Question regarding calorie deficit
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alid8333
Posts: 233 Member
Ok so I've posted on here before and got mixed opinions. I need to know if I'm looking at this correctly.
I live a pretty sedentary lifestyle as I'm a stay at home mom and business owner. I do spend a good amount of the day at the computer doing invoices, keeping up bookkeeping etc. I do walk on the treadmill for a hour a day (30 min in the morning and 30 min in the evening) as that's all I'm allowed to do until my heart doc clears me for more.
MyFitnessPal wanted to set me at 1200 calories a day but my heart doc said that is to low and he said no lower than 1350 a day for most women. He said I needed to figure out my how much my body needs and then subtract 500 from that and I would be at a 500 calorie deficit a day which would equal 1 pound a week weight loss.
So if I then add 60 min of walking and say burn 400 calories I would need to eat most of those back. I use a HRM that syncs to my Apple Watch and I walk at 3mph on a incline. My heart rate easily gets up to 135 to 140. So I believe my calorie burn is correct.
For instance yesterday after logging all my meals and with my exercise I only netted 857 calories. That's way to low right?
I've always been told that the 500 calorie a day deficit is either done through diet or exercise alone or a mixture of both, but not to exceed the 500 a day. If you do both diet and exercise and exceed the 500 calorie a day deficit then you need to replace most (50 to 75%).
I live a pretty sedentary lifestyle as I'm a stay at home mom and business owner. I do spend a good amount of the day at the computer doing invoices, keeping up bookkeeping etc. I do walk on the treadmill for a hour a day (30 min in the morning and 30 min in the evening) as that's all I'm allowed to do until my heart doc clears me for more.
MyFitnessPal wanted to set me at 1200 calories a day but my heart doc said that is to low and he said no lower than 1350 a day for most women. He said I needed to figure out my how much my body needs and then subtract 500 from that and I would be at a 500 calorie deficit a day which would equal 1 pound a week weight loss.
So if I then add 60 min of walking and say burn 400 calories I would need to eat most of those back. I use a HRM that syncs to my Apple Watch and I walk at 3mph on a incline. My heart rate easily gets up to 135 to 140. So I believe my calorie burn is correct.
For instance yesterday after logging all my meals and with my exercise I only netted 857 calories. That's way to low right?
I've always been told that the 500 calorie a day deficit is either done through diet or exercise alone or a mixture of both, but not to exceed the 500 a day. If you do both diet and exercise and exceed the 500 calorie a day deficit then you need to replace most (50 to 75%).
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Replies
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i have doubts that walking an hour is 400 cals. an hour on the elliptical for me is only 300, and im 180 pounds...
for the record, mfp tries to give me almost 700 cals burned for the same workout. 300ish is from the fitbit and matches the machine closer, and is more accurate (much to my dismay LOLOL)10 -
I'm sure your doctor meant TDEE - total daily energy expenditure. That's your maintenance.
BMR (basal metabolic rate) are the calories if you stayed in bed all day.
TDEE should include your exercise (My Fitness Pal doesn't until you log it). Put all the exercise you intend to do in a TDEE calculator & eat 500 less than that. Then don't log exercise because it's already accounted for.
http://scoobysworkshop.com/calorie-calculator/
If you use My Fitness Pal #'s - set it to sedentary - 1 pound a week - log workouts - eat 50 to 75% back.
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callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »i have doubts that walking an hour is 400 cals. an hour on the elliptical for me is only 300, and im 180 pounds...
for the record, mfp tries to give me almost 700 cals burned for the same workout. 300ish is from the fitbit and matches the machine closer, and is more accurate (much to my dismay LOLOL)
I use my chest strap that is connected to my Apple Watch so it's going by heart rate. I'm 185 pounds and I walk at 3mph on a incline. My heart rate easily gets up to 135 to 140. I never go by what the treadmill or MyFitnessPal estimates as it's way off.
So yes I roughly burn around 400 calories or more in a hour on the treadmill.
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First, when you got 1200 from MFP what did you have your weight loss goal set to?
Second - You should only eat back half of your exercise calories as it sounds like you are overestimating your burns.
Third - You need to make sure that you net 1200 calories a day. So if you really burned 400 calories via exercise you eat 1600 - 400 burned = 1200 net.3 -
First, when you got 1200 from MFP what did you have your weight loss goal set to?
