Has anybody ate back their exercise calories consistently and still lost weight?
Replies
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NorthCascades wrote: »A lot of people think this, but it's not true at all, it's not even in the same ballpark as true. If you're walking, you'll get better accuracy from a formula that considers your distance, elevation change, and time than from a heart monitor. If you're cycling or rowing, a power meter is night and day more accurate than a heart monitor. For lifting weights, rolling dice is more accurate than using a heart rate monitor.
Can you provide sources for your thoughts?
This MFP article speaks to the accuracy of heart rate monitors. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
The accuracy of heart rate monitors is that they can tell you your actual heart rate, not that they can tell you how many calories you've burned or how many miles you drove to work or how old you were when you lost your virginity, or any other thing that's not your heart rate.
The article you linked to says as much and cautions people strongly that heart rate monitors are not calorie monitors, and urges people to recognize their limitations.Machine based only are generally considered least accurate. Resting HR, Max HR, and VO2 Max are important factors in addition to actual HR that the purely weight, age, gender machine calculations are missing.
Think about this: your VO2max is essentially your fitness level, it changes constantly. It's not common for people to get it medically tested, but it's very rare for people to get it tested repeatedly, even though a stale value is inaccurate.
The most accurate way to measure your energy use on a bike is with a power meter. This is a machine that measures torque and RPMs and uses that information to measure how much energy went from your body into the bike. It doesn't know your sex or your age or your HR or anything else about you, and it's more accurate than any HRM system for determining calorie use on a bike. Sadly that doesn't exist for most types of exercise, but the point is that heart rate is not the key to unlocking the mysteries of energy use.
It actually only measures the amount of work applied to th bike. It does not measure the the energy cost (calories) used to produce that work.
So if you attach two different engines with significantly different efficiencies to the bike and have them pedal the bike the same distance at the same "speed," the work done will be the same, but one will need to burn more gas to do the same work.
Another more extreme example: try super gluing the pedal sprockets so you can't move the pedals, then get on the bike and push as hard as you can on the pedals for 20 minutes. How much work would you be transferring to the bike? Answer? Zero. How many calories would you have burned? Answer? More than zero.1 -
None of that is realistic. All humans have essentially the same metabolic efficiency (conversion of energy stored in the body into work) on a bike.
People do not ride bikes that have been purposely broken to make the pedals immovable.0 -
Yes. My exercise calories are generated by my apple watch which seems to be pretty darn accurate.0
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NorthCascades wrote: »None of that is realistic. All humans have essentially the same metabolic efficiency (conversion of energy stored in the body into work) on a bike.
People do not ride bikes that have been purposely broken to make the pedals immovable.
Also untrue. The cost of energy production even for the same individual can vary widely. Aerobic vs anaerobic catabolism produces atp (the chemical entity your muscles use for energy) at different energy costs. It's biochemistry 101. Believe what want, though I noticed you didn't answer the question about the "broken bike" experiment.1 -
Yes, for the last 6 months or so and I've lost a little over 30lbs.0
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NorthCascades wrote: »None of that is realistic. All humans have essentially the same metabolic efficiency (conversion of energy stored in the body into work) on a bike.
People do not ride bikes that have been purposely broken to make the pedals immovable.
Also untrue. The cost of energy production even for the same individual can vary widely.
Sure. It takes twice as much energy to run a mile as to walk one. We're talking about how people actually ride bikes in reality, though, not in contrived situations that only turn up on the internet.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »None of that is realistic. All humans have essentially the same metabolic efficiency (conversion of energy stored in the body into work) on a bike.
People do not ride bikes that have been purposely broken to make the pedals immovable.
Also untrue. The cost of energy production even for the same individual can vary widely.
Sure. It takes twice as much energy to run a mile as to walk one. We're talking about how people actually ride bikes in reality, though, not in contrived situations that only turn up on the internet.
My last post on this topic: I actually took Biochemistry 101 and came up with the experiment on my own (used brain calories to do it), no internet involved.
And how many calories would you use pushing pedals that won't move?1 -
You're majoring in the minors, being very imaginative about situations that aren't part of reality, like pedals that won't move.
