EAT EXERCISE CALORIES

Congrats on breaking the plateau!!! I hit a plateau before and I read so many articles online about them & they all basically say the same thing, eat more, & drink more water. & It was a scary concept to grasp because like you said you think that when you are trying to loose weight you eat less. Unfortunately, like other people have posted, I overestimated & started to gain.

Here comes a nay-sayer...


Please explain how this makes any sense.

Please cite a credible study(s) that shows a definite entry into 'starvation mode'.

If you're going to use the metabolism defense, please cite a study that has strong evidence to suggest metabolism is affected enough to adversely prevent you from losing weight.

I am having a hard time believing you should eat back calories you just burnt.

My question to you is, have you seen any research (from a reputal source) that supports teh best way to lose weight is eat very little calories and exercise a lot? This isn't intented to be mean or melicious but rather looking at it from another point of view.


In reality, this is truely an entire college level course but I will see what I can do to help inform those who would like to listen.



There are three main variables in weight loss that are crutical; lean body mass (LBM), basal metabolic rate (BMR) and total daily energy expended (TDEE) [see shapefit.com link for further detail]. 1. LBM is the mass of a body minus the lipids (body fat); essentially, the weight from organs, muscle, bones and tissue. 2. BMR is the minimum calorific requirement needed to sustain life in a resting individual. It can be looked at as being the amount of energy (measured in calories) expended by the body to remain in bed asleep all day. 3. TDEE TDEE is the total number of calories that your body expends in 24 hours, including all activities. TDEE is also known as your "maintenance level".

Note: BMR is also known as your metabolism (see mayo clinic link)


With that out o the way we can move on. There are several methods to understand weight loss but what I have seen to be the most effective on me and every person I have worked with so far is utlizing the Katch McArdle formula. This incorporates your metabolism (BMR) which is derived from your Lean Body Mass and your overall caloric expenditures to create an overall deficit for weight loss. See below formula (see link 3)

Lean Body Mass

LBM = Weight - (Weight * body fat %)

The formula is as follows:
BMR = 370 + (9.79759519 X Lean Mass in pounds)

TDEE is calculated by multiplying your BMR by your activity multiplier from the list below:

Sedentary = BMR X 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR X 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Mod. active = BMR X 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/wk)
Very active = BMR X 1.725 (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days/wk)
Extr. active = BMR X 1.9 (hard daily exercise/sports & physical job or 2X day training, i.e marathon, contest etc.)


Example me

Weight: 195
Body Fat: 11%
TDEE (I do p90x): 1.725
Deficit: 250

LBM = 195 - (195*.11) = 173.6
BMR = 370 + (9.79759519 X 173.6) = 2070.4
TDEE = 2070.4 * 1.725 = 3209.1
Caloric needs = 2959.1

Ok, so what this means is my metabolism burns 2070.4 calories if I did nothing but sleep for 24 hour. Based on my lifestyle (sedentary job but workout 6 days a week) I am considered very active so between my metaboism and activity I burn 3209 calories (aka, the calories I woudl need to eat to maintain my metabolism). So if I want to lose weight, then i need the deficit which is my caloric needs.



So lets talk metabolism and body fat. So we know that your BMR is your metabolism. And we know your BMR is affected by lean body mass, which means, that the higher your LBM, the higher your metabolism, the higher your caloric needs. This means, that BMR is one of most important factors in weight loss (because lets face it, you can lose weight without exercise, but you can adversely affect your metabolism by doing so). What I mean by this, there is only one real way to maintain a metabolism during weight loss and that is increasing lean body mass. Essentially, for every one pound of fat burned is a pound of lbm increase.

Example me again'

Start
Weight - 210
Body fat - 18%

LBM = 210 - (210 *.18) = 172.2
BMR = 370 + (9.79759519 X 172.2) = 2057.1

Current

Weight - 195
Body Fat - 11%
LBM = 195 - (195 * .11) =173.6
BMR = 370 + (9.79759519 X 172.2) = 2070.4