Second - You should only eat back half of your exercise calories as it sounds like you are overestimating your burns.
Third - You need to make sure that you net 1200 calories a day. So if you really burned 400 calories via exercise you eat 1600 - 400 burned = 1200 net.
I use a HRM during my workout that syncs to my Apple Watch. I do 30 min twice a day at 3mph on a incline. My heart rate easily gets up to 135 to 140 doing so. So I doubt it's overestimating my burns. I'm also 185 pounds. I typically burn little over 200 each 30 min session.
I had it set at 1.5 pounds a week at sedentary and got 1200 calories. If I set it at 1 pound and sedentary I get 1390.
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As others point out, 400 for an hour sounds pretty high. But, if you're confident, eat them all back. If then you do not lose at the rate you want/expect, drop the cals a little.
The thing to remember is that all the figures are, at best, an estimation - BMR, TDEE, Calories in, exercise burns, all bring with them some errors.
So, set a target, implement it and tweak your outputs or inputs if you don;t get the planned results.8 -
StealthHealth wrote: »As others point out, 400 for an hour sounds pretty high. But, if you're confident, eat them all back. If then you do not lose at the rate you want/expect, drop the cals a little.
The thing to remember is that all the figures are, at best, an estimation - BMR, TDEE, Calories in, exercise burns, all bring with them some errors.
So, set a target, implement it and tweak your outputs or inputs if you don;t get the planned results.
So walking at 3mph on a incline with a heart rate of 135 to 140 for a total of an hour isn't sufficient enough to burn 400 calories? I'm using a polar chest strap that's Blue toothed to my
Apple Watch. I'm not going by what the treadmill says or what MyFitnessPal estimates.
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StealthHealth wrote: »As others point out, 400 for an hour sounds pretty high. But, if you're confident, eat them all back. If then you do not lose at the rate you want/expect, drop the cals a little.
The thing to remember is that all the figures are, at best, an estimation - BMR, TDEE, Calories in, exercise burns, all bring with them some errors.
So, set a target, implement it and tweak your outputs or inputs if you don;t get the planned results.
So walking at 3mph on a incline with a heart rate of 135 to 140 for a total of an hour isn't sufficient enough to burn 400 calories? I'm using a polar chest strap that's Blue toothed to my
Apple Watch. I'm not going by what the treadmill says or what MyFitnessPal estimates.
I don't think a 3 mile walk is 400 cals for anyone but the v.heavy but like I said... if you're confident you're burning 400 cals - eat 'em all.3 -
First, when you got 1200 from MFP what did you have your weight loss goal set to?
Second - You should only eat back half of your exercise calories as it sounds like you are overestimating your burns.
Third - You need to make sure that you net 1200 calories a day. So if you really burned 400 calories via exercise you eat 1600 - 400 burned = 1200 net.
I use a HRM during my workout that syncs to my Apple Watch. I do 30 min twice a day at 3mph on a incline. My heart rate easily gets up to 135 to 140 doing so. So I doubt it's overestimating my burns. I'm also 185 pounds. I typically burn little over 200 each 30 min session.
I had it set at 1.5 pounds a week at sedentary and got 1200 calories. If I set it at 1 pound and sedentary I get 1390.
First off, a HRM only gives a reasonably decent estimation of calorie burn...your HR does not directly correlate to calorie burn...it's just used in an algorithm to give an estimate...it is very much an estimate, not gospel. Secondly, the burn it gives you is gross...so it includes the calories you would have otherwise burned doing nothing, so at minimum you would want to subtract your basal calories.6 -
StealthHealth wrote: »As others point out, 400 for an hour sounds pretty high. But, if you're confident, eat them all back. If then you do not lose at the rate you want/expect, drop the cals a little.
The thing to remember is that all the figures are, at best, an estimation - BMR, TDEE, Calories in, exercise burns, all bring with them some errors.
So, set a target, implement it and tweak your outputs or inputs if you don;t get the planned results.
So walking at 3mph on a incline with a heart rate of 135 to 140 for a total of an hour isn't sufficient enough to burn 400 calories? I'm using a polar chest strap that's Blue toothed to my
Apple Watch. I'm not going by what the treadmill says or what MyFitnessPal estimates.