Either you're wrong, or everybody else in the world is, including Andy Coggan and Joe Friel. Do some research and you'll find it very eye opening.
Humans are about 24 % efficient at turning food energy into mechanical energy within the context of a bicycle. That's not exact and will vary according to several factors, but your "gospel truth" number is VERY close to that. Using a power meter to determine energy use on a bike (a working bike in good order with pedals that move) will not get you further than 5 % from the truth according to Joe Friel, founder of Training Peaks.0 -
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If you eat back all calories you burn off, how can you lose weight? I could never be confident in a device to tell me precisely how many calories I burn, so I approximate and update my needs periodically.
I calculate my daily requirement, and eat ½-⅔ of my daily calories to ensure a deficit.1 -
NorthCascades wrote: »
No, you burn calories just sitting there. Even sleeping. You'd lose some. You'd lose more if you're applying pressure and using your muscles.0 -
@metalmeow1metalmeow1 wrote: »If you eat back all calories you burn off, how can you lose weight? I could never be confident in a device to tell me precisely how many calories I burn, so I approximate and update my needs periodically.
I calculate my daily requirement, and eat ½-⅔ of my daily calories to ensure a deficit.
I don't think you aren't understanding how MFP works.
Your deficit is there irrespective of exercise. If do no exercise you still have your selected deficit.
If you burn off an extra 500 cals and than eat those 500 calories you haven't changed your deficit.
No-one knows precisely how many calories they burn - so it's just as well precision is absolutely not required.
When you are aiming to be in a 500 calorie (for example) deficit it really doesn't matter if your actual deficit is in a range around that number. If you don't get expected results over time you adjust.
By the way if you are calculating (in truth estimating not calculating) your daily requirement (TDEE in other words) that actually includes your exercise. It's just an average instead of varying daily.
Eating only 1/2 to 2/3rds of your TDEE sounds really extreme by the way.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »A lot of people think this, but it's not true at all, it's not even in the same ballpark as true. If you're walking, you'll get better accuracy from a formula that considers your distance, elevation change, and time than from a heart monitor. If you're cycling or rowing, a power meter is night and day more accurate than a heart monitor. For lifting weights, rolling dice is more accurate than using a heart rate monitor.
Can you provide sources for your thoughts?
This MFP article speaks to the accuracy of heart rate monitors. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/the-real-facts-about-hrms-and-calories-what-you-need-to-know-before-purchasing-an-hrm-or-using-one-21472
The accuracy of heart rate monitors is that they can tell you your actual heart rate, not that they can tell you how many calories you've burned or how many miles you drove to work or how old you were when you lost your virginity, or any other thing that's not your heart rate.
The article you linked to says as much and cautions people strongly that heart rate monitors are not calorie monitors, and urges people to recognize their limitations.Machine based only are generally considered least accurate. Resting HR, Max HR, and VO2 Max are important factors in addition to actual HR that the purely weight, age, gender machine calculations are missing.
Think about this: your VO2max is essentially your fitness level, it changes constantly. It's not common for people to get it medically tested, but it's very rare for people to get it tested repeatedly, even though a stale value is inaccurate.
The most accurate way to measure your energy use on a bike is with a power meter. This is a machine that measures torque and RPMs and uses that information to measure how much energy went from your body into the bike. It doesn't know your sex or your age or your HR or anything else about you, and it's more accurate than any HRM system for determining calorie use on a bike. Sadly that doesn't exist for most types of exercise, but the point is that heart rate is not the key to unlocking the mysteries of energy use.
Out of curiosity, have you made a direct numerical comparison of calorie estimates between MFP, your bike's power meter, and a HRM? What did you find.
I have done similar things in the past, and would post results here for comparison, but I didn't bother to record them at the time. I know that after I compared for a while, I decided to prefer HRM or power-metered (Concept2 rower) over MFP for activities where that made sense (steady state cardio, or something close), and that those two (C2 or HRM) were close enough for the things I routinely do that I wasn't going to fret over it . . . but I do have some tolerance for estimation/approximation.1 -
@metalmeow1metalmeow1 wrote: »If you eat back all calories you burn off, how can you lose weight? I could never be confident in a device to tell me precisely how many calories I burn, so I approximate and update my needs periodically.
