Which is better

[Melancholy]

Plainly speaking:

-Is it better to consume 3000 calories, and burn 1000 calories daily (doing cardio, not lifting) for a 2000 calorie net, or to just consume 2000 calories, and work out occasionaly?

This is the easy way to say it. What I am trying to get at, is that I am working out quite vigorously on a daily basis. I am not eating 3000 calories, but I am eating more calories daily because working out is making me hungrier. Aside from the benifits of getting a cardio workout, is there a difference in the two conditions above? My joints hurt, I am running out of time in the day, and I am getting tired. If I can just cut intake, I may forgoe working out for a couple of weeks. If eating more and working out is better (please at least reference something. I don't need a hyperlink, but at least something that someone has read please! ...), then I will continue to do that.

Thanks in advance, tricky situation.

-Mellon

 

[~Ash~]

I'm in no way an expert but I would say that eating less is going to give you a quicker and more habitual weight loss. Exercising everyday for the rest of your life is a little hard to do if you are going to maintain the loss - whereas if you are used to eating less and right over 6 months while you lose the weight then it is more likely that you will be able to keep that up because you would have kicked the bad food habits. That way any exercise you do is a bonus to your lose but its the control over you food that is your key, I think

 

[Jeanette401]

It sort of depends - I find that eating less and exercising less works better for me - but some days I want to eat more So it's about finding that happy medium...

Really I've had a hard time figuring out the benefit of actual cardio beyond the 'don't be so sedentary' parts. In fact, recent studies have shown that people who do intense exercise, but sit most of the time have higher health risks than people who are standing and maybe doing some walking, but not doing 'exercise'. ... Hopefully that made as much sense as it does in my head

Personally I'd recommend lower calories/lower workouts except when you decide you want to have a week of eating the donuts they bring into work etc. ... (Someone brought in Krispy Kremes for their birthday today... mmmmm.)

 

[Melancholy]

I'm in no way an expert but I would say that eating less is going to give you a quicker and more habitual weight loss. Exercising everyday for the rest of your life is a little hard to do if you are going to maintain the loss - whereas if you are used to eating less and right over 6 months while you lose the weight then it is more likely that you will be able to keep that up because you would have kicked the bad food habits. That way any exercise you do is a bonus to your lose but its the control over you food that is your key, I think

Thanks for the reply. I have eaten restricted intake for several months now (7) and agree with you completely, it takes a while to build good habbits

It sort of depends - I find that eating less and exercising less works better for me - but some days I want to eat more So it's about finding that happy medium...

Really I've had a hard time figuring out the benefit of actual cardio beyond the 'don't be so sedentary' parts. In fact, recent studies have shown that people who do intense exercise, but sit most of the time have higher health risks than people who are standing and maybe doing some walking, but not doing 'exercise'. ... Hopefully that made as much sense as it does in my head

Personally I'd recommend lower calories/lower workouts except when you decide you want to have a week of eating the donuts they bring into work etc. ... (Someone brought in Krispy Kremes for their birthday today... mmmmm.)

See, I tend to agree with you on this one.. but... anytime someone posts a thread about "am i eating enough" on this site, they get numerous responses saying they are in starvation mode.

As someone that is "sedentary" according to the classification scale (I am a desk worker), my BMR is around 2211 calories a day. To Lose 1.5 pounds/ week (less than 1% body weight), I need to consume around 1500 calories/ day.

I don't know how many people out there count their calories diligently, but I do. AND 1500 calories is VERY hard to do. I eat a 300 calorie protein breakfast, a 500 calorie low-carb lunch, and about 600 calories for dinner. And after 3pm on a day with the aformentioned food intake, I am ALWAYS hungry.

So in the past month or so, my idea has been to burn about 800-1000 calories by working out. This has allowed me to eat another 800-1000 calories respectively throughout the day, so having more healthy snacks to keep more full during the day.

My thread topic arrises, because I have not been losing much weight for the last 2 months now. So why bust my tail working out, if it's not helping me lose the weight.

Lastly, people always say more food = increased metabolism, so theoretically should I not be burning more calories metabolically by eating more? (If that is true, it's not working for me!)?

