Talk to me about Calories . .

[zafirah]

I'm a calorie coutning virgin!

I just started making a note as an educational tool. . . .first off . . when we say 'calories' me mean killocalaries, right?

Now, the machines in the gym that estimate calories use, if I burn 600 calories in a session that also mean kcal? (God I hope so!)

So . . . My average daily intake seems to be about 1500-1800 kcal. At the moment I try and eat well and balanced but I'm not 'dieting'. Women are recommended 2000 right? But I'm 5'2" surely i should use less?

Also I am trying to loose the squidgy belly . . .what do i need to cut my intake down to? I am currently about 130 pounds and want to get down to about 120 (remember i am short and 'small boned') or whatever looks healthy minus squidge (not aiming for skeletal by any means)

I do on average 2xgym sessions (60 min cardio) and 2 x 40-60 min swims (medium pace i guess) plus am trying to do the stretching and floor work parts of New York City Ballet workout 2-3 times a week. Other than that I have an office job, although as of next week will have a 30 min walk to/from work which will help. I can't really fit much more excercise time in . . is there anything i could be doing to be more effective? I thought swimming was good but when i look it up online it doesn't seem to burn all that many calories. . . of course I am going for fitness as well as gut loss . . .

Um . . .not sure what my question is!

Any advice?!

[antimony]

that 2,000 calorie maintenance number might be the average, but that number swings widely from person to person, and changes based on how much you weigh, how fit you are, etc. For me at my goal weight of 140lbs, maintenance is about 1600 calories or so.

Anyway, don't count on burning enough calories to lose weight. You can undo your whole workout with one snack. Increasing your level of fitness increases your base metabolic rate, which over time will help with weight loss, but at the beginning it is pretty mucy all about what you eat.

Swimming is great excercise, even though it doesn't burn the kind of calories other excercise does because you have to do it with a controlled breathing pattern. That builds lung capacity, and it forces you to build stamina and cardiovascular fitness. Also, it's fun and pleasant, and the only excercise that does you any good is the excercise you actually do. So swimming is 3 times a week does you more good than saying you're going to run but then finding excuses not to.

anyway, good luck! There's a lot of us here in the same boat.

[aazura]

First off, the cal counts on the gym machines are notoriously inaccurate. Use them as an estimate, but don't treat them as gospel. Looking at your workout schedule my first thought is that you're doing too much cardio. You need to build muscle mass, which will raise your metabolism. The more muscle mass will also help reign in the gigglies. If you can't fit in more gym time, I would suggest cutting back your cardio routine to 20-30 mins (60 is way way too much!) and using the rest of that hour for weights. I'm unfamiliar with teh NYC Ballet workout, but if it's also cardio based, then you could even skip the gym cardio altogether and use that time for weight lifting.

[tahiradancer]

Or if you are uninterested in more weight taining, you could add pilates, and other forms of excercise which fit into the resistance training label.

{{{HUGS}}}

[zafirah]

I did 30 min cardio and 30 min weights for 3 months (Oct-Dec) and just got fatter. I have actually at least started loosing ever so slowely since my cardio binge.

Z

[antimony]

Working out alone isn't going to do much, you really have to keep an eye on your food. It sucks, but unless you're working out for hours a day, you can't just eat what you want. And if you *are* working out for hours a day, then you have whole different nutritional concerns so you still would have to plan what you eat.

Some people count calories, some people don't, but at some point you have to sit down and decide what you want your healthy diet to look like, and what kind of changes to your eating will help you reach your goal.

I've been trying to keep myself to 1,300-1,400 calories a day, but the cold weather has been a big roadblock for me. Now that it's warmed up, I'm doing a lot better. I don't count every single calorie anymore, only because I counted for a long time, and I eat a lot of the same things every day, so I really know fairly well where I'm at without doing much tracking. But I know for sure that if I stray above 1,400 too often, I won't lose any weight.

[Emma]

According to my Rosemary Conley diet book (yes, I own a diet book, where's the embarrassed smilie?) you should be aiming for 1382 calories per day if you want to lose weight but not go crazy with starvation. I used this a few years ago, and the only way I could get it to work was to weigh and calculate the calories of everything I was going to eat, and adjust recipes as necessary. What can I say, I was a chemist...but since I had the same thing for breakfast, and bought sandwiches which had the kcal content marked at lunchtime, it wasn't as much of a faff as it sounds.

[bul_bul_ksa]

Too much cardio and not enough HEAVEY weights. Lighter weights won't really achieve what you want. Do cardio for sure but mix it up with steady state cardio and HIIT.

With your diet, rather than focus on calories I'd focus on 'eating clean'. You know what they say: abs are created in the kitchen.

