Not sure if I should factor in activity or eat back calories burnt through exercise when sedentary
florent_ven
Posts: 18 Member
Hi all,
Due to Covid, i’m off work and staying at home all day. I’m struggling to figure out my calorie defecit and activity level so here is some information so you can help me
Gender: male
Age: 21 (22 in April)
Height: 174cm
Weight: 84kg
Body fat %: 27.2
Activity:
I’m not that active. I shower everyday, sometimes cook, sit in the garden, might do some cleaning but most of the day I’m chilling or on the laptop learning a language or watching netflix.
I do, however, do some exercise:
• I aim to walk about 7,000- 10,000 steps everyday (6-10km a day).
• I also aim to do 3-5 strength training sessions a week. Some are more intense like tabata
• I might also throw in 1-3 HIIT sessions on the treadmill for 20 min (walk for 1 min at 3mph and run for 30 sec at 10mph)
• I have a weighted vest to make my exercises more intense but I don’t use it often. I might use it if I’m going for a short walk or to make my leg/chest exercises more intense
Based on this, I think my activity level is sedentary as I’m not factoring in the exercise. If I factor in the exercise, I would say lightly active. What I prefer to do is add on calories I burnt from the HIIT workout and from walking to the calories I’m supposed to eat to lose fat. The issue I have with this is accidently overestimating the calories I burnt so I tend to eat half. When it comes to strength training, I eat about 15% more of my calorie intake as i know it’s hard to calculate calories burnt from strength training.
If u have any tips or advice, i would appreciate it!
Many thanks!
Due to Covid, i’m off work and staying at home all day. I’m struggling to figure out my calorie defecit and activity level so here is some information so you can help me
Gender: male
Age: 21 (22 in April)
Height: 174cm
Weight: 84kg
Body fat %: 27.2
Activity:
I’m not that active. I shower everyday, sometimes cook, sit in the garden, might do some cleaning but most of the day I’m chilling or on the laptop learning a language or watching netflix.
I do, however, do some exercise:
• I aim to walk about 7,000- 10,000 steps everyday (6-10km a day).
• I also aim to do 3-5 strength training sessions a week. Some are more intense like tabata
• I might also throw in 1-3 HIIT sessions on the treadmill for 20 min (walk for 1 min at 3mph and run for 30 sec at 10mph)
• I have a weighted vest to make my exercises more intense but I don’t use it often. I might use it if I’m going for a short walk or to make my leg/chest exercises more intense
Based on this, I think my activity level is sedentary as I’m not factoring in the exercise. If I factor in the exercise, I would say lightly active. What I prefer to do is add on calories I burnt from the HIIT workout and from walking to the calories I’m supposed to eat to lose fat. The issue I have with this is accidently overestimating the calories I burnt so I tend to eat half. When it comes to strength training, I eat about 15% more of my calorie intake as i know it’s hard to calculate calories burnt from strength training.
If u have any tips or advice, i would appreciate it!
Many thanks!
0
Replies
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MFP's method wants you to log purposeful exercise and eat those calories back, so yes, mark yourself as Sedentary and log your walks, strength training, and HIIT.4
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As stated above, your daily activity level and your exercise are counted separately. It sounds like you're mostly sedentary. Log your deliberate exercise and eat back some of the calories from that. Some people find MFPs numbers for calorie burn to be exaggerated, others do fine with them, so try eating 50-75% back for a couple of weeks and see how that works for you. If you are losing faster than expected, then eat back 100%. If you aren't losing as quickly as you'd expect, then eat back fewer.0
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MFP's great compared to other sites if you need help learning the lesson of eating less when you do less and being able to eat more when you do more.
That initial eating goal with deficit is based on a daily estimated calorie burn based on non-exercise activity level - sedentary sounds correct for now, though it might be easier to throw the walking in there and count it as Active.
No, not Lightly-Active with that distance and steps - Active. Probably going higher actually.
Tabata is not strength training, it's intervals, but not HIIT since they make the recovery so short, and the protocol is not supposed to be all out like HIIT is for cardio, which allows for short recovery.
If actually doing strength training like sets, reps, and rests of 2-4 min - log that is Strength Training from the database when actually done.