Thanks,

-Mellon

 

[Jeanette401]

Well, the whole 'eat more to boost your metabolism' is only kind of true. That is, if you eat an extra 500 calories, it might increase your metabolism such that you burn an extra 100 calories. (Numbers not exact, I forget the exact amount estimated to go for digestion). So... your metabolism is boosted but you're still losing LESS than you were before because you ate more than enough calories to make up for it the metabolic boost.

As for the starvation mode... I recommend googling starvation mode myth and see what you find. While your metabolism does lower when you eat less - in part because you burn calories to digest calories! - the idea of not losing weight because you're losing too little hasn't ever been shown to be true. There are a lot of health reasons not to drop too low in calories, but people will lose weight - just maybe not as much as they'd predict based on BMR etc. Now, if eating less makes you watch more TV or move less or other things that mean calories out... you could be losing more weight by eating more, maybe. You may want to try to find info on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment - I believe they found that the participants in the study lost less weight than they expected, but they still ultimately lost 25% of their bodyweight through the course of the study.

For me though I've found that practically speaking it's more about how hungry/deprived I feel vs. how tired I am of working out to burn extra calories (and your body is awesome at finding other ways to conserve energy throughout the day if you do hard workouts I'd rather it be skilled at something else but... there you go.)

Also - I agree. 1500 calories is damn hard. That's why I like 1800 with a couple hours of standing 2 hours of standing = around 200 calories extra and ... I'll pretend I'm bad at math, but really, 1800 calories just seems about right for me to not feel like I'm super deprived.

 

[Melancholy]

That's a really good point Jeanette...

I am going to check out those articles, to see if I can find any specifics!

So I guess the real question then:

If you take two identical people, both with weight to lose, and person A eats 2000 calories, and person B burns 1000 calories/ day, and eats 3000 calories, who will lose weight faster?

 

[Jeanette401]

And I think some of that depends on genetics - or something. If the 'calories burned' part comes only from exercise, then B will lose faster because of the digestive component. However that doesn't address whether B would compensate for the exercise calories burned through reduced non-exercise activity thermogenesis (sometimes called NEAT!) which in some people can account for as much as 700 calories a day.

That also doesn't cover things like muscle vs protein loss, it's my understanding that you might be able to burn 2 lbs of muscle for the same calorie deficit as 1 lb of fat (although I have never been able to track down really satisfactory sources for this) so it's very vague and very individualized.

 

[PLB]

I think the thing to remember is that if you want to keep the weight off long-term, you need to find a balance of diet and exercise that you can maintain. If you're working out so hard that your joints are sore, you're tired, and you're running out of time in the day, something needs to change. Often, people run into overtraining (i.e. some of the symptoms that you're having...) when they do too much high-intensity exercise. Your body cannot recover properly, then you start to feel crappy. It can also be from deficiencies in your diet.... higher intensity exercise requires more dietary carbohydrates. If you're eating low-carb all the time, you will start to feel symptoms related to fatigue because your body simply does not have the proper fuel to do the exercise you're trying to make it do. To burn fat while doing cardio, you need to stick to low-moderate intensity. You need to be able to carry on a conversation pretty much normally. If you can't, then you're out of the optimal range for burning fat the most efficiently. Interval training also works because you have active recovery intervals for your heart rate to recover and energy stores to replenish themselves. If you're doing constant high intensity, your 'fat-burning' fuel system cannot keep up.

Burning 800-1000 cals per day through exercise is a lot. My suggestion would be to aim for slightly less cals per day burned on average... drop it to say 500-ish cals and keep it constant low-moderate intensity and do intervals (HIIT) 1-2 times per week. I'm not exactly sure what you're currently eating per day calorie wise (you stated that 1500 was very difficult, so I'm assuming that you're eating more than that), so my best suggestion is to create a 500 - 750 cal per day deficit. If your BMR is estimated to be 2200 and you burn 500 cals per day, that puts you at needing 2700 cals per day just to maintain your weight. Sticking with 2000-2200 cal per day intake and reducing the intensity of some of your workouts might be more manageable in the long term.

If you were to continue your current exercising, but start to eat 3000 cals per day, you would be at most creating only a 200 cal per day deficit. (BMR of 2200 + 1000 cals burned through exercise = 3200 cals per day to maintain body weight).

OK so short story long... In my opinion, because of the health benefits of exercise, I think it's better to eat around 2000 cals per day and work out regularly (not occasionally), but only doing high intensity 1-2 times per week at most.

