Exercise advice

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brianparow
brianparow Posts: 17
in Health and Weight Loss
Newbie here.
I've been a very active and fit person my whole life up until about 4-5 years ago, so I've always eaten anything I wanted and maintained a healthy weight between 215lbs and 225lbs. Unforetunately life got a little more complex after age 30 with mortgages, wife, kids, 2 jobs etc... and now I'm a hefty 305lb 37 year old. My kids are almost 18 and I left my second job and want to get back to being active again.
My questions are... I can see from this site that to lose 2 pounds/week I need to eat around 2000 calories/day. I want to stay at this pace of weight lose but want to do alot of low impact training. Stationary bike, treadmill, ellyptical, weights etc... So if I burn an extra 1200 calories per day and I eat those calories for a total of 3200 cal/day then I should still lose 2lbs/wk but the extra exercising should help me firm up quicker? Would I still be losing mostly fat at this point or will a high amount of exercise be counter-productive?

Replies

  • deamarie
    deamarie Posts: 90
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    Hi there newbie! Welcome! According to the rules, you are supposed to eat your exercise calories in addition to your daily calories. However, every person is different. I was following the formula to the calorie and was not losing anything. I starting eating less calories and the weight came off easier. This led me to believe that my daily caloric intake number was off, meaning I did not need as many calories as the formula calculated. I suggest following the numbers that the formula gives you. Start off by doing whatever cardio your body can handle to get your metabolism going. If you don't lose anything in the first few weeks, shave off a couple hundred extra calories. Good luck! Let me know if you need any advice. I am not new to this!
  • CasperO
    CasperO Posts: 2,913 Member
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    That's pretty much how I did it. Careful eating, elliptical/bicycling/some circuit training when I was ready. I did eat most of my exercise calories and lost 60 lbs in 7 months.

    As Marie says, the MFP calorie allowance is a great starting point, and you may want to tweak from there. Good luck, keep us posted,
  • Sunsh1ne
    Sunsh1ne Posts: 879 Member
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    Basically, when you work out, you damage muscle tissue, and burn calories to create the motion. By eating back the exercise calories you convince your body that you aren't in danger of starvation, so it won't hoard calories, and you're giving it protein to repair muscle damage. Those repairs create lean muscle which burns more calories than muscle and fat. So yeah, combining workout with a sensible diet will help you lose weight and tone up, but deamarie is right, your body may be different. Stick to the MFP plan for a few weeks and see if it's working, then tweak one thing at a time until you get to the plan that's best for you. :smile: Welcome to MFP!

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