Stupid calorie related question of stupidity.

Your profile says you're male. The minimum daily calorie goal for a male is 1500. How long were you on the treadmill? A 1100 calorie burn is extremely high. What are your stats?

PS: No question is considered stupid---we've heard them all.

Hi , Andrew. Welcome to MFP.

I’ve had my share of stupid stupidity, both as a new and eventually as a seasoned user. It still amazes me the things I learn as I go along.

Did the calorie burn come off the treadmill? Are you using a fitness tracker? If so, compare the numbers between the two. If not, consider getting a tracker. They are inexpensive nowadays, and you may even have a friend with one sitting in a drawer, who’d be happy to give away their guilt by giving it to you.

Many pieces of gym equipment are seldom if ever calibrated or maintained and can report inaccurate burns. It’s also to a gym’s benefit if their patrons look at a machine and say “wow! I burned (insert abnormally high number here) so many calories!!!!”

Fitness trackers have their own issues but tend to be far more accurate than gym equipment.

Even my own stationery bike records burns about 25% or so higher than my Apple Watch records for the same workout.

Also, if you are using a tracker or Strava or something similar, make sure it’s not recording double to MFP. That’s been an issue for some users, too.

And this is presumably new exercise to you. If you experience any soreness or discomfort, expect your weight to actually go UP until a few days after the soreness diminishes. Your body will retain water to cope with healing soreness/ and it can be a lot of water. Several pounds worth.

You’re off to a great start! I sincerely hope we’ll see you on the boards asking questions. Because for every “stupid” question, there’s a hundred other who want to know but are afraid to ask.

If you’re figuring your calorie burn on the treadmill based on heart rate, don’t. You most likely burned half of what you thought

What is your height and weight?

Welcome to calorie counting! It's the dieting method preferred by control freaks everywhere!

Anyway, the point of MFP is that it calculates your plan for you. Just fill out your profile with your stats, choose a goal (e.g., 1lb weight loss per week), choose an "activity level--" sedentary for us desk jockeys.

Now you need to learn how to track your eating and exercise, entering both into the app. Exercise estimates can be a bit tricky. But, it's easy when you do a (gym quality) exercise machine, since they calculate the calories for you (generally based on your weight, so you need to provide that accurately).

As the day goes by, you burn your daily calories plus any additional "exercise calories." MFP calculates what you should eat to achieve your goal. In other words, if you set it up for a 1lb per week weight loss, it will indicate the total calories you should eat to achieve that.

Best of luck!

Everyone has had very sensible advice so far. I just wanted to add a bit of common sense. One day of eating far too few, or even too many, calories isn't going to cause a problem. If you don't feel like eating any more today, then don't. Just recognize that you can't do that every day and stay healthy. More than likely, you'll wake up tomorrow with a rumbling belly and an "eat all the things" hunger and if you go over your calories a little bit tomorrow (or even as many as you were under for today) , that kind of course correction isn't a bad thing, either. Unlike MFP, the way your body burns calories doesn't "close" every 24 hours.

andrewgilfellon wrote: »

My height is 5ft 7 and I am just under 18stone. 17 12 last I checked.
I did a max gradient of 15 and a speed of 6.0 for 1hr and 10 minutes. Put in my age and weight on the machine. Kicking the treadmill like this every day is what got me losing weight in the first place. I lost 4st in 9 months doing so, but back then I was able to do upwards of 1400-1600. So, really these days I'm only able to do 1200 at the most. I also do stretches and weight training too.

Hey there. First of all, congratulations on your healthy journey! I am going to veer off-topic because some other posters have already answered your question (especially nossmf - read and heed what they wrote). I am going to take the liberty to critique your weight loss approach, because from what I am reading here, you are making some potentially costly mistakes.

1) Running every day. At your current weight point, you are placing a great deal of strain on your body by running for that duration, at that incline, and every day. I'm very impressed with your cardio condition! But. Your body needs time to rebuild, your muscles and ligaments need to heal the micro-tears that cardio causes, your joints need to relubricate, rest and take a load off. I would strongly recommend running every other day instead, and doing stretching immediately after a run.

2) Undereating/not compensating calories burned through physical activity. You said you were "done for the day" after barely eating what you just burned on the treadmill? How do you power your body for the rest of the day? Your body, as others have mentioned, needs *at least* ~1500 calories to live and function (called a basal metabolic rate). A daily calorie intake under that minimal figure exposes you to severe long-term health issues such as hormonal and metabolic imbalance, hair loss, mood swings and worse. You should estimate your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE, calculators are available online), then your calorie deficit should come out of that number. The figure you get is your daily calorie allowance, and it should roughly match MFP's daily figure to a tolerance of +/- 200 calories. That is the number you've *got to hit with your nutrition* to avoid doing damage to your health in the long term.

3) Very high intensity cardio. I don't know if you've calculated the fat burning range in your heart rate, but I feel like you haven't, and 180 is through the roof for what you're intending to do (presumably weight loss). You can calculate your fat burning threshold by subtracting your age from 220, then multiplying by 0.7. For example if you're 25, you'd do:
220 - 25 = 195
195 * 0.7 = 136.5
That is the heart rate where you'd be tapping into your fat reserves to power your run. Ideally you should stay a bit above it throughout. Going much higher than that rate is overusing your heart and straining the rest of your body without burning more fat. It prolongs the recovery time (of which you already have very little) and it's probably signing you up for chronic joint pain later on in life.

So why should you avoid too high intensity cardio? Allow me to explain this with a car analogy.
You want to get from point A to point B. You can:

A) drive your car at 110km/h, following traffic, and arrive safely.
Or you can:
drive at 160 km/h, which makes your engine burn more gas and run consistently at higher RPM.
The pistons in the engine are travelling back and forth many more times in their casings than at the lower speed.
This causes more wear and tear on the engine and decreases mean time to failure.
You arrive to your destination in about 30% less time, but with a car that will break down 2-3 years sooner.

Your body is like the car in the analogy. It already suffers strain from a calorie deficit/diet. If you are overusing and underpowering it, it's going to break down sooner than if you take a more balanced approach to physical activity and nutrition.

As solutions to these, I'd recommend reading up on the principles behind the CICO diet, how much cardio is ideal for weight loss, how to set a reasonable calorie deficit starting from your TDEE, and how to ensure that you are at least meeting your BMR every day with your calorie intake. And optionally, since you've joined MFP, how to ensure that the composition of your diet, in terms of macro- as well as micronutrients, is balanced for a healthy lifestyle and it supports your weight loss efforts.

Cheers!

SavageMrsMoose wrote: »

Andrew- I’m not surprised you’re not hungry the day of a long or hard run.

I’ve been consistently running more than 1000 miles a year for the past 30 years or so. In my experience, I have a suppressed appetite the day of a particularly hard workout, but can be ravenous the next day. So if you don’t typically run that hard or long, you might just not be that hungry. I’m not sure the physiology of it, but I know other runners are the same way. But be wary - you might get really hungry tomorrow so make a plan for what to eat.

Good luck!

I used to experience the same thing when I was regularly running 30+ miles per week. I'd wake up the next morning and need to eat all the things.