On another board someone has questions about why her routine (in which she does cardio 6 days a week) isn't working and the responses might help you. The link is: http://www.oxygenmag.net/showthread.php?t=31449

Now, I need to take the above advice, I tried on a pair of jeans today and they were a little more...mmm...snug than I'd like.

[Bellydancingcaroline]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I know nothing about this sort of thing, and that I'm also stuggling with squidge. I have found that since binging on cardio I too have found a few pounds starting to shift. Zaph - have you tired running yet? When I have time, I'm going to do this next....

[aazura]

Originally Posted by zafirah

I did 30 min cardio and 30 min weights for 3 months (Oct-Dec) and just got fatter. I have actually at least started loosing ever so slowely since my cardio binge.

Z

Hmmm... you put on weight over the holiday season??? How odd! Seriously, you need to add resistance training and less cardio. More isn't always better when it comes to cardio! Bul_bul_ksa's links is a good one -- it hits right at the core of the more cardio=more calories=more fat burning myth. When you do too much cardio, as you are currently, you actually end up BURNING MUSCLE not fat. Why? Because your body needs a source of fuel for those long cardio sessions. Ever notice how the "fat burning" mode of the cardio machine seems so easy? It's because you need to keep your heart rate low to use fat as a fuel source. Once it goes over a cerain level, your body reaches for other sources. If you just ate a bunch of carbs, it'll use those first, but once those are exhausted (and they will be fast during an hour long cardio session) it'll go for the next best thing -- muscle. Muscle is full of protein so it's good for a long burn. Problem is, you need and want to maintain your muscle tone. Not only does it LOOK better, but it also helps you burn more fat even when you're not excercising.

[spanishdoll]

I'm curious as to how 30 minutes of cardio is too much? I know that if you do too much it will burn muscle, but I was under the impression that we were talking more like 1 hour of cardio. 30 minutes seems like a normal session to me.

[danidance]

This is the key from the post above:

Ever notice how the "fat burning" mode of the cardio machine seems so easy? It's because you need to keep your heart rate low to use fat as a fuel source.

It's not that 30 minutes is too much - it's what that 30 minutes entails. Actually - you should vary your routine from what I understand - 30 minutes one day, then 45 the next, then 20 and so on. Your body gets used to 30 minutes as a routine and you don't want that. Or is that a myth too?

Originally Posted by spanishdoll

I'm curious as to how 30 minutes of cardio is too much? I know that if you do too much it will burn muscle, but I was under the impression that we were talking more like 1 hour of cardio. 30 minutes seems like a normal session to me.

[spanishdoll]

Thanks Dani! That's interesting; I didn't realize that there was a difference in what gets burned depending on how fast your heart is beating.

I definitely mix up cardio - actually all exercises, including weighted movements. I don't think it's a myth. If I do only the elliptical for a few months, my body will tire quicker when I go on to the treadmill. It moves your body in a different way. Not sure about the time variants; I think you have to hold your target heart rate up for a certain period of time.

[aazura]

Originally Posted by spanishdoll

I'm curious as to how 30 minutes of cardio is too much? I know that if you do too much it will burn muscle, but I was under the impression that we were talking more like 1 hour of cardio. 30 minutes seems like a normal session to me.

It's not that 30 min is too much. 30 min up to 3x week is fine. But Zafira is currently doing 60 minutes 2x week, PLUS swimming and an instructional video. I imagine she's also dancing as well. This is too much.

[zafirah]

I typed a reply, but I am in a bad mood so i did the sensible thing and deleted it.

Half of this advice is the opposite of what my medical student sister says so who knows. I will cut cardio to 30 min and do that 30 min on different machines each sesson and also start the weights again. I wil stop beating myself up when I feel too tired to go out to leisure centre and do full ballet workout instead. I will be walking to work and back (30 min each way) starting next week anyway but that barely counts does it, well it doesn't in the UK where towns are set up that you can actually walk places (I'm not going to accept that walking is too much - sorry!). I honestly don't think weights is gonna work - like I said I had loads of muscles in the autumn, they just pushed the fat out further. Maybe my muscles just need less calories than normal people? I don't count dancing as excercise really . . . . .its very low level.

I think with regards to calories I'll have to just cut portion size further as what I'm eating is healthy and BALANCED already. I'm not going on any crazy fad diet.

Z

[antimony]

Zafirah, keep in mind that they are talking about how much cardio is "too much" for the specific purpose of losing weight.

Obviously athletes who train for hours a day are not destroying their bodies (assuming they are eating and training sensibly) but you need different amounts of cardio and strength training, and you have different nutritional requirements if your goal is to lose weight, or if it's to achieve a specific level of fitness, to train for some kind of athletic competition, or any other specific reason people working out.

I think that's where some of the disconnect is coming from, since I suspect some people are talking about what kind of excercise you need to burn fat, and others are talking about what you need to build up your cardiovascular fitness.