I calculate my daily requirement, and eat ½-⅔ of my daily calories to ensure a deficit.
I don't think you aren't understanding how MFP works.
Your deficit is there irrespective of exercise. If do no exercise you still have your selected deficit.
If you burn off an extra 500 cals and than eat those 500 calories you haven't changed your deficit.
No-one knows precisely how many calories they burn - so it's just as well precision is absolutely not required.
When you are aiming to be in a 500 calorie (for example) deficit it really doesn't matter if your actual deficit is in a range around that number. If you don't get expected results over time you adjust.
By the way if you are calculating (in truth estimating not calculating) your daily requirement (TDEE in other words) that actually includes your exercise. It's just an average instead of varying daily.
Eating only 1/2 to 2/3rds of your TDEE sounds really extreme by the way.
I don't, that's why I'm here to learn from all of you wise and lovely people
TDEE has been working, but I've plateaued before and it's really discouraging. Years later, I now anticipate the plateau. Do you think spiking up calories and changing workouts for a week would help with plateauing? Thanks! 0 -
Out of curiosity, have you made a direct numerical comparison of calorie estimates between MFP, your bike's power meter, and a HRM? What did you find.
You posted something along these lines yesterday (?) and I've been wanting to talk to you about it more. Unfortunately this isn't as easy a question to answer as it seems because the devil is in the details.
Out of curiosity I've compared MFP's estimates to the numbers from my power meter. That's pretty easy to do, because MFP wants some basic info to describe the ride I did, and I can just enter that from the data my Garmin and compare the two.
It's much harder to compare my HRM against my PM because they both talk to my Garmin and it's what ultimately gives me all of the data. It's programmed to not run the calories from HR software when it has power data. I can't remove the power data after the fact and get what the HR calories would have been. I could not record power for a ride, and have an HR calories number, but then I won't have power to compare it to. I have an older (~6.5 years) Garmin bike computer, maybe I'll be able to do a test tonight.
Occasionally I rent a mountain bike, with no PM. It's very hard to compare, there's really nothing to go on but perceived exertion. But if you take my word for it that these two rides were very similar in terms of how much effort they felt like they required (similar amounts of time and HR response) then the HRM system did a very impressive job:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/914030386
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9130790390 -
I eat most of my calories from exercise. I try to stay 200 to 300 below my limit. I always underestimate my calorie burn and overestimate my calories, though.0
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metalmeow1 wrote: »If you eat back all calories you burn off, how can you lose weight?
Surgery. Or it won't happen. Like you said above, you burn calories while you're asleep, not just while you're running and lifting weights.
But most people here are talking about a different "all" than that. We're saying we eat all of the calories we burn from exercise, not all of the ones we burn with every metabolic process in our bodies.
When you sign up for MFP it asks you if you some questions about yourself and your weight goals. From your answers, it sets you up on a calorie deficit and that's without exercise factored in. So if you go out and burn some calories and eat them, you come back to where you started, which is a place with the correct deficit for you.3 -
I am down 14 pounds since January 3rd.2
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Yes, and it surprised the crud out of me!0
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metalmeow1 wrote: »
@metalmeow1metalmeow1 wrote: »If you eat back all calories you burn off, how can you lose weight? I could never be confident in a device to tell me precisely how many calories I burn, so I approximate and update my needs periodically.
I calculate my daily requirement, and eat ½-⅔ of my daily calories to ensure a deficit.
I don't think you aren't understanding how MFP works.
Your deficit is there irrespective of exercise. If do no exercise you still have your selected deficit.
If you burn off an extra 500 cals and than eat those 500 calories you haven't changed your deficit.
No-one knows precisely how many calories they burn - so it's just as well precision is absolutely not required.
When you are aiming to be in a 500 calorie (for example) deficit it really doesn't matter if your actual deficit is in a range around that number. If you don't get expected results over time you adjust.
By the way if you are calculating (in truth estimating not calculating) your daily requirement (TDEE in other words) that actually includes your exercise. It's just an average instead of varying daily.
