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>the amount of calories burned by exercise is minimal What evidence is there for this? All the things that calculate approximate calories burned for various ex

>the amount of calories burned by exercise is minimal What evidence is there for this? All the things that calculate approximate calories burned for various exercises tell me that it's not minimal. I burn about an average of an extra 500 calories a day doing exercise type activities. Playing pickleball, cycling, jogging, etc. Losing 1 pound is about 3500 calories, so 500 calories a day burned is about 1 pound a week which is not insignificant or minimal in my opinion at least. I kept my diet the same, and added about 500 cal average of exercise per day and have been seeing my weight dropping by a few pounds a month. Obviously diet is the biggest factor, but if you just eat less and sit around all day, you body will adapt to the lower calorie intake and slow your metabolism down too and you will have to eat so little that you will never feel full or satisfied (so you will probably not be able to keep that up for long) and you will feel like crap and have no energy if you don't combine with exercise, at least in my experience.

Kirby64 1y ago
> What evidence is there for this? All the things that calculate approximate calories burned for various exercises tell me that it's not minimal. Minimal meaning that the amount of exercise you need to do to burn substantial amounts of calories is quite high. Your example of 500cal would be something like an hour of moderate intensity jogging, which would be a lot of exercise for someone to do every single day. Meanwhile, eating 500cal takes like... 5 minutes? Less? > Obviously diet is the biggest factor, but if you just eat less and sit around all day, you body will adapt to the lower calorie intake and slow your metabolism down too and you will have to eat so little that you will never feel full or satisfied (so you will probably not be able to keep that up for long) and you will feel like crap and have no energy if you don't combine with exercise, at least in my experience. Metabolic adaption is largely overblown. You definitely will burn less calories as you lose weight, but that would happen exercise or not. The only difference there is that exercise tends to build muscle, which would burn more calories and offset some of that loss. The fact of the matter is, if you end up losing substantial amounts of weight, you will need to eat fewer calories to maintain that same lower weight forever. In my experience, if you're losing weight then you are often going to feel not full. It's just a natural human reaction to caloric deficit. There's tricks to making it not be as impactful (e.g., eat more whole foods, less junk, etc) or medication to make it less of a problem (i.e., GLPs), but expecting to be able to lose weight and always feel full just by adding exercise is wishful thinking.
- SirMaster 1y ago
  >which would be a lot of exercise for someone to do every single day. Well I already disagree here at this point I guess. For me that is like the minimum on average. When I'm playing pickleball I'm plying like 3 hours, if i'm cycling I'm cycling like 2 hours, and if i'm jogging i'm jogging like an hour. Humans are built to be active, not sitting in an office all day, and for a healthily lifestyle I don't think this asking too much IMO to do an hour of moderate exercise a day on average. I kind of feel like crap when I am not exercising and feel like I have a lot more energy when I do exercise nearly every day. That's my experience with it at least.
  - Kirby64 1y ago
    For someone that is doing little to no exercise every day, asking someone to do an hour of moderate intensity jogging or possibly multiple hours of lower intensity activity (e.g., pickleball) is asking a lot. Advocating for folks to exercise is a worthy cause, but you're setting people up for failure by advocating for adding a minimum of 7 additional hours a week to their schedule. EDIT addition: Realistically, adding something like 30 mins of exercise a few times a week (3-4) is more achievable. And in that regard, it doesn't really burn meaningful calories. Maybe an additional 500-1000 a week if you're actually pushing yourself, but beginners often don't.
    - SirMaster 1y ago
      Well of course you don't just jump from 0 to that much a day/week. It would and should take a newcomer a few months to ramp up to that level, but I believe that most people can support that amount of activity. I mean sure I agree that 500-1000 cal a week in exercise would be minimal which is precisely why I think people should have a more ambitious goal to work into their life even if it takes months to get to that level.
      - Kirby64 1y ago
        Can vs. want to. You're suggesting people get a new hobby, essentially. Not everyone wants to do that much exercise. Also, like I said, if your diet isn't fixed then no amount of exercise is going to overcome that. You'll just eat more to compensate.
reverendsteveii 1y ago
