The more I exercise, the more my body adapts to calories and I can't slim further.

rebeccabardet wrote: »

Hi everyone -- I've been a Zumba teacher for three years, and I've noticed how I can exercise myself to oblivion (and exhaustion) and still have thick legs. I don't just mean like big calves, but my whole body seems to have what my brother calls a 'sheath of fat', the shakiest of it being on my legs. I am back on MFP because I like to see all the ways I sneak in food without noticing - I appreciate the self-accountability. My real question is whether one can REALLY just add back into one's daily calorie goal the calories burned? I am often under my daily goal numbers, and MFP cheerfully tells me that in 5 weeks I'll weigh some super dream-like number on the scale. If that were true, I would weigh it! So what gives? Should I ignore the calories burned? Should I even bother documenting the daily exercise?

MFP is set up to give you your targets without any exercise...meaning your activity level does not include any exercise. Suffice it to say, if you exercise regularly, your activity level would exceed your activity level without exercise...exercise is unaccounted for activity and the way you account for it with MFP is to log it and earn calories to eat back. Other calculators include exercise in your activity level and thus some estimate of those requisite calories would be included in your targets...it's just common sense...you have to account for that activity somewhere. The biggest issue most people have is overestimating calories burned...often substantially...they trust this and other data bases as gospel, and they're far from it. It's one of the reasons I prefer the TDEE method.

As far as the little projection goes, just ignore it...it's a silly, overly simplified equation that assumes linearity in weight loss...it's a stupid and worthless tool...losing weight isn't as simple as cutting X calories per day and linearly losing Y Lbs per week.

I lost 40 Lbs easily following MFP's method of eating back calories...but I did a lot of research in regards to the calories I burned and used multiple sources for helping me determine that...and then I still knocked some % off the most conservative estimate to account for estimation error in both calories out as well as inherent logging errors of calories in.

I eat back half my exercise calories per MFP's calculations (for my daily 5 mile walk, comes out about 120 calories over what my Garmin calcs w/out heart rate monitor, about spot on when I'm wearing my heart-rate monitor.).
Try not eating back everything it gives you, dropping by a 100 or calories a time until you're in loss again.

The other factor is how carefully one logs what they eat. If a person is not using a digital kitchen scale to weigh out solids including ground (peanut butter) and grated (cheese) solids, and using measuring cups and spoons to measure out liquids they are likely not measuring properly. If they don't make sure of the database entries to make sure they match up with what you are logging. There too inaccuracies arise. For example the cocoa powder I use for my protein shake in the morning. I just purchased a new container, and as usual I compared the nutrition information since it was a new container even though it was the same brand and product. Guess what, the old calorie information 6g=15 calories, the new one 6g=20 calories. Looking at the two the colour of the new one is quite a bit darker, hence, even though pure cocoa, the variations from different amounts of cocoa butter in it changes the calories even for the same brand, same product. In other words, if your logging of calories eaten is as accurate as you can make it, then you can start eating say half your Zumba calories, if weight loss is too fast after 4 weeks, eat more. If it is slower, eat a bit less.

Keep in mind that as one gets older, their body becomes more metabolically challenged. They naturally become more insulin resistant and as such, their body doesn't deal with the excess glucose in their blood as well, so it stores it as fat. No matter how much exercise you get, you'll never escape this problem without changing how you eat and reconsidering what is "healthy".

Excess glucose obviously comes from added sugars, but it also comes from foods that are converted quickly to sugar in the blood such as grains like wheat and pasta, starches like potato and rice and of course sugars.

The body really wants more fats (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated... NOT trans).

If you can adjust to this, you'll find your body won't hold onto the excess as easily. It's simple science and is being proven over and over and over.

edival wrote: »

Keep in mind that as one gets older, their body becomes more metabolically challenged. They naturally become more insulin resistant and as such, their body doesn't deal with the excess glucose in their blood as well, so it stores it as fat. No matter how much exercise you get, you'll never escape this problem without changing how you eat and reconsidering what is "healthy".

Excess glucose obviously comes from added sugars, but it also comes from foods that are converted quickly to sugar in the blood such as grains like wheat and pasta, starches like potato and rice and of course sugars.

The body really wants more fats (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated... NOT trans).