Eating only 1/2 to 2/3rds of your TDEE sounds really extreme by the way.
I don't, that's why I'm here to learn from all of you wise and lovely people TDEE has been working, but I've plateaued before and it's really discouraging. Years later, I now anticipate the plateau. Do you think spiking up calories and changing workouts for a week would help with plateauing? Thanks!
@metalmeow1
Both TDEE and MFP methods work if down properly, they will work out at the same average calories over time if your goal is the same.
I think the way to avoid a long term plateau is no more complex that making sure you are logging accurately and completely with an appropriate calorie deficit. If you are in a deficit over time you will lose. That rate of loss will decline, it may go in fits and starts.
What I would avoid is massive calorie deficits.
There's loads of really informative sticky threads pinned to the top of each forum - well worth having a browse through.1 -
The exercise program I do (Orangetheory Fitness classes) involves wearing a chest strap heart rate monitor, which are supposedly pretty accurate with estimating calories burned. I did a lot of reading about this because I wasn't sure about "eating back" my exercise calories either. I've been consistently losing weight (10 lbs in the first month on MFP) so far. If you're in it for the long haul, I think it's extremely important to fuel your body for your activity level and to not undereat or you'll just damage your metabolism and gain it all back later. It's not sustainable. I don't always consume ALL of my exercise calories, but I do most of them (probably 75% on average).
I found this article REALLY helpful in reframing the "eating calories back" way of thinking. http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/eating-back-calories-burned/0 -
Absolutely.0
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I do not. It doesn't work for me. My MFP calories are set at sedentary. So at 5'10" and 192lbs I'm allotted 1400 calories. I wear a fitness tracker and according to that I burn an extra 350 calories a day on average above the sedentary level. This would give me 1750 cals a day to consume. If I eat 1750 cals I don't lose weight. If I eat half my exercise calories - 1575 I lose roughly 2lb a month. If I'm lucky. If I eat 1400 cals a day I lose about 3lb a month. I have no health issues.0
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I have been eating back excersize calories and maintaining my weight now for 6 months after losing. While I lost I didn't bother to calculate excersize I just used the sedentary setting, but then I rarely got much excersize.0
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I don't, that's why I'm here to learn from all of you wise and lovely people TDEE has been working, but I've plateaued before and it's really discouraging. Years later, I now anticipate the plateau. Do you think spiking up calories and changing workouts for a week would help with plateauing? Thanks!
My wife became a competitive natural bodybuilder at 48 years old and has hit frustrating plateaus many times. She lost 50 pounds since our second child and is only 5 feet tall. Had some significant rebounds too. Calorie reduction causes your body to reduce its calorie burn despite all the exercise you're doing to increase the burn rate. Counterintuitive when articles talk about how much extra burn that weight lifting will give you.
Recalculate the goals as your weight decreases. Sometimes my wife had to reduce calories further to push through the plateaus. Frustrating because it gets harder and harder but often she thought it wasn't possible and would get stuck at a weight for a week or so despite eating perfectly clean. Then suddenly it would release and the weight would fall off.
I like the source catdreamz linked and it has a relevant article: http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/starvation-mode/
Keep at it. So much is focused on exercise but the real hard work and discipline happens in the kitchen.
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I lost eating all of mine back. The high estimate coupled with the weight training evened out. Though, once I stopped cardio, my activity level and weight lifting just made me lightly active. Nothing to eat back so I just do the TDEE method.0
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NorthCascades wrote: »
The accuracy of heart rate monitors is that they can tell you your actual heart rate, not that they can tell you how many calories you've burned or how many miles you drove to work or how old you were when you lost your virginity, or any other thing that's not your heart rate.
The most accurate way to measure your energy use on a bike is with a power meter. This is a machine that measures torque and RPMs and uses that information to measure how much energy went from your body into the bike. It doesn't know your sex or your age or your HR or anything else about you, and it's more accurate than any HRM system for determining calorie use on a bike. Sadly that doesn't exist for most types of exercise, but the point is that heart rate is not the key to unlocking the mysteries of energy use.
Snarky, dude!