I spent a year powerlifting and lost absolutely no weight, then spent 2 years powerlifting while restricting myself to 1800 cals/day and lost weight. If we're doing personal anecdotes. If we're doing hard data, I think you're overestimating the impact of taking 500 calories a day off of the average American's diet, which comes in at around 3800 calories/day (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detail?chartId=58376 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-d...). Assuming 3300 net calories per day after exercise, one would have to be in the neighborhood of 400 pounds for that to be below maintenance level assuming 40 y/o moderately active based on the mayo clinic calorie counter (https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20402304 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...). Hell, I ride a bike 6 miles and lift weights every day, have done for two years, and my maintenance calories are still only in the 2200-2300 range, which means if my diet was average I'd be exercising every day and still putting on pounds rather quickly. Tldr - I think your results are an outlier because you've underestimated how much better your existing diet is than the average.
- SirMaster 1y ago
  It shouldn't matter what the diet is. 500 cal a day is 500 cal a day and that adds up for most people on average to 1 pound a week. Whether it's 1 pound a week that you are now not gaining or 1 pound a week that you are now losing, or something in between, it's still ~1 pound of body comp worth of calories which IMO is not "minimal". I never said exercising 500 calories a day means you will lose weight, I just disagree that: "the amount of calories burned by exercise is minimal" I still don't think it's minimal. If you burn an extra 500 cal a day on average that will be about 50 pounds a year of "difference", whether that's you gaining less weight or losing weight that's all up to your total calorie intake of course.
- zero_shift 1y ago
  How are people consuming 3800 calories per day? I don't doubt your numbers but the scale of that seems inconceivable.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
zero_shift 1y ago
When I trained for a half marathon, I didn't lose any weight. I just became very hungry. (And, unfortunately, when I injured myself, I kept being hungry - and gained mass)
BizarroLand 1y ago
Calories in Calories out, but that is only accurately calculable if you have an accurate idea of how many calories you are sending out, and if you are obese or formerly obese, the online calculators are likely not accurate for you at all. One thing that is overlooked is that losing weight can permanently or at least semi-permanently decrease BMR, your Basal Metabolic Rate. Your BMR is the calories you burn just to be alive, and is the foundation of almost every calorie counting system in the world. At my worst, as a 33 year old 250lb 6'1" man, my BMR was at 1,836 Calories/day when it should have been at 2,133 Calories/day as diagnosed by a dexa scan and calorimetry test. A 300 calorie a day decrease in my BMR from losing 100 lbs meant that I have to either find a way to increase my total metabolic burn or I have to permanently cut almost an entire meal from my diet for the rest of my life. This was helpful and harmful in a way. It explained why when I was eating 500 calories a day under what my calculator said I should be eating I was barely losing a pound or two a month instead of a pound a week like I should have. I was also tired and hungry all of the time, no energy, irritable and unhappy because so much weight loss had changed the way I function. But when I quit the diet, I put on weight like crazy. I put on like 20 lbs in a couple of weeks and I didn't eat that much more than usual. I've been checked for thyroid issues and diabetes, fortunately clear there, just a literally slowed metabolism as a consequence of losing 100 lbs. There are things I can do to speed it back up, like going to the gym and putting on as much muscle as possible, but that also takes time and effort and work and it requires overeating and gaining weight at the same time. Basically, once you're on a diet, you're always on a diet for the rest of your life, and the more weight you lose, the harder it becomes to lose weight if your metabolism is altered by your diet in the process. If you're having trouble losing weight, get a Dexa scan and calorimetry test. That will identify where the fat is in your body and how many calories your body burns just sitting there doing nothing. Once you have that data you can more accurately plan your diet to stay close to the 500 calorie/day limit to healthily lose weight. Just make sure you get re-scanned every 20 lbs or 6 months, it's not that expensive and gives you good information.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  I've been on that journey. When I decided to lose weight I started by just tracking and I was at about 3200 calories daily. The trackers aren't perfect, of course, but given my height, weight and (nonexistent) activity level my maintenance calories hovered around 2500. Now it's down to 2200, 50 pounds later after two years of hard cutting and recomp (1800 cals/day). >Basically, once you're on a diet, you're always on a diet for the rest of your life If your diet is maintenance? Yeah, sorta. People get this idea that they'll get getting fit out of the way and then it's done and they stay fit forever and can go right back to the lifestyle that gave them a body other than what they want. Fit has to be what you do, esp because we live in a society where more is more and the