Neither actually. So my BMR was roughly ~2300 calories. Eating less than that is not actually very difficult. Hardboiled eggs in the morning with some coffee +

Neither actually. So my BMR was roughly ~2300 calories. Eating less than that is not actually very difficult. Hardboiled eggs in the morning with some coffee + non sweetened creamer, cold cuts +pickles+cheese for lunch, and a 500cal portioned dinner from a local meal prep service would get me to about 1500-2000 calories. From there, if I wanted a beer or a snack or to eat out, that's where the workouts came in. I would do intermittent sprints on the rower for 45m, roughly 22m of activity, which measured at the rower and verified with my Garmin watch would be between 500-800 calories. Or if it was the summer, 1.5 hours of XCO MTB is worth about the same calorie count (I can only measure that with my Garmin watch, I don't have a power meter on my bike). The goal was to have a net 500 calorie deficit per day. Whether that deficit was generated by eating less (which some weeks while overseas I had to do) or by exercise it didn't matter. The important thing was to generate that deficit. No idea what "zone" I was in as it didn't matter. Just hitting that calorie deficit is the key.