3 ms·

"Calories in, calories out" still holds true. Some people just need less calories than others.

by aerio 3y ago

Rediscover 3y ago
>... cal in...out I often question this. It is something I really don't understand. Gads, up until a few years ago, I was doing 4000-6000 cals most days. Other days, I was doing four shots of vodka and nothing else. I'm real thin, generally muscular, great health. Great health (to repeat) and quite capable of 20 mile hikes with a 40-70 pound backpack (absolutely no f' joke), at a very fast pace. I still don't grasp this.
- gizmo 3y ago
  You probably just excrete excess calories, where other people with your caloric intake would store the excess calories as fat. Also you might become restless when you eat too much and you’ll instinctively start shaking your legs even when sedentary to burn those excess calories. Or maybe you’ll start pacing or you’ll get hot and burn calories that way. This is just favorable genetics. Also, muscles take energy to maintain. As you lose muscle as you get older your burn rate will also go down because of that. Finally, most people eat at set times even when they’re not hungry and snack outside of set times when they are. Needless to say this automatically results in overeating. Skipping meals when you’re not that hungry is great but harder to do when you live with other people.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  Do you have justification for that 4000-6000 cal statement? Were you actually tracking this with weights/nutrition info carefully? Almost every has an extremely bad intuition on calories consumed, which leads to over/under estimation. Also, if you were actually doing 4000cal one day and ~300cal the next (4 shots of vodka), your average cal count would still be 2150 across two days, which is perfectly fine. Alternatively, if you actually are doing 20 mile hikes very regularly with that sort of weight, you truly could just be burning that much extra in calories. Long distance running/hiking burns an immense amount of calories.
WWLink 3y ago
If you're small and your BMR is like 1400 calories a day, it's pretty hard to run a deficit if you're used to eating 3000 calories a day. Like, normally you'd run at least a few hundred calories deficit to lose weight, so that you account for any margin of error where you forget to log things or maybe your serving is bigger than what your counting tools do (or you weigh things wrong, idk). For me I was lucky and my BMR is around 2400, so when I started counting calories and was averaging 3000, it.. well, dropping to a 2000 calorie diet was hard and it has its moments, but it was DOABLE. I could see going from 3000 to say, 1200? Like if your BMR was 1400? OH MY GOODNESS I bet that's a nightmare. And even then there's days where you don't sleep enough and feel hangry. And for the first couple of months sometimes staying under 2200cal was really hard. It's gotten easier. Seeing the 16lbs lost since late February has been incredibly motivating lol.
imtringued 3y ago
It is a very nice equation, it only falls apart because it can't be accurately measured... Oh wait, your body counts calories for you.

"Calories in, calories out" still holds true. Some people just need less calories than others.

by aerio 3y ago

"Calories in, calories out" still holds true. Some people just need less calories than others.

>... cal in...out I often question this. It is something I really don't understand. Gads, up until a few years ago, I was doing 4000-6000 cals most days. Other days, I was doing four shots of vodka and nothing else. I'm real thin, generally muscular, great health. Great health (to repeat) and quite capable of 20 mile hikes with a 40-70 pound backpack (absolutely no f' joke), at a very fast pace. I still don't grasp this.

gizmo 3y ago
You probably just excrete excess calories, where other people with your caloric intake would store the excess calories as fat. Also you might become restless when you eat too much and you’ll instinctively start shaking your legs even when sedentary to burn those excess calories. Or maybe you’ll start pacing or you’ll get hot and burn calories that way. This is just favorable genetics. Also, muscles take energy to maintain. As you lose muscle as you get older your burn rate will also go down because of that. Finally, most people eat at set times even when they’re not hungry and snack outside of set times when they are. Needless to say this automatically results in overeating. Skipping meals when you’re not that hungry is great but harder to do when you live with other people.
Kirby64 3y ago
Do you have justification for that 4000-6000 cal statement? Were you actually tracking this with weights/nutrition info carefully? Almost every has an extremely bad intuition on calories consumed, which leads to over/under estimation. Also, if you were actually doing 4000cal one day and ~300cal the next (4 shots of vodka), your average cal count would still be 2150 across two days, which is perfectly fine. Alternatively, if you actually are doing 20 mile hikes very regularly with that sort of weight, you truly could just be burning that much extra in calories. Long distance running/hiking burns an immense amount of calories.

WWLink 3y ago

If you're small and your BMR is like 1400 calories a day, it's pretty hard to run a deficit if you're used to eating 3000 calories a day. Like, normally you'd run at least a few hundred calories deficit to lose weight, so that you account for any margin of error where you forget to log things or maybe your serving is bigger than what your counting tools do (or you weigh things wrong, idk). For me I was lucky and my BMR is around 2400, so when I started counting calories and was averaging 3000, it.. well, dropping to a 2000 calorie diet was hard and it has its moments, but it was DOABLE. I could see going from 3000 to say, 1200? Like if your BMR was 1400? OH MY GOODNESS I bet that's a nightmare. And even then there's days where you don't sleep enough and feel hangry. And for the first couple of months sometimes staying under 2200cal was really hard. It's gotten easier. Seeing the 16lbs lost since late February has been incredibly motivating lol.

imtringued 3y ago

It is a very nice equation, it only falls apart because it can't be accurately measured... Oh wait, your body counts calories for you.