Anyway, I think we can all agree that all methods are less accurate than O2 consumption, even a power meter on a bike. (How would it know what you are doing with your upper body?)
Many exercise machines can measure power output fairly accurately (we want calorie consumption), but if you dig into their methods, it turns out they calibrate to O2 consumption (sometimes indirectly) and develop a formula for the various settings that typically includes body weight to give an estimate for an individual using the machine. Most will not claim any particular accuracy.
There are also models based on HR, weight, age, and sex that are fairly accurate [see Keytel, et al., "Prediction of energy expenditure from heart rate monitoring during submaximal exercise," Journal of Sports Sciences, 23(3) p289 (2005)]. This is supposedly the formula used by Wahoo fitness for their calorie estimates. You can see from the data in the paper that the formula isn't perfect, but it is useful that you can compare many different activities with one method. If you're doing a machine, you can compare to the machine's estimate. You can always compare to MFPs estimate. I have observed that the machines estimate consistently lower than the Wahoo app.
You could improve the accuracy by having your heart rate calibrated via O2 uptake every once in a while. I'd probably like that.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Out of curiosity, have you made a direct numerical comparison of calorie estimates between MFP, your bike's power meter, and a HRM? What did you find.
You posted something along these lines yesterday (?) and I've been wanting to talk to you about it more. Unfortunately this isn't as easy a question to answer as it seems because the devil is in the details.
Out of curiosity I've compared MFP's estimates to the numbers from my power meter. That's pretty easy to do, because MFP wants some basic info to describe the ride I did, and I can just enter that from the data my Garmin and compare the two.
It's much harder to compare my HRM against my PM because they both talk to my Garmin and it's what ultimately gives me all of the data. It's programmed to not run the calories from HR software when it has power data. I can't remove the power data after the fact and get what the HR calories would have been. I could not record power for a ride, and have an HR calories number, but then I won't have power to compare it to. I have an older (~6.5 years) Garmin bike computer, maybe I'll be able to do a test tonight.
Occasionally I rent a mountain bike, with no PM. It's very hard to compare, there's really nothing to go on but perceived exertion. But if you take my word for it that these two rides were very similar in terms of how much effort they felt like they required (similar amounts of time and HR response) then the HRM system did a very impressive job:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/914030386
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/913079039
Thank you; that's interesting! Are you saying these two seemed to take the same amount of effort in total, not per time interval or per distance or whatever? Since the details of the two are so different, I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.
I did a really tiny, very bad comparison during my rowing team workout this evening. Since we did a warm-up, then intervals with an actual stop in between the interval working pieces (drink water, wipe sweat, etc.), and I kept my rather basic HRM turned on for all of that, all it makes sense to compare is the warm-up part of it, since the HRM-based estimate should be a bit more pure . . . but I'm adapted enough that it takes a while to get my HR cooking, so maybe not that valid for other reasons.
In a mere 10 minutes of warm-up, my HRM thought I burned 67 calories, and Concept 2 said 96 (after the weight adjustment calculator on their website, since the machine reports calories for a 175 pound person, which I no longer am!).
This is further apart than I remember seeing in the past (percentage wise), but probably not a fair sample, either. Thought I'd report just to show good faith effort, though
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I've thought about starting a thread along these lines over in debate or exercise forums (comparing various calorie estimating methods), but haven't gotten around to it.
OP, apologies for the thread hijack. I hope you'll take this as at least a digression into the closely related question of how one could accurately estimate one's exercise calories! 0 -
Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »Anyway, I think we can all agree that all methods are less accurate than O2 consumption, even a power meter on a bike. (How would it know what you are doing with your upper body?)
On a road bike, I'm really not doing anything with my upper body. That's why when you see photos of professional bike racers, their upper bodies look emaciated, like refugees. These are people who can leg press a double decker bus, and bench press a smart phone.1 -
Thank you; that's interesting! Are you saying these two seemed to take the same amount of effort in total, not per time interval or per distance or whatever? Since the details of the two are so different, I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly.
It felt like the same amount of effort. A lot of the numbers are wildly different, but one was on an efficient road bike and the other on a heavy rental mountain bike.
I did a test for you last night. I'm typing the results up into a new thread. 1
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