Over exercising and undereating

Depending on your current body stats, that could be a healthy loss (congrats!), but if all you are doing is cardio then you are more than likely losing mostly muscle (which will slow down your metabolism) instead of mostly fat. Simple solution, get a body composition test and a Basel Metabolic Rate test done to find out how many calories you really need. Then continue the composition test like every month and make sure your losing the bad and gaining the good! Also, definitely make time to eat. Your body needs fuel, if you are trying to lose weight to be healthy then go about it in a healthy way. It sounds like you are very motivated but just a little misguided.

Realize that a 600 calorie burn is tough for 1 hour. And somehow this was sustained for 10 hours?

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Yep. I give myself 600 Cal for an hour's Muay Thai. That includes about 100 sit ups, 50 pushups, 50 lunges or squats with body weight and a heck of a lot of time breathing hard sparring. Or for a rule-of-thumb, one REALLY sweaty T-shirt. By contrast, MFP will try to give me 420 Cal for an hour's general gardening, which is nowhere near as intense.

I know friends who've wore a HRM for housecleaning and general yard work, and find that MFP is overly generous with the calorie estimates. It's definitely smart to scale back whatever number MFP gives you.

I just don't see a 6000 calorie burn possible for the activities described, unless she was sweating heavily, and had a high HR the whole time. In which case, the lack of nutrition would likely have her getting dizzy or even passing out. If anything, I'd expect her to crash. :flowerforyou:

I think of myself as being in fairly good shape and if I work out for 1 hour I am STARVING.............I could eat 3000 calories in one sitting if I had to ..... and sometimes I'm hungry enough to do so. I love food and breakfast is one of my fave meals.....gets the body going. I would pass out if I burned 6000 in one day and ate nothing............not to mention it would take me12 hours of keeping my heart rate in my ideal zone to burn that much and I'd have to pace myself to keep it up. I try to spend as little time each day working out. I'd rather just do enough to keep up my cardiovascular health, build a bit of muscle and call it a day. If I burn enough to have an awesome nighttime snack I'm happy.

I agree that MFP overestimates a lot of the general activities, but I think you're REALLY cutting yourself short with the Muay Thai. I use a hrm and I burned about 850 in a 1 hr boxing class that was no where near as intense as the Muay Thai classes I've taken. I wasn't allowed to use the hrm in muay thai but i would have given myself minimum 1000 for an hour.

I've been using the 600 since I started in October. While I agree it was probably quite low in the beginning, it's pretty good now that my condition has improved. In fact, judging by the long-term effect on my overall weight loss, it might be a little bit high now. I'm set for 1lb/wk, but I've basically stopped losing weight - even though I'm still losing inches in the right places (waist, chest) and gaining inches in the right places (arms, thighs, shoulders). There's a bit of averaging, too, as some classes are harder than others. Overall it's working for me.

Realize that a 600 calorie burn is tough for 1 hour. And somehow this was sustained for 10 hours?

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Yep. I give myself 600 Cal for an hour's Muay Thai. That includes about 100 sit ups, 50 pushups, 50 lunges or squats with body weight and a heck of a lot of time breathing hard sparring. Or for a rule-of-thumb, one REALLY sweaty T-shirt. By contrast, MFP will try to give me 420 Cal for an hour's general gardening, which is nowhere near as intense.

I know friends who've wore a HRM for housecleaning and general yard work, and find that MFP is overly generous with the calorie estimates. It's definitely smart to scale back whatever number MFP gives you.

I just don't see a 6000 calorie burn possible for the activities described, unless she was sweating heavily, and had a high HR the whole time. In which case, the lack of nutrition would likely have her getting dizzy or even passing out. If anything, I'd expect her to crash. :flowerforyou:

The numbers don't match up. People don't normally gain weight burning 6000 calories a day and eating 1500 or less.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

So jealous, though. I miss muay thai sooo bad! I did it for 3 months and lost about 20 lbs without watching my diet whatsoever. Can't fit it into my schedule now though. Maybe this summer

It IS fun. Much more engaging than an hour on a treadmill or some such. Hardest workout I've ever loved, and all that.