400 calories is about what a 250 lb person would burn walking 3 miles. A 100 lb person would burn only 160 calories over the same distance.1 -
StealthHealth wrote: »As others point out, 400 for an hour sounds pretty high. But, if you're confident, eat them all back. If then you do not lose at the rate you want/expect, drop the cals a little.
The thing to remember is that all the figures are, at best, an estimation - BMR, TDEE, Calories in, exercise burns, all bring with them some errors.
So, set a target, implement it and tweak your outputs or inputs if you don;t get the planned results.
So walking at 3mph on a incline with a heart rate of 135 to 140 for a total of an hour isn't sufficient enough to burn 400 calories? I'm using a polar chest strap that's Blue toothed to my
Apple Watch. I'm not going by what the treadmill says or what MyFitnessPal estimates.
An HRM doesn't have any magical insight into how many calories you've burned. If you drink a big cup of coffee that will elevate your heart rate, and your HRM doesn't know if you're sitting at your desk jittering from espresso or jogging.
Honestly as a 240 pound man I doubt I burn 400 kCal per hour walking 20 minute miles. I could be wrong.
Anyway, let's say you need 1,350 kCal per day, as your doc says. And you're confident in your 400 kCal guess from your HRM. That means you should eat 1,750 kCal.0 -
I'm about that size and 60 minutes on a treadmill can burn 400 calories for me, but the important factor is the incline. 3 degrees, maybe not. 5 degrees, maybe so. 15 degrees, absolutely yes.
The recommendations of your doctor are very good.
The math of it is that you log your exercise along with your food. The food diary then tells you how many calories of food you've earned from exercising. So, when you finish a day in an 800 calorie deficit after accurately logging your food and exercise, you can know that you exceeded your wise weight loss goal for that day. Just try not to stack many consecutive weeks of those excessive calorie deficits together, as it is understood that at some point, we don't know when, your greater than 500 calorie deficit actually causes your metabolism to slow.1 -
Wow I guess working out for a hour total with my heart rate around 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate isn't "sufficient" enough to burn. Since it's only
walking at 3mph at a incline 6.
I haven't been eating back any of my exercise calories since I started. So guess I'll just continue not to.
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Wow I guess working out for a hour total with my heart rate around 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate isn't "sufficient" enough to burn. Since it's only
walking at 3mph at a incline 6.
I haven't been eating back any of my exercise calories since I started. So guess I'll just continue not to.
I don't think you're understanding...all people are saying is that devices and machines and data bases, etc are all just estimations...nobody is saying that you're not burning calories...they're just telling you to be conservative as energy expenditure is difficult to estimate and often these devices over estimate. And like I said up thread, it's going to include your basal burn...so at minimum you would want to deduct that.
All people are telling you is that it's an estimate, not gospel. That's it...there should always be an allowance for estimation error...I always just knocked off my basal calories which if I recall was about 20% or so.8 -
OP I would trust what your HR monitor is saying and if you're not losing as much as expected reduce your intake accordingly. I walk about 17 minutes to work each day not much heavier (a couple of lbs) than you and I burn about 120 cals in that time, that has decreased over the last few months as I've got a bit smaller/fitter it was closer to 150. 400 possibly is an over estimation I go up a couple of hills, but honestly there is only one way to know for sure, eat at your target cals for a period of time and see what happens. You're not bound to keep doing it, you can reduce what you eat back down the line if you need to.
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Remember, everything "calculated" is a GUESS, and approximation of a perfect world. You have to experiment in gradual increments to narrow down what is correct and will work for you.
Always be wary of EXACT numbers, and know that it can fluctuate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis depending on any number of factors.
Make sure you feel good, eat enough, and are happy. This is always paramount. Never, ever, sweat the minutiae.
It all takes TIME!2 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I'm about that size and 60 minutes on a treadmill can burn 400 calories for me, but the important factor is the incline. 3 degrees, maybe not. 5 degrees, maybe so. 15 degrees, absolutely yes.
The recommendations of your doctor are very good.
The math of it is that you log your exercise along with your food. The food diary then tells you how many calories of food you've earned from exercising. So, when you finish a day in an 800 calorie deficit after accurately logging your food and exercise, you can know that you exceeded your wise weight loss goal for that day. Just try not to stack many consecutive weeks of those excessive calorie deficits together, as it is understood that at some point, we don't know when, your greater than 500 calorie deficit actually causes your metabolism to slow.