average person is wildly overconsuming from a raw calorie perspective. That's why I hate weight loss as a goal even though that's precisely the goal that started me into the fitness lifestyle. People think that you set the goal, hit the goal, and then you're done forever and that's just not a mindset that will bring success in this. >There are things I can do to speed it back up, like going to the gym and putting on as much muscle as possible, but that also takes time and effort and work and it requires overeating and gaining weight at the same time. First off, cardio will do more for you boosting your base metabolism than lifting and it doesn't cause weight gain. It not only boosts your base metabolism but it burns calories immediately. Second, I think you're a bit too focused on weight as the metric. This is a Goodhart's law problem ('when a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric') and one that I had to overcome. For the first six months or so I was eating very little, working out twice/day (20 minutes resistance in the AM, then 20 minutes on the exercise bike in the early afternoon), and I wasn't losing weight. It sucked. Until I tried on a pair of pants that hadn't fit in years and they slid right on no problem. Turns out that I had naively discovered what the bodybuilding community calls a recomposition or "recomp". That's when you maintain a calorie deficit but still train to gain muscle. You won't lose weight as a number on a scale as quickly, and muscle growth is noticeably slower when you're in a calorie deficit (though not non-existent as long as you sleep well and get your protein), but your shape changes. Fat gets replaced by muscle. I also figured out that I wasn't winded when I went up a flight of stairs anymore and was even able to finish my first 5k having not really lost any weight. I did eventually drop from 210 to about 160 at 5'6" which is more than modest but less than a miracle, but honestly I reached a point in the 170s where I stopped caring about my weight and started caring about my abilities instead. > my BMR was at 1,836 Calories/day....I was eating 500 calories a day under what my calculator said I should be eating Holy shit dude 1300 cal/day is absurd. I'm 40, 5'6" and was 210 when I started and 1800 cal/day was a hard cut for me. 20%ish, right near what they say is the max you can maintain long-term. Even losing almost a quarter of my body weight now my daily only dropped to 1700. I'm not here to tell you about your life but those numbers just don't jive with my experience at all. You're bigger than me and younger, it would be an outlier if your BMR was less than mine all other things being equal like level of exercise FWIW given the data you posted and assuming no exercise the mayo clinic puts your BMR at 2350, which means a hard cut would come in between 1800 and 1900 cals/day. Idk precisely how they define "somewhat active" but if you meet that measure it increases to 2500 and 2000 for a hard cut. Can I ask how you arrived at the figure of 1800 cal/day for your BMR given that the tests you had done set it at 2100?
ezoe 1y ago
Unfortunately, human body doesn't work like a mechanical engine which input fuel and output work. If you increase your calories consumption by exercise, our body reduce the calories consumption of non-vital activities to keep the calorie consumption budget. Unless you're running ultra marathon every day, you can't increase calorie consumption that much.
- SirMaster 1y ago
  Then why do I feel more energetic and alert during downtime when I am in general exercising regularly compared to when I am not? Also my resting heart rate is a little higher when I am exercising a lot. Also my muscles are rebuilding themselves between all my lifting exercises. All of this must be increasing my resting calorie burn rate I would think.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    >Then why do I feel more energetic and alert during downtime when I am in general exercising regularly compared to when I am not? Because feeling tired is a very complex interplay of emotional, hormonal and environmental signals and not simply a lack of fuel. >Also my resting heart rate is a little higher when I am exercising a lot. Weird, almost everyone else's goes down as the heart becomes stronger and more efficient during strenuous exercise, then that more efficient muscle is doing the same job the older, less efficient one did >Also my muscles are rebuilding themselves between all my lifting exercises. All of this must be increasing my resting calorie burn rate I would think. This part is true, and it's why serious bodybuilders trying to get as large as possible run a bulk/cut cycle. First they eat an excess of calories while working out very intensely, causing them to gain a lot of both muscle and fat, then they eat at a calorie deficit while keeping up as much of the intensity as possible. The calorie deficit leads to weight loss but the continued usage of the muscles causes the body to still try to prioritize maintaining their bulk. The way it was explained to me was "pack it on, then shrinkwrap it". This is also why serious bodybuilders take their sleep very seriously as well, as that's the part where your body actually does the repairing, rebuilding and increasing the mass of muscles that were damaged through strenuous use.

