Can someone check my understanding of the math behind calories and exercise?

Yes, weight loss is slow, especially when you have so little to lose. If you were to lose weight too quickly (thus eating too little) your body will get the energy it needs to just stay alive from muscles. Though you'd not look leaned out but flabby and your sport will suffer. Thus slow down! By a lot.

MFP works out your weight maintenance calories (calculated BMR x activity multiplier).
And that multiplier unlike TDEE sites doesn't include any allowance for intentional exercise.

And then you choose a rate of weight loss. If you choose 1lb/week MFP takes 500cals/day off your weight maintenance number. That goal number is only for a day you do no intentional exercise - so the goal is xxxx plus exercise calories. It is incredibly short sighted not to take your exercise calories into account, your body will take them into account even if you don't!

It's important to note that it's you choosing your rate of loss and not MFP giving you a goal.
But it won't go below 1500 minimum for an adult male. I suspect you are choosing 2lbs a week loss - that's taking a massive 1000 calories off your maintenance number. Are you really sure you want to do that?
To me that is not appropriate for someone with not much to lose (12lbs?).

If your results don't match expectations over an extended period of time (weeks not days) then the first thing to review is your logging accuracy.

bobykim6 wrote: »

PAV8888: Yes, correct and I didn't write correctly: I'm overweight (on the high end), not on the high end of obese. Thank you for your detailed response. I appreciate the time you took to write all of this, including running the SBMI calc. I'm going to check that out. I definitely need to get better at nutrition, but I don't eat junk food, drink sodas, beers, smoke, etc. on a daily basis. An occasional soda w/ a cheat meal is a guilty bad day for me. I will be perusing the nutrition forum soon. Also I need to do start weight lifting again, but my martial arts class is very exhausting (lots of burpees, calisthetics, kicking/punching, etc.) and I'm at least feeling tightness in my muscles and less dense fatness around the waist.

Sorry, in case it wasn't clear, I was quoting the SBMI report for your height/weight etc... so no need to thank

No, you are most certainly not at the high end of overweight (nor into obese)

You're at the high end of normal weight for your age group and by WHO and BMI classification officially overweight. If you are of Asian ancestry there might be some argument about you being higher up in the overweight range.

I note that by the old (in use in 1990) definition of BMI and recommended weight ranges, your recommended weight range would top at 162lbs, in 1990, so you would still be within it!

Please note that your exercise sounds substantially more than most. I would not be surprised, at all, if you're clocking out more calories than you give yourself credit for. If you're not eating, after all that is said and done, AT A MINIMUM the equivalent of maintenance level Calories for a "slightly active" to "active person" of your height, weight and sex after you've done all the adjustments (and this equivalent includes a consideration for a -500 Ca deficit), then I would consider your figures to be failing a first level "sanity double check". Basically, from your description, I am expecting your actual maintenance to be at the equivalent caloric level of very active.

I would lose the guilty pop and bad day aspect. It is a bit exhausting. And... you're in charge.

So if you wanted it, and you evaluated that you could afford it in the context of your goals, then i would think that the guilt is entirely optional!

All this is not intended to minimize your desire to improve. Nor to suggest that you shouldn't ramp up to making changes

But it IS, I think, a needed perspective to encourage you to make longer term changes and choices as opposed to panic influenced less long term sustainable and more geared to the short term changes that just try to bring quick results for a problem that might be less advanced than you appear to be believe.

Long terms structural changes to bring yourself in alignment with where you want to be in the future. Pressing for extra speed not necessary.... which I see you've already working on by reducing your rate of loss.

Yes you should eat the mfp number plus the exercise calories. I agree that the number it is giving you is probably at least double what you are really burning. Thats pretty true for every exercise in the mfp database. I always find they are way over estimated.

You could try 2000 ish daily and don't log your exercise at all. If you lose too fast, eat more. If you lose too little, eat less (change by 100 a day for a week). Since you are very consistent with exercise I think that just assuming you'll exercise and eat for it is appropriate. Even though you don't exercise 7 days a week it still balances out. This would be equivalent to setting mfp to "active" or "very active" and eating those calories and not logging exercise. And 0.5 to 1 lb loss a week TOPS.

People use to post guidelines somewhere for appropriate rate of weight loss. I can't remember exactly what they are... but i believe that when one has 15? 20? Lbs to lose, an appropriate rate is 0.5 lbs a week. Is there anyone who can clarify this for me/op? I've been gone for a while having babies and just getting back into it now. My brain is failing me.

MFP overestimates exercise calories! So you might be eating back too many exercise calories. When I log a 1 hour run in MFP it says I burned 632 calories, whereas my Garmin watch (combined with a HR monitor) says I burned 560. For cycling it was even worse MFP 1396, Garmin 922. As soon as I started eating back my Garmin calories I started losing weight as expected.

bobykim6 wrote: »

Heybales,

Thanks for your reply. There were several things I read that intrigued me esp towards the end of your email and I think this was an epiphany of sorts. Would you mind mind reading my responses and questions to your reply to me?

heybales wrote: »

Weighing everything you eat? Because calories is per gram, not cups or spoons volume (except liquids).

My response: For a few days, I did weigh what I ate. But admittedly it got really tiresome and somethings were really messy to weigh and then eat. Truly is this one of the keys to success?

heybales wrote: »

So the same math for fat loss is about the same for fat gain. You'd have to be eating 500 each and every day over true maintenance to gain 1 lb of fat in a week. And your results are showing 1.5 lb in a month.

