Just figured out exactly why I stopped losing weight.

.... feels like you need to be a mathematician to deal with this stuff!

I agree with some of the posts that lifting heavy weights probably can burn just as many calories as cardio - they always have all the biggest loser contestants swinging those enormous kettle bells all the time lol!

YAY I'm glad you discovered what is (hopefully) preventing you from losing. I hope you get good results from eating a little more while continuing your hard work in the gym! Let us know

I am very confused by all of this simply because every thing you see on tv, magazines..etc.. say you have to eat less and exercise more. So what is the point of exercising if you are going to eat back those calories, why not just eat the eligible amount of calories and no exercise.. this is all very confusing.
:huh:

Keeping aside the truth/falsity in the HRM readings, i guess you should eat your BMR calories no matter what.
I was on a plateau for almost 2 years- tried every other kind of diet,every new kinf of excercise(im a dancer on top)-i was under the impression my Metabolism was too slow.I was eating like 800-100 calories a day.

I started training with a personal trainer, he yelled at me when i said i was consuming 1000 cals and asked me to double it up-i was like but,then....he said "no questions asked- without any workout you would burn 2000 on a normal day,your body will never let go of your fat if you eat that low". I just started eating around 1600-1800 a day(my BMR)- 1 week into it and i lost 2 pounds-the scale moved after 2 years-i was super surprised but thats the bottom line-let your body have its basic needs and work on top of it!!

Just be careful, don't use the HRM as an excuse to eat a ton. It may be true that you are in fact eating too little, and eating more may help you lose. But from what I have seen with my own HRM and from what I have researched, they are notoriously unreliable. My HRM typically gives me 3x the calories burned as my pedometer does when I go for a walk, for example. I can tell you that 250 calories in 15 minutes of weight lifting for an average sized woman is very unlikely. I am a large man (6'4" 265lbs) with probably twice the muscle mass and it takes me at least twice as long to burn that much. So you're talking a potentially serious margin for error there.

Regardless, I would still try to eat more for a few weeks to see if you can break your plateau.

Plus, if you are circuit training you get cardio as well as resistance training and burn mega calories. Have you ever done Jillian's Shred? I mean, I am dripping in sweat after 25 minutes. I am sure I burn at least 350 calories.

250 calories in 15 minutes sounds awfully high.

What kind of HRM did you get?

Ya really! I WISH! I am a ball of sweat most days and depends on the workout, it varies! But thats alot of cals burned in a small amount of time

I have a Polar f6 and worked with my trainer today for 30 minutes with 8 - 10 - and 12-lb weights. My HRM said I burned 186 calories during that time. I was also on the Bosu doing some jumping off and on which really got my heartrate up! That does sound like a huge burn for 15 minutes. ;-)

Weight training also burns more calories after you stop working out, just to point out......

Just for giggles, I popped on the weight machine dialed in the max it does 180 and for 15 minutes popped off bench and lat pulls, and other various exercises on it. Total calories burnt: 138. I'm inc. large and using max that machine had as fast as I could crank out 15 reps at a time. I held my HR at 158-163, I use a polar FT40, I think you might have you VO2 MAX set on the default, you need to do a quick est. VO2 MAX test and make sure that is set right, otherwise it'll give you some weird numbers. I learned that when I first got my polar. I just thought, ehhh default should work. Yeah you will want to change that. It takes 12 minutes or so to do the test for the most accurate results.

I have my HRM set up for Own Zone with all of my personal statistics - age, weight, etc.

What is endo/mesomorph?

One of the ways you can tell if you are getting accurate info and eating enough while lifting is assessing how you feel. If you are not able to lift heavier each time or you start getting sick and feeling tired all the time you are not eating enough, specifically protien. You want lean protien for this. It is actually very difficult to gain muscle if you are in a calorie deficiet, and if you are in too much deficiet then your body will start grabing protien... from your muscles, hence the tiredness, non-progresion, and sometimes even weakening can occurr. The more overweight you are the more likely you can gain muscle while losing fat. In short if you start feeling weaker, extra tired all the time and ar getting sick, then you need to eat more. Esp protien, but try for lean protien., you may actually need to adjust your ratio of macronutrients.

Speaking of macronutrients. Keep in mind when I say carbs I mean starchy low nutritional value stuff like grains, pasta, potatos; sugars and corn. I try to avoid carbs at night unless I'm weight training, and I also try to aviod them on non weight training days., though I usually find myself STARVING the day after weight day and I lift heavy. 5X5 each of Squats, Bench, Rows and then the alt work out of Squats, Overhead Presses and Deadlifts. google 5x5 and check the thread on MFP.

What the other poster meant about burning calories long after your lifting session is over is that the body, on that day continues to burn calories at a higher rate, for much longer than standard cardio. This is also true of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Circuit training as well.