Kirby64 1y ago

> What evidence is there for this? All the things that calculate approximate calories burned for various exercises tell me that it's not minimal. Minimal meaning that the amount of exercise you need to do to burn substantial amounts of calories is quite high. Your example of 500cal would be something like an hour of moderate intensity jogging, which would be a lot of exercise for someone to do every single day. Meanwhile, eating 500cal takes like... 5 minutes? Less? > Obviously diet is the biggest factor, but if you just eat less and sit around all day, you body will adapt to the lower calorie intake and slow your metabolism down too and you will have to eat so little that you will never feel full or satisfied (so you will probably not be able to keep that up for long) and you will feel like crap and have no energy if you don't combine with exercise, at least in my experience. Metabolic adaption is largely overblown. You definitely will burn less calories as you lose weight, but that would happen exercise or not. The only difference there is that exercise tends to build muscle, which would burn more calories and offset some of that loss. The fact of the matter is, if you end up losing substantial amounts of weight, you will need to eat fewer calories to maintain that same lower weight forever. In my experience, if you're losing weight then you are often going to feel not full. It's just a natural human reaction to caloric deficit. There's tricks to making it not be as impactful (e.g., eat more whole foods, less junk, etc) or medication to make it less of a problem (i.e., GLPs), but expecting to be able to lose weight and always feel full just by adding exercise is wishful thinking.

SirMaster 1y ago
>which would be a lot of exercise for someone to do every single day. Well I already disagree here at this point I guess. For me that is like the minimum on average. When I'm playing pickleball I'm plying like 3 hours, if i'm cycling I'm cycling like 2 hours, and if i'm jogging i'm jogging like an hour. Humans are built to be active, not sitting in an office all day, and for a healthily lifestyle I don't think this asking too much IMO to do an hour of moderate exercise a day on average. I kind of feel like crap when I am not exercising and feel like I have a lot more energy when I do exercise nearly every day. That's my experience with it at least.
- Kirby64 1y ago
  For someone that is doing little to no exercise every day, asking someone to do an hour of moderate intensity jogging or possibly multiple hours of lower intensity activity (e.g., pickleball) is asking a lot. Advocating for folks to exercise is a worthy cause, but you're setting people up for failure by advocating for adding a minimum of 7 additional hours a week to their schedule. EDIT addition: Realistically, adding something like 30 mins of exercise a few times a week (3-4) is more achievable. And in that regard, it doesn't really burn meaningful calories. Maybe an additional 500-1000 a week if you're actually pushing yourself, but beginners often don't.
  - SirMaster 1y ago
    Well of course you don't just jump from 0 to that much a day/week. It would and should take a newcomer a few months to ramp up to that level, but I believe that most people can support that amount of activity. I mean sure I agree that 500-1000 cal a week in exercise would be minimal which is precisely why I think people should have a more ambitious goal to work into their life even if it takes months to get to that level.
    - Kirby64 1y ago
      Can vs. want to. You're suggesting people get a new hobby, essentially. Not everyone wants to do that much exercise. Also, like I said, if your diet isn't fixed then no amount of exercise is going to overcome that. You'll just eat more to compensate.

reverendsteveii 1y ago

I spent a year powerlifting and lost absolutely no weight, then spent 2 years powerlifting while restricting myself to 1800 cals/day and lost weight. If we're doing personal anecdotes. If we're doing hard data, I think you're overestimating the impact of taking 500 calories a day off of the average American's diet, which comes in at around 3800 calories/day (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detail?chartId=58376 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-d...). Assuming 3300 net calories per day after exercise, one would have to be in the neighborhood of 400 pounds for that to be below maintenance level assuming 40 y/o moderately active based on the mayo clinic calorie counter (https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-depth/calorie-calculator/itt-20402304 https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-...). Hell, I ride a bike 6 miles and lift weights every day, have done for two years, and my maintenance calories are still only in the 2200-2300 range, which means if my diet was average I'd be exercising every day and still putting on pounds rather quickly. Tldr - I think your results are an outlier because you've underestimated how much better your existing diet is than the average.