Let's assume your numbers are correct. If you eat 1500 calories per day and burn 4000, you're obviously leaving absolutely none of those calories for your body to use for maintaining itself. Check out your BMR at the top, under the Tools tab. That gives you the amount of calories your body burns if you were in a coma or otherwise incapacitated. What are those calories being used for? It keeps your organs going. Your heart, your brain, your nervous system, etc.

Your body is not going to discriminate against where its calories come from, within reason. It has no way of knowing "Hey, this person just ate 1500 calories. Let's divert that to keeping the heart beating. I'll just get these calories required for exercise from fat stores." Instead, your food will be used for a little of both.

The question then becomes, where is your body getting the energy to sustain you through your workout? Well, you've got your fat and your lean muscle. Fat is going to keep you alive long term. Muscle is expendable. The body at least knows this, and your muscle will be the first to go.

That said, don't up your caloric intake to 5500 calories a day. You've already read on here a dozen times that you're not burning 4000-6000 calories a day. Realistically it doesn't matter if you are or not. You're using an approximation either way, and if it's off by as little as 10% then this could add up to over a pound per week.

Get a heart rate monitor. Log your exercise precisely. Make your "Calories remaining" zero. You will continue to lose weight, only you will experience a little less premature death this way.

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Get a heart rate monitor. Log your exercise precisely. Make your "Calories remaining" zero. You will continue to lose weight, only you will experience a little less premature death this way.

If you want to be this precise, you have to go all the way. The monitor just calculates gross Calories burned over time. MFP is already "giving you" your BMR. To make the math work you must reduce the monitor's Calories for every hour by 1/24th of your BMR. If you don't do that and exercise a lot (as you do) you could be over-eating three or four hundred Calories per day if you eat back to zero.

Unless it's a Polar - in which case you gave it the stats (age, weight, height) and it calculates BMR for it's calculations, and leaves it out of the calorie estimate.

Unless it's a Polar - in which case you gave it the stats (age, weight, height) and it calculates BMR for it's calculations, and leaves it out of the calorie estimate.

Are you sure about this? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I've not heard it before.

What are you doing to burn 6000 calories a day? You have your diary so we can't see it. Are you recording everything you do like housework, etc. Anything you do in your every day life doesn't count. If it puts your heart rate in the target range for an extended period of time and makes you sweat then it is exercise. Olympic athletes don't even burn 6000 calories a day. I think you need to get real.

She already answered this.

umm.... are you using a HRM???

Plus I don't understand why you "NEED" three hours in the gym?

Gosh, that was a bit rude.
Op is asking a genuine question.

Anyway, I'm wondering if you use a HRM. That's a lot of burn you're doing.
If you are then I don't know how to answer you.
Trying to eat 6000 cals + seems way too hard.
Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me will come along.
Good luck, hope you can work this out.

I agree with this (ALL of it in fact....); if you're using MFP to estimate your calories expended, you may be going way over. I'm sure it overestimates mine by a lot.

Eat more! Workout less! .....haha never thought I'd say that on here!

kidding aside.. I can feel you on your dedication. Just try to ease up a bit on your exercise since you already get enough activity without the formal exercise. And take time for your meal planning, after all staying healthy is why we do this in the first place. GL!

I recommend getting a fitbit or body bugg type of device to get a better idea of what you're burning. Mfp isn't always accurate and gum machines usually over estimate calories burned. I have read that too large of a deficit isn't good but I'm not a dr or scientist.

I tilled a eight foot by eight foot patch of garden (hoeing, shoveling, and watering) for 3 hours, mowed my lawn using an old fashioned hand mower for 2 hours, then edged it, and swept the walk. I then went to the gym and did 2 hours on the elliptical and 1 hour 15 mins doing water jogging with resistance weights.

Holy cow!! Do you need a job?