Any cons to maximizing exercise hours?

CeeBeeSlim · January 2016

Hi. I'm in a period right now where i have my days free and been trying out my neighborhood gym classes. The schedule I found I like turns out to be like two hour long back to back classes a day - Cardio/Trx: cardio/circuit training; circuit training/Trx). Weekends I do some stretching, light yoga. I'm trying to lose the last 5 lbs and wondering despite the fact that I like the classes - once i do lose the weight but don't have that free time - will it be easier to gain it back? Should I slow things down and cut some classes out? It's a problem I thought I'd never have - I'm liking the workouts so would rather not cut any of them out, but if I'm setting myself up to fail, do I need to think about scaling it back? I won't ask about why my weight is creeping up. I'm gonna chalk that to water retention (right, right?!?!?!, gulp!!) before i freak out.

cwolfman13 · January 2016

The more active you are the higher you calorie requisites are...you adjust you food accordingly. If you get to maintenance and decrease your activity then yes...your requisite maintenance calories would be lower than if you maintained the same activity level.

You put the weight back on when you fail to adjust your eating to your activity...the less active you are, the less you can eat...the more active you are, the more you can eat...so in that sense it might be easier to put the weight back on because you'd be required to eat less and it's generally easier to overeat than under eat.

CeeBeeSlim · January 2016

Thanks! So...I'm thinking out loud here, but what if i didn't increase my calories to my activity level now. Let's just say I could do these workouts on the less calories, ifstarvation mode is a myth and I may be just a little tired during or after my workouts (not great but doable) , where, if anywhere, could I hurt myself? So essentially I would workout on my maintenance calories or a little lower. Does that make sense?

cwolfman13 · January 2016

I think you're overthinking...

Your calories should be commensurate to your activity level to maintain weight...if you want to lose weight you would eat a little less...but the more active you are, the more you could eat and still lose weight because your maintenance calories would be higher at a higher activity level.

I guess I don't really understand what you're asking here.

There is a danger of doing copious amounts of exercise and underfeeding...it has nothing to do with starvation mode or whatever...start looking at fitness for the sake of fitness...if you're doing a bunch of exercise, but underfeeding, your performance will suck, your fitness gains will stall, and you leave yourself open to injury...many if not most over-train injuries aren't actually a result of over-training but rather under-feeding.

Your only trying to drop 5 Lbs...your deficit should be pretty dang small. Creating a large deficit by substantially underfeeding and then making it even bigger by doing a bunch of exercise is not the smartest way to go about things.

AnnPT77 · January 2016

If your calorie deficit is small now (as it should be, for optimum healthfulness when you have only a tiny amount to lose), you could consider staying at a small deficit while working out this much, and see how that works out for you. If you're still on a calorie budget targeted to lose 1-2 pounds/week, I wouldn't add this exercise burn on top of that deficit. There's only so much fat your body can burn at a time - you don't want to risk losing muscle by pushing your net deficit too high. (Fatigue is only the tip of the iceberg, IMO.)

This next bit is a little bit tangent to your question, but related: I've done the back-to-back classes thing (specifically spin followed by kettlebell), though while not in calorie deficit. If you decide to keep on this schedule, based on my experience, I'd encourage you to consider a small, easily-digestible snack between classes. Everyone's different, but I found that even eating one of those little pouches of unsweetened applesauce (about 60 calories) made a very noticeable difference in how my energy level held up after class and through the rest of the day. I can only imagine that post-workout tiredness would be even more likely if I adopted this kind of workout schedule while in deficit.

tomteboda · January 2016

Con: you have less time to do other things.

Yi5hedr3 · January 2016

More is not better. Too much cortisol. Back it down a notch or two.

CeeBeeSlim · January 2016

Thanks, everyone. Yeah, I am overthinking and potentially overdoing cuz I'm just tired of these last five pounds sticking around. I was essentially asking how much could I under feed and overexercise without causing damage - whatever that damage would be. I'm 51 and 5'3 (GW 125-128) so maybe it will just take longer than i hoped. Like u said, cwolf, it's not the smartest and I was going for the fastest. I like the applesauce idea Ann.

teckeg · January 2016

How do add strength exercise to your daily exercise. I have tried adding "circuit training", "weight lifting", and specific machines like "abductor". None of them work

CeeBeeSlim · January 2016

I use "circuit training" under "cardio". Not sure I trust the calorie calculation but that's the closest I can find.

AnnPT77 · January 2016

teckeg wrote: »

How do add strength exercise to your daily exercise. I have tried adding "circuit training", "weight lifting", and specific machines like "abductor". None of them work

If you're wanting to add them in order to get a calorie credit, other options would be the "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)" or "Circuit training, general" database entries under the "Cardiovascular" section. But you don't get many calories for anaerobic training - that's not where the benefit comes in.

Any cons to maximizing exercise hours?

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