Yeah I do 3mph at a 6 degree incline. Sometimes I even do 3.5 mph. I usually end up doing around 74 min total with warm up and cool down. So I just say 60 minutes.
I get everything is an estimate, but when people tell me you can't burn that much in a hour by "walking" because they only burn such amount doing something else. I'm 5'3 and weigh 185 pounds. So at 3mph is like a brisk walk for me because I don't have a long stride. Plus with it inclined to 6 gets my heart rate up as well. I try to stay around 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate. I also have a elliptical and when I would get on it and do a hour my heart rate would be 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate and I would burn right around the same.
Again I understand it's all a estimate and that's mainly why I don't eat back my exercise calories. But after sitting there and looking back on the last week I've only been netting 850 to 900 a day.
I don't enter my workouts into MyFitnessPal it automatically does it so I just ignore that number.
But I am going to make sure I start at least netting 1350 a day.
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I'm about that size and 60 minutes on a treadmill can burn 400 calories for me, but the important factor is the incline. 3 degrees, maybe not. 5 degrees, maybe so. 15 degrees, absolutely yes.
The recommendations of your doctor are very good.
The math of it is that you log your exercise along with your food. The food diary then tells you how many calories of food you've earned from exercising. So, when you finish a day in an 800 calorie deficit after accurately logging your food and exercise, you can know that you exceeded your wise weight loss goal for that day. Just try not to stack many consecutive weeks of those excessive calorie deficits together, as it is understood that at some point, we don't know when, your greater than 500 calorie deficit actually causes your metabolism to slow.
Yeah I do 3mph at a 6 degree incline. Sometimes I even do 3.5 mph. I usually end up doing around 74 min total with warm up and cool down. So I just say 60 minutes.
I get everything is an estimate, but when people tell me you can't burn that much in a hour by "walking" because they only burn such amount doing something else. I'm 5'3 and weigh 185 pounds. So at 3mph is like a brisk walk for me because I don't have a long stride. Plus with it inclined to 6 gets my heart rate up as well. I try to stay around 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate. I also have a elliptical and when I would get on it and do a hour my heart rate would be 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate and I would burn right around the same.
Again I understand it's all a estimate and that's mainly why I don't eat back my exercise calories. But after sitting there and looking back on the last week I've only been netting 850 to 900 a day.
I don't enter my workouts into MyFitnessPal it automatically does it so I just ignore that number.
But I am going to make sure I start at least netting 1350 a day.
That would be a good plan...1 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Wow I guess working out for a hour total with my heart rate around 70 to 75% of my maximum heart rate isn't "sufficient" enough to burn. Since it's only
walking at 3mph at a incline 6.
I haven't been eating back any of my exercise calories since I started. So guess I'll just continue not to.
I don't think you're understanding...all people are saying is that devices and machines and data bases, etc are all just estimations...nobody is saying that you're not burning calories...they're just telling you to be conservative as energy expenditure is difficult to estimate and often these devices over estimate. And like I said up thread, it's going to include your basal burn...so at minimum you would want to deduct that.
All people are telling you is that it's an estimate, not gospel. That's it...there should always be an allowance for estimation error...I always just knocked off my basal calories which if I recall was about 20% or so.
I understand what you're saying. What got me was people saying it wasn't possible because they only burned such amount of calories doing something else and it wasn't possible because I'm "just walking". 3mph is a brisk walk for me since I'm only 5'3 and I incline it to 6. Sometimes I walk at 3.5. I technically do a total time of around 74 to 75 min. But I just said 60 min because that 74 min includes 5 min of warm up and cool down and I don't really count that. I can get on my elliptical and do 5mph and my heart rate be at 70 to 75% for a hour and burn just as much as I did walking at 3mph at a incline of 6.
But again I know it's all an estimate and that's mainly why I haven't been eating any of my exercise calories back for that simple fact.
I just don't think it's right for someone to be like well I do a hour on this machine and I only burn this amount so it's not possible your burning that because your "Just walking". Everyone's body is different and people do workout at different levels.
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I burn less than 300 calories for an hour of walking and I weight 230lbs.3
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