It's not a big burn like cardio would be, but it's good estimate and it does count.
Now your eating goal is still based on a deficit from your estimated daily burn - but you burned more, so you should eat more to keep what is hopefully a reasonable deficit. And keep the workouts strong.
Sounds like you are doing the workouts to have a strong body. Might as well not ruin that!3 -
My suggestions:
• I aim to walk about 7,000- 10,000 steps everyday (6-10km a day).
You have a choice regarding your walking, either set your activity setting to Active to account for an average number of steps OR keep your activity setting as sedentary and log your walks as exercise. Wouldn't advise using MFP's walking estimates as they are inflated gross calorie estimates. You could use this calculator to get a net calorie estimate https://exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs
• I also aim to do 3-5 strength training sessions a week. Some are more intense like tabata
MFP's database entry for strength training (low rep, high weight, rests between sets) is fine to use the numbers given. Not sure what you are doing when you say tabata in this context? Circuit training perhaps which has a higher burn rate than strength training but my feeling is the estimate in the database here is rather high (when I've used it I've trimmed it down a bit).
• I might also throw in 1-3 HIIT sessions on the treadmill for 20 min (walk for 1 min at 3mph and run for 30 sec at 10mph)
Harder one to log unless you log the walk and run part separately.
• I have a weighted vest to make my exercises more intense but I don’t use it often. I might use it if I’m going for a short walk or to make my leg/chest exercises more intense.
In which case the estimate method should take that extra weight into account if significant.
As you are a high exerciser I would suggest selecting a modest rate of weight loss to support your exercise and recovery from exercise. At just 21 you are primed to make rapid progress with your fitness and strength so don't undermine that by trying to lose too fast.4 -
Thank you all for your responses! They’re all helpful and I’ll be sure to take it all on board!
For the past 2 weeks, however, I’ve gone on a diet break. I had lost quite a lot of weight since October (a lot of fat and some muscle - about 13kg) and I eventually plateaud since mid January to mid February. I started eating more calories so what I did was:
Put my activity level as sedentary
Put my goal as maintain weight
This gave me 2,280 calories to eat daily
On days I did strength/weight training which was every other day, I ate maybe an extra 150-300 calories.
As I also walked each day (about 8K- 12K steps), I ate back the calories that my runkeeper app told me I burnt. This was like an extra 500-800 calories.
At the end of the diet break, my weight was 83.55kg. At the start, it was roughly 83-84kg and during the break, my weight fluctuated. This means I successfully ate at maintenance since I didn’t gain any weight. Even better, my renpho scale shows I’ve gained a bit of muscle and lost like 0.2% if body fat.
Now that I’m off this diet break, i need to eat 1,730kcal to lose 0.5kg a week based on a sedentary lifestyle. Since I exercise a lot, the idea of eating an extra 500-1000 calories worries me because I don’t want to gain fat. My goal is to lose weight AND maintain/gain some muscle. If I strength train + do my long walks, that would earn me roughly an extra 800 calories to eat. That could be an overestimation so I would probably eat about 600kcal, but I don’t want to not be eating enough that I don’t maintain or gain muscle.
What are your thoughts on this?1 -
florent_ven wrote: »Thank you all for your responses! They’re all helpful and I’ll be sure to take it all on board!
For the past 2 weeks, however, I’ve gone on a diet break. I had lost quite a lot of weight since October (a lot of fat and some muscle - about 13kg) and I eventually plateaud since mid January to mid February. I started eating more calories so what I did was:
Put my activity level as sedentary
Put my goal as maintain weight
This gave me 2,280 calories to eat daily
On days I did strength/weight training which was every other day, I ate maybe an extra 150-300 calories.
As I also walked each day (about 8K- 12K steps), I ate back the calories that my runkeeper app told me I burnt. This was like an extra 500-800 calories.
At the end of the diet break, my weight was 83.55kg. At the start, it was roughly 83-84kg and during the break, my weight fluctuated. This means I successfully ate at maintenance since I didn’t gain any weight. Even better, my renpho scale shows I’ve gained a bit of muscle and lost like 0.2% if body fat.
