| sethnintendo said: Yea, I see how it could throw some people off. I just can never get into the total calorie counting mode nor would I ever want to. First I would assume perhaps that my daily intake would be around 2,500 (because I am a big guy). Sure I sometimes look how much calories are in food but I usually just try to do it the "right" way through controlling portion sizes and eating actually healthy food. I just started working out again and I do enjoy using the eliptical machines. I am going to rotate between cardio and weight lifting. I guess I'll take some of this to heart and just subtract about 50-100 calories from what the machine says to get a more accurate total. I already had the mentality that the totals are inflated a little / not accurate.
|
I know, counting calories exactly has this obsessive feel and not many do it. But alot of people seem to fail for that reason.
I think people should try it more often. Whats important is to do it once for a prolonged timeperiod. You will automatically develop a more precise sense for the calorie contents of food and this can help to keep your goal weight. Even when you stop after a few weeks or months. With the Basics like 1g proteine = 4 Cal 1g Carbs = 4g 1g fat = 7 Cal (Actually its 9 but the body needs 2 Cal to for making ketones out of fat or else its not usable) its possible to see caloric contant by looking at stuff with experience.
Cardio and weightlifting for weightloss ist actually an interesting topic, maybe you already know all of this maybe it will help you:
Weightliftings is a very good way to lose fat cells. 1 pound muscle burns 4 times more cals than one pound fat and this 24 hours even while you sleep. So effectively you raise your BMR longterm and it actually forces you to eat to keep your weight from a certain point onwards. Since muscles are denser and heavier than fat your scale will not necessarily reflect the progress you made. You can build alot of muscle weight before its visible that you do weightlifting which some people, especially women are afraid of. The act of weightlifting will not burn as many cals as the same time cardio activity. It will however stimulate a muscle tissue growth phase after a while which repairs and strengthens the muscle fibers. This process will use up alot of energy and take a day or longer. Additional weightlifting in this phase will slow down the growth process since your body will have less tme building tissue and spend more time repairing tissue. That effect is known as overtraining the recovery phases will decrease when you keep training for long.
It can be accelerated beyond natural limits with certain hormones. This often has consequences and can permanently change the level of natural hormones and leads to aromatization of testosterone which increase the Oestrogenlevels. In males it will cause problems like gynecomastia. It can lead to milk production in a male and pain at this stage surgery is often the only option. It stops production of testosterone in the gonads. Shortterm at first but can lead to a complete permanent shutdown. Also an increase in DHT levels can occour. DHT is toxic for hair follicles. This was just a sidenote incase someone reading this by chance gets a wrong idea.
I think the potential weightlifting has for weightloss is massively underrated.
Cardio burns cals fast and keeps your metabolism from decreasing on a caloric deficit if you target your heartrate sweetspot long enough but won't help building musclemass which inturn increase your daiily caloric needs longterm even without constant training. Obviously muscle will shrink without activity but very slowly if you do nothing in the right way.
This helps with the rebound people experience after diets since they can get back to eat more again and have on and off periods of weightlifting.
Muscle building takes very long but once you are there its much easier to maintain the mass. It requires a certain level of stimulus but regrow way faster than the firsttime. Nutrition is key and regular/enough protein also enough calories and limiting certain habits.
Cardio is an excellent way to strengthen your cardiovascular system and health but as soon as you stop it your weight will go up or you have to decrease food intake again.
If you are already big and aim for weightloss. You have a certain advantage. The muscles are already there. Big people train all day every day just by walking around and doing something and have significant amounts of muscle tissue. Its easier to lose fat than to gain muscle.
But sadly without actually doing anything except restricting calories your body tents to burn muscle before it uses fat reserves so more than half of the weight people lose is actually muscle this inturn leads to a lower BMR and you need to eat less and less to keep losing weight.