WOW that was long, sorry

 

[Melancholy]

And I think some of that depends on genetics - or something. If the 'calories burned' part comes only from exercise, then B will lose faster because of the digestive component. However that doesn't address whether B would compensate for the exercise calories burned through reduced non-exercise activity thermogenesis (sometimes called NEAT!) which in some people can account for as much as 700 calories a day.

That also doesn't cover things like muscle vs protein loss, it's my understanding that you might be able to burn 2 lbs of muscle for the same calorie deficit as 1 lb of fat (although I have never been able to track down really satisfactory sources for this) so it's very vague and very individualized.

That made me intriguied, so I have been researching on PubMed!... I will keep you posted. We'll let the grad students look for it

I think the thing to remember is that if you want to keep the weight off long-term, you need to find a balance of diet and exercise that you can maintain. If you're working out so hard that your joints are sore, you're tired, and you're running out of time in the day, something needs to change. Often, people run into overtraining (i.e. some of the symptoms that you're having...) when they do too much high-intensity exercise. Your body cannot recover properly, then you start to feel crappy. It can also be from deficiencies in your diet.... higher intensity exercise requires more dietary carbohydrates. If you're eating low-carb all the time, you will start to feel symptoms related to fatigue because your body simply does not have the proper fuel to do the exercise you're trying to make it do. To burn fat while doing cardio, you need to stick to low-moderate intensity. You need to be able to carry on a conversation pretty much normally. If you can't, then you're out of the optimal range for burning fat the most efficiently. Interval training also works because you have active recovery intervals for your heart rate to recover and energy stores to replenish themselves. If you're doing constant high intensity, your 'fat-burning' fuel system cannot keep up.

Burning 800-1000 cals per day through exercise is a lot. My suggestion would be to aim for slightly less cals per day burned on average... drop it to say 500-ish cals and keep it constant low-moderate intensity and do intervals (HIIT) 1-2 times per week. I'm not exactly sure what you're currently eating per day calorie wise (you stated that 1500 was very difficult, so I'm assuming that you're eating more than that), so my best suggestion is to create a 500 - 750 cal per day deficit. If your BMR is estimated to be 2200 and you burn 500 cals per day, that puts you at needing 2700 cals per day just to maintain your weight. Sticking with 2000-2200 cal per day intake and reducing the intensity of some of your workouts might be more manageable in the long term.

If you were to continue your current exercising, but start to eat 3000 cals per day, you would be at most creating only a 200 cal per day deficit. (BMR of 2200 + 1000 cals burned through exercise = 3200 cals per day to maintain body weight).

OK so short story long... In my opinion, because of the health benefits of exercise, I think it's better to eat around 2000 cals per day and work out regularly (not occasionally), but only doing high intensity 1-2 times per week at most.

WOW that was long, sorry

Thanks PLB, I really appreciate the response! From you and Jeanette!

I have been doing what you suggested for the last several days now. I have been keeping my heart rate about 125-135 (uphill it gets to about 170 when I push it, but the hills around my house are steep)...

I have now been doing about 1.5 hours of this brisk walk (for 2 miles), then 4.5 miles of slow jog to try and re-invigorate the fat loss I was getting before this MEGA-plateau about 2 months ago.

I also think I was getting over-obsessive with the calorie counting, with my iPhone app and all. When I first started, I ate really heathy according to SB diet, and didn't count calories.. I think I was getting frustrated counting calories because the results should have been there and they are not.

By not counting calories, and remaining vigilant, at least if I don't lose weight I can say... "well, I must have eaten too much" , and not get as frustrated. I am going to keep doing the moderate pace on the jog instead of a full on run. One caveat, the wife LOVES the new pace, because we can run side by side now instead of me coming back to get her... awesome.

-Mellon

 

[transparent]

I have now been doing about 1.5 hours of this brisk walk (for 2 miles), then 4.5 miles of slow jog to try and re-invigorate the fat loss I was getting before this MEGA-plateau about 2 months ago.

I know it sounds funny, but after I lost the first 15lbs this time around I started to plateau at around 285 or so. It didn't make sense to me. I lost the first 15-20 fast, then the weight just yo-yoed for the longest, one minute 288 or 290, then 285 or so. I started exercising counting calories because I thought this is too early to plateau, somethings gotta give.