Now that I’m off this diet break, i need to eat 1,730kcal to lose 0.5kg a week based on a sedentary lifestyle. Since I exercise a lot, the idea of eating an extra 500-1000 calories worries me because I don’t want to gain fat. My goal is to lose weight AND maintain/gain some muscle. If I strength train + do my long walks, that would earn me roughly an extra 800 calories to eat. That could be an overestimation so I would probably eat about 600kcal, but I don’t want to not be eating enough that I don’t maintain or gain muscle.
What are your thoughts on this?
My thoughts are you were already maintaining during your diet break eating NEAT maintenance calories and eating your exercise calories...why would it be any different when you were brining your base calorie target down to lose weight?2 -
florent_ven wrote: »Thank you all for your responses! They’re all helpful and I’ll be sure to take it all on board!
For the past 2 weeks, however, I’ve gone on a diet break. I had lost quite a lot of weight since October (a lot of fat and some muscle - about 13kg) and I eventually plateaud since mid January to mid February. I started eating more calories so what I did was:
Put my activity level as sedentary
Put my goal as maintain weight
This gave me 2,280 calories to eat daily
On days I did strength/weight training which was every other day, I ate maybe an extra 150-300 calories.
As I also walked each day (about 8K- 12K steps), I ate back the calories that my runkeeper app told me I burnt. This was like an extra 500-800 calories.
At the end of the diet break, my weight was 83.55kg. At the start, it was roughly 83-84kg and during the break, my weight fluctuated. This means I successfully ate at maintenance since I didn’t gain any weight. Even better, my renpho scale shows I’ve gained a bit of muscle and lost like 0.2% if body fat.
Now that I’m off this diet break, i need to eat 1,730kcal to lose 0.5kg a week based on a sedentary lifestyle. Since I exercise a lot, the idea of eating an extra 500-1000 calories worries me because I don’t want to gain fat. My goal is to lose weight AND maintain/gain some muscle. If I strength train + do my long walks, that would earn me roughly an extra 800 calories to eat. That could be an overestimation so I would probably eat about 600kcal, but I don’t want to not be eating enough that I don’t maintain or gain muscle.
What are your thoughts on this?
If you add a walk directly through MFP, for example, using "Walking, 3.0 mph, mod. pace" (or whatever your MFP is), do you get an amount of calories in the same ballpark?
Is your runkeeper app synced to MFP? I was flabbergasted at calories burns from a non-synced app until I learned it was giving me GROSS calories, which include my NEAT, not NET calories, which do not, as MFP already factors them in.
For the second bolded, eating back 600 calories is probably fine. Best way to test this is give it AT LEAST A MONTH and see if you lose as expected.0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »florent_ven wrote: »Thank you all for your responses! They’re all helpful and I’ll be sure to take it all on board!
For the past 2 weeks, however, I’ve gone on a diet break. I had lost quite a lot of weight since October (a lot of fat and some muscle - about 13kg) and I eventually plateaud since mid January to mid February. I started eating more calories so what I did was:
Put my activity level as sedentary
Put my goal as maintain weight
This gave me 2,280 calories to eat daily
On days I did strength/weight training which was every other day, I ate maybe an extra 150-300 calories.
As I also walked each day (about 8K- 12K steps), I ate back the calories that my runkeeper app told me I burnt. This was like an extra 500-800 calories.
At the end of the diet break, my weight was 83.55kg. At the start, it was roughly 83-84kg and during the break, my weight fluctuated. This means I successfully ate at maintenance since I didn’t gain any weight. Even better, my renpho scale shows I’ve gained a bit of muscle and lost like 0.2% if body fat.
Now that I’m off this diet break, i need to eat 1,730kcal to lose 0.5kg a week based on a sedentary lifestyle. Since I exercise a lot, the idea of eating an extra 500-1000 calories worries me because I don’t want to gain fat. My goal is to lose weight AND maintain/gain some muscle. If I strength train + do my long walks, that would earn me roughly an extra 800 calories to eat. That could be an overestimation so I would probably eat about 600kcal, but I don’t want to not be eating enough that I don’t maintain or gain muscle.
What are your thoughts on this?
If you add a walk directly through MFP, for example, using "Walking, 3.0 mph, mod. pace" (or whatever your MFP is), do you get an amount of calories in the same ballpark?
