarules
    Dnarules Posts: 2,081 Member
    cdudley628 wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »

    As the others have mentioned, those numbers seem really high ... so yes, I'd half them.


    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba

    Total: 1750 calories.

    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.

    Total: 1475 calories.

    Eat all the 1475 calories.

    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.

    I've never seen people halve their exercise calories after already halving the estimated burn they got from online calculators. I thought the point in halving was because the calories burned was overestimated? So the calculators gave her 600 and 500, I thought she would just cut those in half because they were overestimated, giving her the total of 1750.

    My thoughts exactly. 1750 seems way more correct. The whole point of halving it is to take care of possible problems with overestimation. There is no reason to cut it in half again.

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    ASKyle wrote: »
    Stop holding on to the treadmill- Walk at an incline and pace you can maintain with your legs.

    To give you an idea of why it's cheating- I recently did a hike with 2000ft of elevation gain over 2 miles (about 19% incline). It took WELL over an hour of huffing and puffing by an avid hiker that's 5'2" 130lbs. You can't count the calorie burn if you're holding on, because you're simply not really working that hard.

    THIS.

    You're much better off walking at the highest incline you can without holding on. I'm not the most athletic person but I'm not in a bad shape by any means and for me for now it's 13.5% incline at 3.3mph for an hour. And I'm sweating buckets and pretty much dying when it's over.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,610 Member
    cdudley628 wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »

    As the others have mentioned, those numbers seem really high ... so yes, I'd half them.


    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba

    Total: 1750 calories.

    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.

    Total: 1475 calories.

    Eat all the 1475 calories.

    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.

    I've never seen people halve their exercise calories after already halving the estimated burn they got from online calculators. I thought the point in halving was because the calories burned was overestimated? So the calculators gave her 600 and 500, I thought she would just cut those in half because they were overestimated, giving her the total of 1750.

    I presume most of those online calculators over-estimate the number of calories burned, so generally speaking I go with a low estimate.

    For example, some online calculators presume that I might burn as much as 800 cal/hour cycling!! Yeah, right. I wish! More realistically, however, it's down around 400 cal/hour. And then I might eat half of that.

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,242 Member
    edited January 2016
    Machka9 wrote: »
    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba
    Total: 1750 calories.
    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.
    Total: 1475 calories.
    Eat all the 1475 calories.
    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.
    No.
    You have given her 1/4 of her exercise calories.
    rabbitjb wrote: »
    Did you hold on in your 20% incline, because that is rather steep and if you held on you counteracted any benefit in the incline. Always walk without holding on...at 230lbs I would imagine you burned around 500 cals if walking at a decent intensity (based on walking uphill being around 5 METs)

    ...Zumba I'd say probably more like 3-400

    So if your goal is 1200 you get to eat 2100 today ...or spread it over the week in ice cream

    Good times

    YES

    jacki865 wrote: »
    Well my calorie goal is 1200 and today before dinner I burned about 600 calories on a 20 % incline walk for an hour and then some friends offered to do a Zumba class which is estimated to burn about 500 calories for that 45 minute duration. These are all rough estimates I got using multiple calculators online taking my weight into consideration. Well that's 1100 calories and I haven't even ate dinner yet which puts me at a net of 1600 which is more than my goal. I'm still learning the whole calories in/calories out and how exercise comes in. But I never heard of burning an entire days goal of calories in 2 hours. Has that ever happened to you?

    Your 1200 calories are the calories left AFTER your desired deficit has already been taken into account.
    Yes, with enough exercise you can burn 2000, or even more calories.
    However, it is not easy to do that day in and day out.

    Moderate exercise activities are those during which you burn approximately 3x to 6x more energy than you would at rest.

    Once you hit an activity that burns 6x the energy you would at rest (or more), you graduate to "vigorous".

    I would not expect a non athlete to be be able to watch TV while exerting vigorously, hence Rabbit topping your walk at 5 MET regardless of incline.

    Have a look here at what would be considered moderate and vigorous exercise activities.
    http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/physical_activity_intensity/en/
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,610 Member
    edited January 2016
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »
    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba
    Total: 1750 calories.
    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.
    Total: 1475 calories.
    Eat all the 1475 calories.
    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.
    No.
    You have given her 1/4 of her exercise calories.

    No, I've given her half of a realistic number of exercise calories.

    600 calories for a walk just isn't realistic. I dropped it to 300 to place it within a realistic ballpark. (If she were running, 600 calories might be realistic.)

    Then I encouraged her to eat half her exercise calories. Half of a realistic number. :)


    But, if she can lose weight using the 600 calories number ... great! I figure, eat as much as possible while still losing at the rate you want to lose ... and you might need to shift your calorie intake up and down a bit to figure out what that number is.

  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,242 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »
    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba
    Total: 1750 calories.
    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.
    Total: 1475 calories.
    Eat all the 1475 calories.
    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.
    No.
    You have given her 1/4 of her exercise calories.

    No, I've given her half of a realistic number of exercise calories.

    600 calories for a walk just isn't realistic. I dropped it to 300 to place it within a realistic ballpark. (If she were running, 600 calories might be realistic.)

    Then I encouraged her to eat half her exercise calories. Half of a realistic number. :)


    But, if she can lose weight using the 600 calories number ... great! I figure, eat as much as possible while still losing at the rate you want to lose ... and you might need to shift your calorie intake up and down a bit to figure out what that number is.

    Your MFP goal already includes your deficit.

    If you have correctly estimated your number of exercise calories then you're supposed to eat it back in order to meet your selected goal and avoid creating an undesirably large deficit.

    If your number is realistic, in other words correct, then you eat it back.

    You generally halve unreliable exercise estimates in order to bring them within the realm of believable.

    You don't do it for the heck of it, or if you have reason to believe that they're accurate in the first place
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Machka9 wrote: »
    OK, you've got 1200 calories to use.
    Plus, say, 300 calories for the walk
    Plus, say, 250 calories for the Zumba
    Total: 1750 calories.
    Many of us eat only about half our exercise calories back, so subtract 275 calories to remove half your exercise calories.
    Total: 1475 calories.
    Eat all the 1475 calories.
    You could probably even eat a little bit more if you happened to be really hungry. Once in a while I'll eat 75% or 90% of my exercise calories because I'm having a really hungry day.
    No.
    You have given her 1/4 of her exercise calories.

    No, I've given her half of a realistic number of exercise calories.

    600 calories for a walk just isn't realistic. I dropped it to 300 to place it within a realistic ballpark. (If she were running, 600 calories might be realistic.)

    Then I encouraged her to eat half her exercise calories. Half of a realistic number. :)


    But, if she can lose weight using the 600 calories number ... great! I figure, eat as much as possible while still losing at the rate you want to lose ... and you might need to shift your calorie intake up and down a bit to figure out what that number is.

    My 'walks' burn more calories than my run, because I walk at a high incline without holding the rail. Just saying.