GET OUT OF THE 210’s

AGLake wrote: »

Hi ! How are you doing at getting out of the 210’s weight range lb by lb ?
Aside from that, it’s my opinion that, as ordinary people, any extra exercise or intentional activity we might do will burn a few calories more than sitting around all day, but really not enough to wonder about eating back the calories. It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

It seems to me that anyone who does a meaningful amount of exercise needs to fuel that exercise, whether they weigh 210 pounds or 97 pounds. It needn't be 8 hours of exercise to matter: A person can burn hundreds of calories in an hour. I ate all my exercise calories pretty close to every day while losing from class 1 obese (so a little below 210, but not much) to a healthy weight, and have done so for 7+ years at a healthy weight since then.

If I didn't eat back my exercise calories - somehow - I'd keep losing weight pretty fast, and that's not suitable for me since I'm currently at a reasonable body weight (BMI 22, mid-normal range). I'm extremely gratefully that I learned and practiced how to estimate exercise calories while I was still losing weight: It helped to have the cushion of a calorie deficit while I was in the learning process so was more likely to make errors. By the time I got to goal weight, I had a lot of confidence in my practices.

For me, the MFP approach of estimating exercise separately works extremely well: My exercise is seasonal and much of it weather-dependent, so there's some unpredictability. Also, even though I'm not remotely a professional athlete - just a li'l ol' retired lady, age 67, working out for an hour-ish or so most days - it's not unusual for my exercise calories to be several hundred calories, like 20%+ of my daily calorie needs. That's not a thing to ignore! I was this active when I was still obese, BTW (had been this active for a dozen years while overweight/obese - exercise isn't a guarantee of weight loss).

For other people, with a more consistent exercise schedule/volume, it can make sense to average in exercise calorie needs and just manage weight loss rate via calorie intake alone. (Folks who do that should give a think about how they'll adjust when some unfortunate future thing keeps them from exercising, such as an injury or surgical recovery, or even a big ramp-up in time needs for job or family care.)

Fast weight loss isn't necessarily a good thing. If it goes too fast, bad things can happen. Sure, that includes more potential for deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the weight-loss action, even giving up altogether if it seems too hard. (Sometimes slow loss that's more doable can get us to goal weight in less calendar time than some extreme plan to "lose weight fast" that goes in fits and starts.)

On top of that, too fast loss increases health risks: Fatigue and weakness are the minor end of that, along with appearance issues like thinning hair or brittle nails. But the risks include gallbladder problems, unnecessarily much muscle loss alongside fat loss, immune system suppression, and worse.

Will bad things for sure happen? No, of course not. But the odds of problems increase as the loss rate gets faster. It's a question of how much risk you want to tolerate. In that, health history and other demands in one's life need to be considered. Weight loss is a physical stressor, and all the stresses in our lives - physical and psychological - are cumulative. I don't think anyone should turn all the dials to the maximum setting: It won't end well, IMO.

For me, getting and staying healthy (or at least heathier) was my main reason for losing weight in the first place. Why would I shoot myself in the foot by not accounting for my substantial amount of exercise while I lost weight, thus increasing my health risks?

You (or anyone else) can do what works for you. But you asked what we think. The above is what I think. I think it's not very good advice to generically suggest that only professional athletes need to plan in exercise calories, even though how to handle it is a personal choice.

If you can (that's a definite*if* but *can* is also a big and loaded word) you should consider that the smaller the proportion of your deficit the easier on the body.

I got to MFP 8.5 years ago and already weight reduced during the preceding 10 montha. I got here at about 240lbs and 172.25 cm (you can convert online I'm sure, it's between 5ft 7 and 5ft 8) at age 48

At the end of 365 days, I averaged 17,970 steps of walking type activities a day, had eaten an average of 2560 Cal each and every logged day (even logging all you can eat buffet meals as best as I could), and gone from 240.6lbs to 168.1, i.e. an effective deficit of 695 Cal a day.

No plan other than to keep as close as I could to posting my daily/weekly deficit, log my food carefully and for quite a few months in the beginning before opening my mouth up put it in logged with verified entries to the gram (yes, many times I ate an apple or two to survive logging and then postponed the logged meal for later since I was no longer hungry. Doing so actually helped me slowly become more aware of my personal hunger cues). Then review logs and keep on making choices that best allowed me to stick to the deficit plan while believing that they were ones I would be able to keep making indefinitely at maintenance.

Do we really think that I got to be above 280 by walking to the grocery store or the McDonald's drive through? Increasing my activity and reducing less active aspects of my daily life was a deliberate choice. Not all at once. Not without trials and changes. But a deliberate choice that I would seek more movement and drop or reduce lack of movement where I could. And that no aspect of my life was off limits for review.

Not saying that people can't succeed without doing this. Not saying that everyone can physically or financially/time of life do this. But it's not all of nothing 100% success or 100% failure either.

You can always move in a direction you choose to by making choices that head towards there.

About the only thing you need to do is drop the sacred cows. Some of the things that have led us to become *and remain* morbidity obese for extended lengths of time can and should be examined for change. And their current importance in our lives can definitely mutate over time

And you can bet your sweet patooties that I eat every one of the carefully logged calories I spend--even if I am not a professional athlete! 🤪

AGLake wrote: »

It seems to me only professional athletes need to eat back calories after working out for eight-hour days of training, practice and athletic performance.
What do you think?

Simply stated, I think you are flat-out wrong.

As someone who is NOT a professional athlete and does NOT spend 8 hours/day training, I meet your criteria as someone who you say should not eat back exercise calories. This is me, yesterday morning, 151.4 lbs (5'4"):



If I did NOT eat back exercise calories, I'd be losing weight at a rate of, ballpark, for the sake of argument, let's call it a pound/week (realistically, it'd be more than that, but I'm taking a reduction in NEAT etc into consideration, and hey, its' a nice round number so let's roll with that). Do you believe I NEED to be losing weight, especially at that rate? I mean, I'm not a skeleton by any means, but I don't truly believe that would be advantageous, in terms of aesthetics (which I know is a personal preference; your opinion may not align with mine on that), health, or performance.

Health-wise, not eating back my exercise calories would have me running into REDS (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport - you can Google the symptoms associated with the condition) and particularly as a woman, would quickly have me in the territory of the Female Athlete Triad. I've been at those bodyfat levels before and I can assure you, it's not pleasant, healthy (my doctor about hit the roof when he saw my bloodwork when I was nearing the of a cut), or sustainable.

And as someone who actually cares about my performance in the gym, FOOD IS FUEL. This morning I pulled a PR 400-pound deadlift (YAY ME! Yes, I'm stoked, although I saw my life flash before my eyes, but that's a story for another day....). Would that have been possible if I were in the kind of deficit that you're saying I SHOULD be running? Doubtful, to say the least. Again, I've been in some pretty gnarly deficits and I know from experience that my performance suffers terribly beyond a certain point.

So, TL;DR? I absolutely eat back exercise calories, and for good reasons. If you don't feel it's necessary FOR YOU, then by all means, nix them. But to say that EVERYONE besides professionals who train 8 hrs/day shouldn't? Naaaaaah. Sorry, ya lost me there.

Oh, and I also like to eat. So there's that as well.