Is your runkeeper app synced to MFP? I was flabbergasted at calories burns from a non-synced app until I learned it was giving me GROSS calories, which include my NEAT, not NET calories, which do not, as MFP already factors them in.
For the second bolded, eating back 600 calories is probably fine. Best way to test this is give it AT LEAST A MONTH and see if you lose as expected.
When I first got the app, MFP was synced with my iphone health app and it would tell me I walked 10,000 steps but only burn 100-200 calories. Whereas I had the runkeeper app installed and it would say 500-700 calories burnt. I usually use a calculator online as well and add it with the calories burnt on runkeeper to get an average and I’d minus maybe 50-100 to ensure I don’t overestimate.
My runkeeper app is synced to MFP. I mean, I guess I should be find eating back those calories since I’ll be maintaining a 500 calorie defecit everyday.
I just don’t know how much to eat when I do strength training. Do u think 15% more on top of my defecit is enough? Obviously it depends on the intensity, weight, how many reps, sets, etc. For example, today I worked my legs. I did 11 different exercises such as:
• Squats ( 4x8 reps)
• Goblet squat ( 15,12,10, 8 reps)
• lunges ( 8 on each leg x3)
• bulgarian split squats (8 on each leg x3)
• lying leg raises (12 on each leg x 2)
• normal lunges (8 on each leg x3)
• side lunges (6,5,4 on each side)
• sumo deadlifts (12,10,8 reps)
• squats (12, 10, 8 reps)
• fire hydrants (15 on each leg x 2 )
• calf raises (1 min and a half, every 30 sec changing direction of toes pointing)
• lying clams (12 on each side x2)
I did all of these exercises with a 10kg vest on. I also held additional weights like 2kg, 4kg, 5kg, 7kg and 9kg dumbbells for most exercises.
How many calories should I eat back?
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florent_ven wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »florent_ven wrote: »Thank you all for your responses! They’re all helpful and I’ll be sure to take it all on board!
For the past 2 weeks, however, I’ve gone on a diet break. I had lost quite a lot of weight since October (a lot of fat and some muscle - about 13kg) and I eventually plateaud since mid January to mid February. I started eating more calories so what I did was:
Put my activity level as sedentary
Put my goal as maintain weight
This gave me 2,280 calories to eat daily
On days I did strength/weight training which was every other day, I ate maybe an extra 150-300 calories.
As I also walked each day (about 8K- 12K steps), I ate back the calories that my runkeeper app told me I burnt. This was like an extra 500-800 calories.
At the end of the diet break, my weight was 83.55kg. At the start, it was roughly 83-84kg and during the break, my weight fluctuated. This means I successfully ate at maintenance since I didn’t gain any weight. Even better, my renpho scale shows I’ve gained a bit of muscle and lost like 0.2% if body fat.
Now that I’m off this diet break, i need to eat 1,730kcal to lose 0.5kg a week based on a sedentary lifestyle. Since I exercise a lot, the idea of eating an extra 500-1000 calories worries me because I don’t want to gain fat. My goal is to lose weight AND maintain/gain some muscle. If I strength train + do my long walks, that would earn me roughly an extra 800 calories to eat. That could be an overestimation so I would probably eat about 600kcal, but I don’t want to not be eating enough that I don’t maintain or gain muscle.
What are your thoughts on this?
If you add a walk directly through MFP, for example, using "Walking, 3.0 mph, mod. pace" (or whatever your MFP is), do you get an amount of calories in the same ballpark?
Is your runkeeper app synced to MFP? I was flabbergasted at calories burns from a non-synced app until I learned it was giving me GROSS calories, which include my NEAT, not NET calories, which do not, as MFP already factors them in.
For the second bolded, eating back 600 calories is probably fine. Best way to test this is give it AT LEAST A MONTH and see if you lose as expected.
When I first got the app, MFP was synced with my iphone health app and it would tell me I walked 10,000 steps but only burn 100-200 calories. Whereas I had the runkeeper app installed and it would say 500-700 calories burnt. I usually use a calculator online as well and add it with the calories burnt on runkeeper to get an average and I’d minus maybe 50-100 to ensure I don’t overestimate.