And you know what, it did, I just got mad and ate, ate what I wanted, for a few days, and the stupid scale went down. I could not figure it out. It seems I had to start tricking my body, not eating the same amount of calories everyday, somedays I ate 2000 others as low as 1200, never went below 1200, and it seems with doing this, the weight is steadily coming off again, lost another 15lbs, on my way to the next 15 lost.

Now on most days I eat anywhere between 1200 - 1500 calories, then on Sundays, all bets are off, I eat what I want, still mindful of portion sizes, but I don't count calories.

Sometimes it comes down to not creating equilibrium in your body, keeping it off balance, so it doesn't store food and go into starvation mood, and you don't become grumpy because you are hungry for 3 days straight, oh yeah... I forgot, my secret weapon is cold cereals with alot of fibre, I'm really having a love affair with Kashi Go Lean right now, it fills you up like no one's business.

 

[PLB]

I also think I was getting over-obsessive with the calorie counting, with my iPhone app and all. When I first started, I ate really heathy according to SB diet, and didn't count calories.. I think I was getting frustrated counting calories because the results should have been there and they are not.

I think that it's great to recognize this. As much as we want it to be, weight loss isn't as simple as calories in & calories out sometimes. There's also a lot of error involved with estimating our portion sizes, so unless you're measuring absolutely everything, all we have is an estimate.

By not counting calories, and remaining vigilant, at least if I don't lose weight I can say... "well, I must have eaten too much" , and not get as frustrated. I am going to keep doing the moderate pace on the jog instead of a full on run. One caveat, the wife LOVES the new pace, because we can run side by side now instead of me coming back to get her... awesome.

That's awesome that you're wife is able to join in! The more support the better!

I know it sounds funny, but after I lost the first 15lbs this time around I started to plateau at around 285 or so. It didn't make sense to me. I lost the first 15-20 fast, then the weight just yo-yoed for the longest, one minute 288 or 290, then 285 or so. I started exercising counting calories because I thought this is too early to plateau, somethings gotta give.

And you know what, it did, I just got mad and ate, ate what I wanted, for a few days, and the stupid scale went down. I could not figure it out. It seems I had to start tricking my body, not eating the same amount of calories everyday, somedays I ate 2000 others as low as 1200, never went below 1200, and it seems with doing this, the weight is steadily coming off again, lost another 15lbs, on my way to the next 15 lost.

Now on most days I eat anywhere between 1200 - 1500 calories, then on Sundays, all bets are off, I eat what I want, still mindful of portion sizes, but I don't count calories.

Sometimes it comes down to not creating equilibrium in your body, keeping it off balance, so it doesn't store food and go into starvation mood, and you don't become grumpy because you are hungry for 3 days straight, oh yeah... I forgot, my secret weapon is cold cereals with alot of fibre, I'm really having a love affair with Kashi Go Lean right now, it fills you up like no one's business.

This sounds very similar to one of the 'rules' of the 4 hour body diet.... I'm not sure what the research or even the theory is behind it, but some people are having success with cheat meals or cheat days. I don't really have an opinion yet on 'going crazy and eating whatever you want' to lose weight, other than, if you're having success with it, then why not stick with it. As long as you eat reasonably healthy the majority of the time, I don't see the problem, but again I don't think there's been much research into it yet.

How was that for a non-answer

 

[Jeanette401]

Hehe. I know that in the early days I had a plateau broken by pizza and birthday cake

But since I wasn't really tracking what I ate (was doing Atkins) no clue about the actual causes behind it all. Also, I've heard that if you were at a particular weight for a substantial amount of time your body feels 'comfortable' with it, and you'll often plateau there for a while. Why, I don't really know... I'm trying to train mine to be comfortable with 148 but I have to get there again first

In any event, other than flushing water out, and potentially carb refeeding if you're under 100g of carbs a day normally, I don't know that there's much to the binge day physiologically - it seems more psychological. And it seems much better for people who don't have bottomless stomachs.

And do let me know what you find out in your research! I tried to figure out the calories it takes to gain/lose a pound of muscle but it seemed like I found multiple figures and I didn't know what to believe. Also, the research on NEAT is pretty interesting. Although there are a lot of acronyms. TEF = thermal effect of food, TEA = thermal effect of activity... and there are these equations and stuff...

I'm doing low intensity right now myself - which is funny because for the longest time my goal was to keep my heart rate over 150 for half an hour or more... but I've been so run down between work and everything else, I'm taking a break!