So the question is, what does this mean with my weight loss? What do large deficit do to weight loss? Well to understand this, you have to understand how to build muscle. Essentially, to build muscle, you need a combination of eating enough protein (about 1 g per lbm in your body). So my example above, I would need 173.6 g of protein to gain/maintain muscle (see link 4). I will note I have seen as low as .5 - 1 g to do this. So if I need 173.6 g of protein and 1g of protein = 4 calories (that means that 694.2 calories are from protein alone). So lets take a woman who is 175 & 37% body fat (this info comes from teh 5th link, real people on this board). This person has 110 lbs of lean body mass which means her protein needs to grow/maintain lbm = 444 calories from protein. That is over 1/4 of the calories a person that eats 1200 would have. That doesn't account for carbs which is 4 calories per gram and 9 caloriers per gram of fat. And btw, these are all net calories. When you expend energy, you expend calories because calories are what create energy. So if you eat 40/40/20 (carbs/protein/fat), you would need to eat 480/480/243 to get your 1200 calories. So if we can the woman above, her BMR is 1450 calories. if she does nothing her TDEE is 1740 which means with a 1 lb per week lose than 1240 calories is ok. Once you start to increase your TDEE, you need to increase your caloric needs because your body needs more food to fuel. So lets say you don't. You go to the gym and workout for an hour (zumba ) and you burn 600 calories. That means your net calories is 640 for the day. There are two main sources your body pulls energy from. First it's from yoru fat cells (food stores) and second is from the ammino acids in protein. So if you are only netting 640 calories, where do you think it's getting energy from? Thats right both fat stores and muscle (aka, the ammino acid stores). Essentially, it's the equivalent of eating 60 g of protein, 60 g of carb and 14 g of fat. So how can you maintain muscle mass with that? Well you can't.


This is very apparent in people on HCG where you only eat 500 calories. Example 6 below, fivefatcats (her results).

March 2010 - weight 182, lean weight 131.4 - fat weight 50.6, body fat 27.8 %
Sept 2010 - weight 167, lean weight 124 - fat weight 43, body fat 25.5
Oct 2010 . . . . .weight 154 . lean weight 116 , fat weight 38 . body fat 24.6.

At first, you are like wow, she lost 28 lbs and 3.2% body fat. Then you take a very close look at it, in reality, she lost 28 lbs, 15.6 of which was from muscle. That means over 50% of the weight lost was from muscle. What happens when you lose muscle? That is right, you slow your metabolism, which means you have to eat less food to keep losing weight. Huge muscle loss was obtained by little calories. So this is why when you eat little calories and exercise, you lose a lot of muscle which hurts you in the long run because that is what kills your metabolism. So how to you change that, you eat your calories, you eat quality foods and you lift weights!!!




http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/metabolism/WT00006

http://www.cordianet.com/calculator.htm

http://stronglifts.com/how-to-build-muscle-mass-guide/

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/282320-caloric-intake-body-fat

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/356410-hcg-diet?page=3


I could do more, but I won't because I am tired and it's bed time. So now that I dropped some knowledge on everyone's arses feel free to rebutal or ask questions. We are all here to learn and the only way to do so is by challenging each other. I will say, if you are gonna comment, you better back it up because it wouldn't be the first time I have laid the intraweb smack down on someone, lol, jk.

Lemon

lol..mine says 2730cal per day! that is insane..im eating 1750atm and working out around 6 to 9hrs per week. unless i did something wrong...? my target weight is 182.

What a great post Lemon. Thanks for taking the time to write it out. Next time someone posts about starvation mode, point them to that post. Great explanation.

What a great post Lemon. Thanks for taking the time to write it out. Next time someone posts about starvation mode, point them to that post. Great explanation.

thanks. I was just hoping to make sense since i wrote it late at night. Unfortunately, a lot of the myths out there will still prevail over this method/thinking. But the way i look at it, even if it helps one person i am happy.

Pgalasti, i actually wasnt responding to the op, in fact that is why i quoted you and didnt reference the op at all. I would adsume that by responding to your request that the op utilize some of the knowledge and relate it to their situation.

I guess i should have made that a bit more clear but unfortunately it wasnt. Also for your edification, if i were to increase my exercise or my tdee, i also increase my caloric intake to prevent muscle mass in which it has worked to date. Another think i do is remeasure myself every 90 days to monitor progress as well as re assess my caloric needs.

I hope you didnt take my post as offensive, as it was not intended to be that way.

Cheers


Lemon

I don't understand why people get so defensive about this subject. I think the bottom line is if eating back your exercise calories works for you, go for it and eat them! And if not, then don't eat them. I always eat mine because I was stuck for a while due to NOT doing so, and I know many people that were in the same situation until they finally started eating them back.

There's a lot of trial and error on the weight loss journey. We all just need to figure out what works best for us, and without the tiresome attitude people often give each other on this site.

Good luck to all on this journey!

I have eaten between 600 and 900 calories for 6 weeks..down went the weight, I gave up drinking, no fast food, no dinners out. I then followed directions, ate 1200 to 1400 calories and exercised I gained 4 pounds. It is NOT muscle, have only been going to the gym for 2 weeks. Is it my age, diet, SO discouraged and depressed.

Don't be discouraged. There are two reason why you gained weight. First, you deprived your body of proper nutrition for a while. So when your body got the nutrition it needed, it held onto the food. Don't worry though as it will correct itself. This stuff takes about a month. Second, if you just started going to the gym, where you previously haven't, your muscles are holding onto water (this is part of repairing themselves) and in fact, if you are burning a lot of calories, there is still a good chance you aren't eating enough.