The trick is to keep the muscle tissue while losing fat and its an extremly fine line to go. But its possible the start is hard once on track its easier. Here some general stuff:
First of 1kg body fat equals 7000 cal available. To lose 1kg bodyfat you need to consume 7000 cal less than you burn. Seems simple however >50% of that are usually muscle. So you actually need to burn 11000 cal and lose 2kg weight to lose 1kg fat. But there is still waterweight. You don't need to lose more than 11000 cal to lose water weight but if your scale shows 3-5kg less after a few weeks you haven't actually lost that much, its still just 1kg fat the other kg is dense muscle tissue the rest is water which can be, depending on your food, 1-5kg or even more. Less salt less carbs and alot of fluid intake make your body let go of water. Just by doing that and not changing anything else you will lose a lot of weight. But it comes back just as fast as it went away. Numbers on a scale must be interpreted correctly and are not a sign of progress. On the other hand its easy to gain 5kg but its mostly water it takes time for the body to build fat or lose it
It also takes time to start burning fat. The Body first uses up all the readily available nutrients after a while, when its all depleted it takes the glycogen storage. This keeps you running for days without any food before its depleted. The majority of the weightloss people experience at first is glycogen and water this will go fast its actually quite benefital to start eating very little for a few days and be hungrwhen trying to lose weight. Aslong as there is easy access to glycogen your body will not start losing fat in substantial amounts. After glycogen comes muscle fibers and fat.
Its possible to get your body to burn more fat and not mostly muscle . Its important to get enough protein (About 100g) and keep your muscles periodically regenerating (aka train/rest/train) but still have a deficit of BMR-500. Guided movements like machines provide are not actually a good thing it forces your body into an unnatural movement and targets a certain muscle while the muscles which would have stabilized your movement will not be needed. Without them also getting stronger the strength gain will be not effective and your muscle proportions will suffer. So freeweights with gradually increasing weight targeting all muscle groups within a week and giving a targeted muscle 24-48 hours time to recover with additional cardio and a 500 cal deficit, should let you lose weight for a long time, before food readjustments must be made. Once at the goal you would need to increase your caloric intake to 500 + BMR and increase the weights at a faster pace. Losing 1kg fat a month + X of water is the upperlimit to whats possible without bringing the metabolism to the knees. The muscle gaining process goes slower 500g a month weight gain is the upperlimit anymore and its water significantly more and its fat. Now all you have to do is gain muscl and up your calories while seeing 1kg weightgain month.
Once build fatcells will never go away just shrink, its easier to replenish existing fatcells even though it still takes a while. They also produce a certain hormone called leptin which spikes appetite so once overweight people can easier get back into old habits. This is why I believe that the best way to keep unwanted body fat of is to raise your BMR permanently in order to end up eating normally. Its easy to forget that in order to keep weight and get the possible health benefits later. People need to keep running like on a diet and eating like on a diet for the rest of their lifes. Also BMR decreases naturally with age. An example: If you are 20 and ideal weight and get lets say 2500 Cal the exact amount you burn. Now you do every day the same things and keep eating 2500 cal every day for 20 years you will be overweight with 40 because your internal biochemical processes slow down with age. But these processes burn calories so if they slow gradually down you will just need 2000 cal instead of 2500 even if nothing else has changed.
Why I even wrote all of this:
Well this thread reminded me of an Article I read that long term weightloss is impossible to achieve for more than 9 out of 10 people . I think its because the underlying factors and mechanisms are simply unknown or just partially known and people just won't know which particular mistake they made or what problem they didn't pay attention to. And spend too much time doing stuff which is harder or not effective enough so they get frustrated and see not enough progress or lose it all very fast . But I think its possible to customize a certain food and trainings routine according to personal needs which allows after 3 years to gradually go back into old habits andkeep the weight down through random but regular traingsphases.
The things I described above are just rough descriptions but it basically works that way for everyone , adjusting it to certain conditions, a few tweaks in nutrion and a proper trainingsplan to make it achievable should be done. It should be possible to exactly pinpoint the personal sweetspot between weight time foodamount and workout intensity.
When I think about it there can be so many things customized with data about the physiology, biochemistry, daily routine and psychology of someone to work out the perfect way for quick healthy and permanent weightloss if you have total control over the environment. It could be done like the care pro athletes get (without the drugs) but with focus on easy and efficent weightloss.
Would be an interesting long term study to follow and see if people still fail after 15 years
