Quick Weight Loss Reality Check

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keinanbriggs
keinanbriggs Posts: 39
in Health and Weight Loss
1lb of fat = 3,500 calories
To lose 10 lbs of fat = 35,000 calories need to be burned

Lets say your metabolism burns 2,000 calories per day
and you eat 2,000 calories in a day
you break even.

(Not working out and eating less will burn calories until you body adjust your metabolism to match the amount of calories you eat)

One hour of cardio on a treadmill is approximately 500 calories
it will take 70 hours on the treadmill to burn 10 lbs of fat aka 35,000 calories

Take a second and think about how many days you work out per week and how long you workout each day
you will quickly see how long it takes to lose weight (if you plan to keep the weight off)

Replies

  • sabulla
    sabulla Posts: 58
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    Awesome statistics! Never realized those #s.
  • Alissa_Sal
    Alissa_Sal Posts: 141
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    Isn't this why they say that weight loss is like 90% diet?

    Personally, I view working out along different lines. I don't think that working out is going to lose the weight, even though I make an effort to work out 6 days a week.

    I once read something where they were talking about exercise and weight loss, and they were saying that the reason to work out while trying to lose weight is to put your body on notice that it can't get rid of those muscles because you are using them. The more muscle mass you have, the higher your resting metabolism, so you don't want to lose muscle mass (easy to do when you are restricting calories.) Working out by itself probably isn't going to be enough to lose significant amounts of weight (as you illustrated above) but it keeps your metabolism buring at a faster rate which is important particularly when you're restricting calories and your body's first instict is to slow down your metabolism.

    I know everyone's body is different, but I find that exercise helps me maintain a middle ground where I am eating more calories than the 1200 a day that MFP recommends (I cannot live on 1200 day!) but still losing weight.
  • keinanbriggs
    keinanbriggs Posts: 39
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    Keep working out. Every pound of muscle will burn 50 calories daily at rest. So.. a good goal would be to switch out 10 lbs of fat for muscle.. that's 1 lb of fat burned weekly at rest. Ps 1lb of muscle is about half the size of fat
  • keinanbriggs
    keinanbriggs Posts: 39
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    Also doing cardio between 70-90% of your max heart rate will burn muscle.. weight training does not build muscle, it breaks muscle down

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