SirMaster 1y ago
It shouldn't matter what the diet is. 500 cal a day is 500 cal a day and that adds up for most people on average to 1 pound a week. Whether it's 1 pound a week that you are now not gaining or 1 pound a week that you are now losing, or something in between, it's still ~1 pound of body comp worth of calories which IMO is not "minimal". I never said exercising 500 calories a day means you will lose weight, I just disagree that: "the amount of calories burned by exercise is minimal" I still don't think it's minimal. If you burn an extra 500 cal a day on average that will be about 50 pounds a year of "difference", whether that's you gaining less weight or losing weight that's all up to your total calorie intake of course.
zero_shift 1y ago
How are people consuming 3800 calories per day? I don't doubt your numbers but the scale of that seems inconceivable.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago

zero_shift 1y ago

When I trained for a half marathon, I didn't lose any weight. I just became very hungry. (And, unfortunately, when I injured myself, I kept being hungry - and gained mass)

BizarroLand 1y ago

Calories in Calories out, but that is only accurately calculable if you have an accurate idea of how many calories you are sending out, and if you are obese or formerly obese, the online calculators are likely not accurate for you at all. One thing that is overlooked is that losing weight can permanently or at least semi-permanently decrease BMR, your Basal Metabolic Rate. Your BMR is the calories you burn just to be alive, and is the foundation of almost every calorie counting system in the world. At my worst, as a 33 year old 250lb 6'1" man, my BMR was at 1,836 Calories/day when it should have been at 2,133 Calories/day as diagnosed by a dexa scan and calorimetry test. A 300 calorie a day decrease in my BMR from losing 100 lbs meant that I have to either find a way to increase my total metabolic burn or I have to permanently cut almost an entire meal from my diet for the rest of my life. This was helpful and harmful in a way. It explained why when I was eating 500 calories a day under what my calculator said I should be eating I was barely losing a pound or two a month instead of a pound a week like I should have. I was also tired and hungry all of the time, no energy, irritable and unhappy because so much weight loss had changed the way I function. But when I quit the diet, I put on weight like crazy. I put on like 20 lbs in a couple of weeks and I didn't eat that much more than usual. I've been checked for thyroid issues and diabetes, fortunately clear there, just a literally slowed metabolism as a consequence of losing 100 lbs. There are things I can do to speed it back up, like going to the gym and putting on as much muscle as possible, but that also takes time and effort and work and it requires overeating and gaining weight at the same time. Basically, once you're on a diet, you're always on a diet for the rest of your life, and the more weight you lose, the harder it becomes to lose weight if your metabolism is altered by your diet in the process. If you're having trouble losing weight, get a Dexa scan and calorimetry test. That will identify where the fat is in your body and how many calories your body burns just sitting there doing nothing. Once you have that data you can more accurately plan your diet to stay close to the 500 calorie/day limit to healthily lose weight. Just make sure you get re-scanned every 20 lbs or 6 months, it's not that expensive and gives you good information.