As for how many calories you need, I am very suspicious of that 2,000 calorie amount you mentioned earlier, I think for many women, it is quite a bit lower.

[shahravar]

Originally Posted by zafirah

I did 30 min cardio and 30 min weights for 3 months (Oct-Dec) and just got fatter. I have actually at least started loosing ever so slowely since my cardio binge.

Z

Are you sure that you were not just increasing you muscle mass?
If you are already in your height and weight bracket you could possibly be adding new Muscle weight, not fat.

[BabsGrrrl]

You may also be in a calorie deficit. I know it sounds strange, but you might not be eating enough. Your body needs to feel fueled so that it does not go into a starvation mode and hang onto the fat to "protect itself". Count the calories you are eating as well as the calories you are burning. Make sure that you are actually ending up with a number that is between 1500 and 1800

For example, if you eat, say, 1500 calories but burn off 600 during that workout, your body is really only getting 900 calories for that day. Not nearly enough to keep your metabolism happily perking along - thus you are not seeing any fat loss.

Kudos for doing the sensible thing and avoiding fad diets etc. You might check with your doctor to see if you can get a referral to a nutritionist to help you figure this all out. I'm certainly not an expert by any means, just letting you know what I have learned that works for me. :)

[Lauren_]

A lot of the above differs from what I was taught in college as an exercise & wellness major, too, Zaf.

First of all, it's true that the body uses 'carbs' first, but not the ones you just ate. The body stores energy as glucogen, there are small reserves of it in the muscles, ready to be used if you should suddenly decide to sprint across the parking lot in the rain, for instance. There's lots more glucogen stored in the liver & (IIRC) other places in the body.

After about 20 minutes of activity, the body is likely to shift to 'fat-burning' mode. This figure is pretty approximate, depends a lot on how efficient your body is at producing energy (how fit you are).

So, in order to burn fat, you're better off exercising at a low level because you need to sustain your activity for at least 20 minutes before you begin to burn muscle. Hence the easier 'fat-burning' settings on the machines. If you want to achieve cardio fitness, you need to get your heart rate up to 60-80% of your VO2 max, which is much more intense. You would still be burning fat at that range, but you don't *have* to exercise that hard to burn fat.

I think you're right to look at calorie intake (you're also right that we usually mean Calories, with a capital C, which is a kilocalorie). That's the other side of the equation. I used to walk an hour on the treadmill & then figure I could 'afford' to eat more. Nuh uh! An hour on the treadmill and a tiny bag of peanut M&Ms cancel each other out. Or a bowl of soup. Never mind a sandwich at the deli! A plate of my favorite pasta dish = SIX HOURS on the treadmill. My fave chocolate milkshake -- a small one -- would take about 4 hours to burn off, walking hard.

Counting calories is a great way to get a better understanding of it all. So is the Weight Watchers point system. I'm using Fitday.com right now, cuz it's free.

[Lauren_]

btw, current guidelines according to all the fitness agencies I've worked with/studied are for cardio "30-60 minutes most days."

That's for basic health, what experts say EVERYONE should be doing just to reduce risk of heart attack & cancer.

For weight loss, the recommendation is 60 minutes per day.

Our bodies were really designed to be active MUCH more than that, more like 6-8 hours a day of vigorous hunting/gathering.

[Asra*]

To me, 1300 calories a day sounds like too little for even a slightly active person. Maybe you guys are starving yourselves too much and slowing down your metabolism.

As stated above - if you eat too little your body becomes even more efficient at storing every little calorie as fat, and then - as soon as you start eating even a bit more normally your body will gain lots of weight because it never knows when you're going to be starving again.

Maybe talk to a nutritionist, for even one session. As a nurse, and as someone who is trying to lose weight, cutting back to 1500-1700 Calories a day plus adding some walking has dropped almost 10 pounds of fat since Xmas, and summer's not even here yet.

[Lauren_]

Calculating how many calories you need is complicated. There are formulas we used in class that took into account the clients gender, weight, activity level, the thermodynamic effect of food, etc. These were nightmarish problems that appeared on our tests. Ugh.

Surely there are online calculators for this? Try googling "TDEE" (total daily energy expenditure) calculator?

The most accurate thing is to get your metabolism measured. Some personal trainers have access to equipment for this, and most university kinesiology programs have the equipment & tons of students who need to measure people, so if you call around you might find a way to get it done for free.

A quick & dirty method for getting an estimate -- that doesn't take into account your activity level, age, BMI or other factors - is this:

Fat loss = 12-13 calories per lb. of bodyweight
Maintenance = 15-16 calories per lb. of bodyweight
Weight gain: = 18-19 calories per lb. of bodyweight

Nice thing about the above is that if you find it works for you, it'll help you track the