I Am Really Confused By This.

[tipptruck1]

This week I started my work out routine. I walk a little over 2.5 miles at 2 or 3 mph. Thanks to the treadmill being stuck at a 10% incline. I fell it I do plan on start jogging a little at a time. I hope to get up at lest 30 mintues be middle of next month.

I ride the Stationary bicycle for about 60 minutes at about 12-15 mph. Then for about 30 minutes at 15-20mph. I do some crunches, push ups, take the dog for about a mile walk.

According to a Calorie calculator with sleep and various other stuff. I am burning the what it takes to maintain my weight. Mind you I am eating smaller meals. I eat at lest 4 meals a day. I am sure its over 2000 calories. Also with that calculator I found I would have to burn at lest 3500 more calories then I take in. I don't know about you but that seems like a lot. I really dont want to kill my self.

All ready with smaller meals and working out. I have a lot more energy. I feel like I am bouncing off the walls with all this energy.

Last time I went on a work out diet. I was eating at lest 4-5 meals a day. I can tell you what I ate. Mind you I was working a not so tuff job and going to school. I went from a 50 in waist to a 44 in a few months. Here is what I ate. I would wake up around 9 pm for work. Eat a small home cooked meal for first break. Second break I would eat maybe a some thing small like a candy bar. Third break I would usually not eat any thing. I would just drink some water. After work at 7am I would grab any thing from the fridge or drive through at bk. The large drink I would sip all morning. I might throw in a candy bar if I was hungry. At 11 or 12 when class was over. I would go home and have a home cooked small meal. I was drinking a lot of water also during the time. Put it this way I was drinking and eating any thing and losing weight. That is were I learned As long as I was working out I could pretty munch eat any thing.

Any way I am just confused about the whole calorie thing. Mind you I am not looking to build muscle. I have plenty of that from doing farm and hard labor. Just wasn't burning more then I ate. So I just need help with the whole calorie thing.

[clayton86]

Idk bout the calorie thing but this is what in doing and iv lost 17lbs in te last 3 weeks. Breakfast I have 2 harbboiled eggs a small bowl of oatmeal 2 slices of cantalope, a glass of oj 4 slices of bacon. Then lunch I have a large grilled chicken salad. Dinner varies but yesterday was veal parm a small salad a bottle of power ade and rice. I'm hitting the gym for an hour a day plus the 1.5 mile run there and run telephone poles back dead sprint to one pole walk to the next and repeat. That's it for food and exercise besides what we do for training but I'm loosing roughly a pound a day which is alot but like another Sgt here said I went from couch potato to the active duty mobilization training and my body is still young and wanting to get back at my ideal weight.

[nick76]

what are you using for a calorie calculator? You really should not be losing more than a pound or two a week unless you go from a large calorie intake to a small one and add in tons of exercise. At 6'2" and 240 lbs I can consume ~2100 calories a day and that is calculated so I lose 2 lbs per week. If you have a smart phone or a PC you can get something called Lose it! There is an app for smart phones and a website to login to on the PC. It will ask you some basic info and then ask how much you want to lose. It will calculate your caloric intake for the day and allows you to either look up foods, or make custom recipes. It has just about everything. With the smart phone app you can scan the UPC code from an item and input it that way. Super helpful I have found. You can also add custom exercises or use the pre calculated ones on the site. It might help you to understand. I know it helped me to get a better idea of intake calories from what I eat.

[Marty]

I'm not sure exactly what it is you're asking, but one pound is the equivalent of 3500 calories. So for any given period of time, you need to burn 3500 more calories than you take in to lose a pound or 3500 less to gain a pound.

The majority of your calories are burned while doing nothing, like sleeping or watching TV. It's the action of your heart and lungs that is doing this burning. There is information available so you can estimate how many calories you burn a day by doing nothing. And information that estimates how much of a given exercise will burn.

Combine this with the nutrition information on food package labeling and you should have a pretty good starting point as to what you need to do to either lose, gain or maintain weight.

[tipptruck1]

Marty I know I need to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound. But I still cant figure out say I am eating 2500 calories a day. That means I would have to burn almost 6000 calories just to lose one lb. That's is what I am not getting. Math was never my never my strong point.

Nick thanks for the site. Here is what I was using http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc

I do not know hoe accurte it is. But it seemed like it was about 100 off on the high side compared to the site you gave me.

[nick76]

Let me see if I can help more. Your body takes X amount of calories to keep it running each day. Lets say that is 3000 calories (also known as your Basal Metabolic Rate). If you want to lose a pound a week then you ideally need to eat 3500 calories less a week or approximately 500 calories a day. That is with just diet. If you exercise you can thus eat more calories or will lose more weight if you maintain your 3000 calories per day. If you burn 600 calories additional by exercise you can really eat 3600 calories per day and lose the same weight. If you eat the same 3000 calories and exercise you will lose and additional 4200 calories per week or just over an extra pound. Hope that helps.

[deaknh03]

Sort of related to your question, you need to be mindful of WHAT the calories you take in consist of. You mentioned 4 smaller meals or snacks per day, sounds great, then you say candy bars, burger king, sipping soda all day. Those calories are empty, they bring very little of the energy and nutrients your body needs to fuel itself, and they rob your body of vitamin and minerals stored up, as they don't have any so your body uses what's stored. You should try snacking on fruits, granola and "real" foods, and sipping water all day. I think if you give something like this a try, you will fall well below the size 44 you reached before. Good Luck!

[tipptruck1]

thanks nick I think that cleared it up.

[nick76]

Not a problem. Hope it helped. I had to explain it to my wife as well when we first started the calorie counting. Just be careful. You will quickly notice items that are high in calories and not really worth the count. You will find that those little snacks you have spoken of will add up fast. You need to find "healthier" alternatives that give you more fill for your calories bang.

I know when I first started out I really was addicted to food. It took me 4-6 weeks to break that addiction. Yes I went through withdrawls and all. Headaches, sweats, cravings.......it was bad

I had to find a few foods to get me through it. I found Emerald Dark Cocoa covered Almonds filled that void. Full of good fats, dark chocolate gave my mind the feeling of something sweet and it gave me a crunch to chew on. I have not had pop or soda for 2 years, but my wife had to switch to diet to get off the sugar. After beating the addiction, it is now easier to find my calorie budget. Just tonight we went out to dinner and both of us founda healthy meal at Red Robin that stayed within our calorie intake.

One last note......if you are serious about working out to lose weight and are going to stick with it, do yourself a favor and look into a Polar F4 exercise watch. I just got mine yesterday. Cost me $62 from Bodytronics.com. I grossly underestimated my calories burned. It monitors your Heart Rate and calculates your calories burned based on your weight, height, age. I was estimating my calories based on my wife's. Low and behold I burnt over twice as many calories as she did doing almost the same exercises. Just a heads up.