Need help

[Err2]

If you are working out and burning X amt of calories, you need to add those back into your diet (in a healthy manner of course)

Something that threw me at first was double counting baseline calories when adding exercise calories. So if your BMR is 2400, you should expect to burn about 100 calories an hour just doing nothing. Walking the dog burns 3.5 x as many calories as sitting so an hour long walk with the dog should burn about 350 calories, but only 250 *extra* calories (you would have burned 100 calories sitting on the couch). So be careful when adding back the calories various fitness trackers & exercise machines say - chances are they are too high.

You can look up the metabolic equivalents of activities various places online (e.g. https://community.plu.edu/~chasega/met.html )

 

[Korrie]

So be careful when adding back the calories various fitness trackers & exercise machines say - chances are they are too high.

True, I guess my point was u can't consume 1200 cals and work off 500...its not healthy

 

[wago]

True, I guess my point was u can't consume 1200 cals and work off 500...its not healthy

Yeah I see that now but I still don’t understand how it would result in little to no weight loss. Even though not getting enough nutrition isn’t necessarily healthy, how would it have little to no affect on my bw?

 

[Err2]

Yeah I see that now but I still don’t understand how it would result in little to no weight loss. Even though not getting enough nutrition isn’t necessarily healthy, how would it have little to no affect on my bw?

Thermodynamically it can't aside from short term exceptions when retaining water or building muscle. You are probably underestimating how many calories you're actually eating (extremely common - even dieticians underestimate by 200 calories), overestimating how many calories you're burning, or both.

But it shouldn't matter as long as you are consistent because you should be able to just adjust your calorie intake down further until you start losing the amount of weight you're targeting.


PS: One of the mistakes I made when I first started counting calories was using calorie data from raw meat (or raw vegetables) when I was consuming cooked meat. For example, 3 oz of boneless skinless chicken breast has about 105 calories raw, but 3 oz of cooked chicken breast is about 140 calories (raw chicken has a higher water content and shrinks when cooked). Most meats lose about 25% of their weight when cooked, but retain all of the calories (and that is before you add butter or oil). Tracking Macros of Raw vs Cooked Meat - Cheat Day Design