If you can adjust to this, you'll find your body won't hold onto the excess as easily. It's simple science and is being proven over and over and over.

Sorry, there is just too much incorrect information in this post.

edival wrote: »

Keep in mind that as one gets older, their body becomes more metabolically challenged. They naturally become more insulin resistant and as such, their body doesn't deal with the excess glucose in their blood as well, so it stores it as fat. No matter how much exercise you get, you'll never escape this problem without changing how you eat and reconsidering what is "healthy".

Excess glucose obviously comes from added sugars, but it also comes from foods that are converted quickly to sugar in the blood such as grains like wheat and pasta, starches like potato and rice and of course sugars.

The body really wants more fats (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated... NOT trans).

If you can adjust to this, you'll find your body won't hold onto the excess as easily. It's simple science and is being proven over and over and over.

Sorry that's just not true OP. I've reached 15% body fat and I'm 45, with just the same amount of calories as when I was 19.
This is on a pretty high carb diet, with syrup, wine, pasta etc etc.
Calories in calories out.
I also time my nutrients but it still all works out, whether I was eating one big meal at night or 25 small ones.

edival wrote: »

Suit yourself.

It's proven that the body requires ZERO carbohydrates, it's not a macro that is required as the body has the ability to produce all the glucose it requires. That said, carbs are great, but we've been eating so much of them that we've become sick and obese over the past 40 years. (Since Ansel Keys anti-fat recommendations became promoted)

Just cutting back on sugars, grains and starches will, by default, reduce the excess fats.

If the OP is having trouble finding a way to reduce the extra fat, it's time to try something different.

BTW, here are 23 studies that prove that a LCHF diet works:
http://authoritynutrition.com/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets/

I think maybe you should study the diets of East African runners, or some olympic athletes, or many of the fittest, strongest and leanest people on this very website!

Sorry that's just not true OP. I've reached 15% body fat and I'm 45, with just the same amount of calories as when I was 19.
This is on a pretty high carb diet, with syrup, wine, pasta etc etc.
Calories in calories out.
I also time my nutrients but it still all works out, whether I was eating one big meal at night or 25 small ones.

Fair enough, not everyone is metabolically challenged. Many people can continue to eat as many carbs as they wish and stay thin. There are 2 parts to this though, 1 is that they stay thin, but are still in fact, metabolically challenged and as such have a very high amount of visceral fat. This is fat that surrounds the organs and is a very high indicator of heart disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, among other issues.

The second part is that they're genetically blessed with having a perfect metabolism and have nothing to worry about.

This is something that everyone "can" benefit hugely from, but not everyone needs to do it, such as yourself.

Having the knowledge that there are alternatives to eating, and perhaps better methods isn't a bad thing and attacking an alternative will only do a disservice to the OP.

The anti-fat recommendations were never widely done by the population. Carbs are NOT the reason people are overweight.
Cutting back on CALORIES will reduce excess fats.

And it's proven your body requires barely 60 grams of protein and fats per day which is way below your energy needs so that you need ZERO carbohydrates is completely and utterly irrelevant because if you only ate the macronutrients you needed without paying attention to your energy needs, you'd starve to death all the same.

The anti-fat regulations were followed quite well actually, but not in the way you're thinking. What happened is that food producers took the recommendations and removed fat from everything they could (think yogurt as one item) and replaced the tasty fat with added sugar. All this extra sugar is far from good for our bodies, in fact, many people say it's toxic (Look up author Dr. Robert Lustig).

It's funny that for macronutrients, carbs and protein provide 4 kCal of energy, but fats provide 9 kCal... that's a huge boost in energy. Also, fats are satiating and as such you don't need as much and aren't hungry all the time, whereas carbs cause an insulin spike and follow with an insulin crash which causes hunger as your body needs more sugars for energy. Oh, also, your body can hold onto about 2000 calories of energy in the form of glucose, whereas your body can store about 15,000 calories of energy in fats. This is why those who are fat adapted can run/bike, etc for very long times (6-10+ hours) on just water, whereas someone who uses glucose as energy require additional fuel during that same time.

What you say is true for someone who hasn't converted their body to using fat for energy, if you choose to fast as a glucose burner, you would in fact starve to death as your body requires glucose and doesn't have access to the fats as easily.