If you believe that is fat, then this would apply: 1.9 x 3500 / 36 days = 185 cal above maintenance. So that would imply you were inaccurate enough through 685 total calories (because you had 500 deficit right?).

Yes, I believe you're right that I was probably above maintenance and the cals burned from my exercise was way overestimated. I'm going to use this month to refine my cals in and out.

Also in your equation, what is the 1.9?

heybales wrote: »

How much are you standing around in that workout time? 660 cal/hr is a high hard workout for someone light.

I've actually been filming my sessions w/ my GoPro (more to correct any technique issues), but after watching my workouts, I'd say that out of the 50-55 min online sessions, about 15 mins of it is standing around or very, very light activity/warm ups. I'd say 30 mins is moderately intensive and the last 10 is very intense. But the pace of the activity is not 15, 30 moderate, 10 intense. It's all mixed in together. I also do neck/strength training as I want to do more BJJ in the future for about 10-15 minutes as well as a solid 5-10 mins of pullups (one of my biggest weaknesses).

heybales wrote: »

That type of intense workout though is going to be high glucose usage - just begging the body to store more in the muscles being used. That stores with water. If you were eating so little in doing it prior, body finally got a chance to have more carbs to store.

Now I should've put this at the front of the email because this is what really intrigues me because I've seen similar things on Youtube, which contradicts alot of things I was brought up to believe and the 3 years of Crossfit /HIIT workouts I did between '13-'15. You wrote that intense workouts are going to burn glucose first, but then I don't understand the rest of the meaning of that sentence and the next one. So if I go full out during these classes, my body is burning glucose and not fat? And then storing water (or is it carbs as you said in the last sentence)? Is this why I'm not burning any body fat?

heybales wrote: »

Also - that weight change math is so minor - if you had several days of eating low sodium before 1st weigh-in, and were back to normal by 2nd weigh-in, easily see that much difference in water weight. By the last weigh-in, could have had an Asian meal night before with some higher sodium than average - so water weight.

So I am Asian (ethnic Korean to be exact), but what we eat can be extremely varied throughout the week and not only Asian food. I'm going to open up my food diary once I figure that out and you can see that for lunch and dinner, its all over the map. My breakfasts are pretty standard: a protein bar w/ coffee and lots of water (I don't log my water). I rarely snack. As mentioned, lunch and dinner are all over the map but we lean towards Asian food. We try to eat lighter dinners unless we're really hungry and we have substantially cut down our white refined products and white rice consumption. I have a looong way to go to clean up my diet and I think this is definitely something that would help with my fat burn goal.

Points in order.

Food logging accuracy - Yes. Obviously a wide range between celery and peanut butter where it matters more than others - but perhaps some tips & tricks to make it easier. There is a sticky about it.

What was the 1.9? - 160.9 minus 159.0.

Workout time - some of the database entries are based on the very short intense actual usage doing the moves, not the slow practice, or intermittent, or the rests. Some do include the rests like Strength Training Weights.
Sort of like pullups - you literally do pullup after pullup non-stop for 5-10 minutes? That's almost aerobic level of pullups. I'm not even sure I've seen the CrossFit games go that long at once with their version of "pullups".

Diet - So you are likely in a higher sodium state all the time, so the potential water weight fluctuations from that are really minor. For someone that normally eats low sodium, after 1 meal they can jump in weight maybe 2 lbs the next morning - but then take several days of back to normal low sodium eating to drop that extra water weight.
In your normal state - just means you did not get that kind of effect then, because even if you had a meal or two that was lower sodium, you'd need several days to likely see a change.
Not that other known reasons for water weight fluctuations didn't apply. Maybe you had a hard very sweating workout night before that first weigh-in and didn't make up the water, making you underestimated weight. Then final weigh-in back to normal. That kind of thing. Or maybe really sore on last weigh-in from hard workout day before.

Fuel source/usage/storage.
Muscles are burning ATP literally, from where that is sourced depends on how quickly it needs more - under aerobic conditions it's a % range of fat to higher % glycogen as you get more intense and less aerobic.
Very intense movements for short amounts of time, like lifting or likely the intense part of the workouts you do - are sourced from intramuscular stored glycogen, so it doesn't have to wait for blood supply to bring it (and to spare what's in the blood desired for the brain).
That glycogen is stored with water. 1g with 3g.
You push the body, it responds to the stimuli by improving - one such improvement is to store more glycogen in the muscles. (another aerobic improvement is to use more fat as source, but some things are intense enough that won't work)
My comment was if you were undereating and getting smaller amounts of carbs, and you increased your eating level - body finally got to do what it has been desiring to do - store more.

Don't worry whether you burn fat or carbs during the workout, it's the whole day that matters.
Because you used a bunch of carbs, after your next meal insulin is going to shuttle off eaten carbs back to that storage, blood sugar is going to drop sooner, insulin will go back down - and you'll be back to normal daily fat burning mode sooner than if you had no glycogen stores to refill.

Is that really different than CrossFit reported?
Or were they reporting on a study that HIIT (which is some cardio activity done in interval fashion, not some workout already done in interval fashion anyway) burned more subcutaneous fat than steady-state?
It was due to what I said above - drop back into normal fat burning mode sooner. Not because it's used during the workout.