reverendsteveii 1y ago
I've been on that journey. When I decided to lose weight I started by just tracking and I was at about 3200 calories daily. The trackers aren't perfect, of course, but given my height, weight and (nonexistent) activity level my maintenance calories hovered around 2500. Now it's down to 2200, 50 pounds later after two years of hard cutting and recomp (1800 cals/day). >Basically, once you're on a diet, you're always on a diet for the rest of your life If your diet is maintenance? Yeah, sorta. People get this idea that they'll get getting fit out of the way and then it's done and they stay fit forever and can go right back to the lifestyle that gave them a body other than what they want. Fit has to be what you do, esp because we live in a society where more is more and the average person is wildly overconsuming from a raw calorie perspective. That's why I hate weight loss as a goal even though that's precisely the goal that started me into the fitness lifestyle. People think that you set the goal, hit the goal, and then you're done forever and that's just not a mindset that will bring success in this. >There are things I can do to speed it back up, like going to the gym and putting on as much muscle as possible, but that also takes time and effort and work and it requires overeating and gaining weight at the same time. First off, cardio will do more for you boosting your base metabolism than lifting and it doesn't cause weight gain. It not only boosts your base metabolism but it burns calories immediately. Second, I think you're a bit too focused on weight as the metric. This is a Goodhart's law problem ('when a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric') and one that I had to overcome. For the first six months or so I was eating very little, working out twice/day (20 minutes resistance in the AM, then 20 minutes on the exercise bike in the early afternoon), and I wasn't losing weight. It sucked. Until I tried on a pair of pants that hadn't fit in years and they slid right on no problem. Turns out that I had naively discovered what the bodybuilding community calls a recomposition or "recomp". That's when you maintain a calorie deficit but still train to gain muscle. You won't lose weight as a number on a scale as quickly, and muscle growth is noticeably slower when you're in a calorie deficit (though not non-existent as long as you sleep well and get your protein), but your shape changes. Fat gets replaced by muscle. I also figured out that I wasn't winded when I went up a flight of stairs anymore and was even able to finish my first 5k having not really lost any weight. I did eventually drop from 210 to about 160 at 5'6" which is more than modest but less than a miracle, but honestly I reached a point in the 170s where I stopped caring about my weight and started caring about my abilities instead. > my BMR was at 1,836 Calories/day....I was eating 500 calories a day under what my calculator said I should be eating Holy shit dude 1300 cal/day is absurd. I'm 40, 5'6" and was 210 when I started and 1800 cal/day was a hard cut for me. 20%ish, right near what they say is the max you can maintain long-term. Even losing almost a quarter of my body weight now my daily only dropped to 1700. I'm not here to tell you about your life but those numbers just don't jive with my experience at all. You're bigger than me and younger, it would be an outlier if your BMR was less than mine all other things being equal like level of exercise FWIW given the data you posted and assuming no exercise the mayo clinic puts your BMR at 2350, which means a hard cut would come in between 1800 and 1900 cals/day. Idk precisely how they define "somewhat active" but if you meet that measure it increases to 2500 and 2000 for a hard cut. Can I ask how you arrived at the figure of 1800 cal/day for your BMR given that the tests you had done set it at 2100?

ezoe 1y ago

Unfortunately, human body doesn't work like a mechanical engine which input fuel and output work. If you increase your calories consumption by exercise, our body reduce the calories consumption of non-vital activities to keep the calorie consumption budget. Unless you're running ultra marathon every day, you can't increase calorie consumption that much.

SirMaster 1y ago
Then why do I feel more energetic and alert during downtime when I am in general exercising regularly compared to when I am not? Also my resting heart rate is a little higher when I am exercising a lot. Also my muscles are rebuilding themselves between all my lifting exercises. All of this must be increasing my resting calorie burn rate I would think.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  >Then why do I feel more energetic and alert during downtime when I am in general exercising regularly compared to when I am not? Because feeling tired is a very complex interplay of emotional, hormonal and environmental signals and not simply a lack of fuel. >Also my resting heart rate is a little higher when I am exercising a lot. Weird, almost everyone else's goes down as the heart becomes stronger and more efficient during strenuous exercise, then that more efficient muscle is doing the same job the older, less efficient one did >Also my muscles are rebuilding themselves between all my lifting exercises. All of this must be increasing my resting calorie burn rate I would think. This part is true, and it's why serious bodybuilders trying to get as large as possible run a bulk/cut cycle. First they eat an excess of calories while working out very intensely, causing them to gain a lot of both muscle and fat, then they eat at a calorie deficit while keeping up as much of the intensity as possible. The calorie deficit leads to weight loss but the continued usage of the muscles causes the body to still try to prioritize maintaining their bulk. The way it was explained to me was "pack it on, then shrinkwrap it". This is also why serious bodybuilders take their sleep very seriously as well, as that's the part where your body actually does the repairing, rebuilding and increasing the mass of muscles that were damaged through strenuous use.