My runkeeper app is synced to MFP. I mean, I guess I should be find eating back those calories since I’ll be maintaining a 500 calorie defecit everyday.
I just don’t know how much to eat when I do strength training. Do u think 15% more on top of my defecit is enough? Obviously it depends on the intensity, weight, how many reps, sets, etc. For example, today I worked my legs. I did 11 different exercises such as:
• Squats ( 4x8 reps)
• Goblet squat ( 15,12,10, 8 reps)
• lunges ( 8 on each leg x3)
• bulgarian split squats (8 on each leg x3)
• lying leg raises (12 on each leg x 2)
• normal lunges (8 on each leg x3)
• side lunges (6,5,4 on each side)
• sumo deadlifts (12,10,8 reps)
• squats (12, 10, 8 reps)
• fire hydrants (15 on each leg x 2 )
• calf raises (1 min and a half, every 30 sec changing direction of toes pointing)
• lying clams (12 on each side x2)
I did all of these exercises with a 10kg vest on. I also held additional weights like 2kg, 4kg, 5kg, 7kg and 9kg dumbbells for most exercises.
How many calories should I eat back?
The first bolded sounds like you had your activity level set to something higher then Sedentary, which is why you only got 100-200 calories - it waited until you were at the higher activity level before giving you credit for steps.
For the second bolded, I just log my time for "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training.)"
Note: This has to be done in the Cardiovascular section - the Strength Training section does not give you calories - it is just for notes.1 -
Log the duration of your strength training in the CV part of the exercise diary for a perfectly good (and modest, which is true) calorie estimate.
There's no need to make it quite so complicated as you are doing.0 -
Ah right! Thank u! I was logging it in the strength section but was getting no calories! Will do that now! 0
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Log the duration of your strength training in the CV part of the exercise diary for a perfectly good (and modest, which is true) calorie estimate.
There's no need to make it quite so complicated as you are doing.
Should I take into account the breaks between sets, time taken to change weights, etc, when logging the duration? For example, my workout took 1 - 1.5 hours hours to complete with breaks, changing weights, etc, wouldn’t it be better to put 1 hour so I dont overestimate calories burnt? Because I can guarantee the time spent actually holding the weights and doing the exercises is less. Or are the extra calories needed since I want to maintain/gain muscle whilst lose fat? Sorry, I’m just so stuck. And I know im overcomplicating it0 -
florent_ven wrote: »Log the duration of your strength training in the CV part of the exercise diary for a perfectly good (and modest, which is true) calorie estimate.
There's no need to make it quite so complicated as you are doing.
Should I take into account the breaks between sets, time taken to change weights, etc, when logging the duration? For example, my workout took 1 - 1.5 hours hours to complete with breaks, changing weights, etc, wouldn’t it be better to put 1 hour so I dont overestimate calories burnt? Because I can guarantee the time spent actually holding the weights and doing the exercises is less. Or are the extra calories needed since I want to maintain/gain muscle whilst lose fat? Sorry, I’m just so stuck. And I know im overcomplicating it
The entry for strength training in the CV exercise part of the diary is for traditional strength training and includes breaks. I get somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 calories or so for an hour which seemed pretty reasonable and worked well when I was using the MFP methodology.1 -
florent_ven wrote: »Log the duration of your strength training in the CV part of the exercise diary for a perfectly good (and modest, which is true) calorie estimate.
There's no need to make it quite so complicated as you are doing.
Should I take into account the breaks between sets, time taken to change weights, etc, when logging the duration? For example, my workout took 1 - 1.5 hours hours to complete with breaks, changing weights, etc, wouldn’t it be better to put 1 hour so I dont overestimate calories burnt? Because I can guarantee the time spent actually holding the weights and doing the exercises is less. Or are the extra calories needed since I want to maintain/gain muscle whilst lose fat? Sorry, I’m just so stuck. And I know im overcomplicating it
Breaks between sets are expected and accounted for in the estimate of the whole training period.
Strongly suggest you simplify things massively and then be consistent with your methods.
After a few weeks of consistency you will start to see the trend of what your weight trend is doing and you can adjust accordingly, if you need to to regulate your weight loss.
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