I track my heartrate/steps/excercise/etc all the time with my sportwatch. The software works together with myfitnesspal. I also book EVERYTHING I eat to myfitnesspal.
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to adjust my daily Calorie intake with the estimate of my Calorie expenditure that my watch is providing. Or is it way too inaccurate?
I would set my resting metabolic rate as the estimate that I have from inbody scan (~1700kcal) and increase/decrease it based on how my body weight moves.
So that would mean that in some days I’d eat almost 3000kcal and others only 2000kcal depending on how much I move during the day.
The reason I would do this is simple: I don’t really like aerobic stuff all that much. I find it super motivating to ride my bike instead of using my car if that allows me to eat an icecream.
I did listen to those podcasts and also the one with Dr. Herman Pontzer. Facinating stuff!
I guess my idea was that even while it is true that energy balance is struck over a long period of time and my body is super good at adapting to my way of life, it still remains the case that moving more increases my calorie expendeture for the day. What changes from person to person and what adapts to my activity level over a long period of time is my NEAT. Therefore figuring my energy balance is more about finding my NEAT.
So the way I figured this was there are two ways of getting 2200kcal/day which seems to be my caloric expendeture at the moment:
A) I eat 2200kcal/day.
B) I set my resting metabolic rate so that my resting metabolic rate + amount spent excercising/walking/etc over past few weeks = 2200kcal/day on avarage.
In both ways there will be days when I end up being on a surplus and days when I end up being on a decific but over a long period of time the net is zero. But on the B-plan if I went for a hike on a weekend and end up spending way more calories than usual, I would allow my self to eat more freely that evening.
But as I write this down I am beginning to realise that I may be making thins way too complicated and also end up doing too much stuff out side of gym to make my strength training suboptimal.
Your energy expenditure is much higher than 2200 Cal/day. Guaranteed.
I think you should ignore what your watch tells you with respect to energy expenditure, as it’s very inaccurate and imprecise, rendering it nearly useless from this perspective. I would adjust energy intake over the long-term based on your goals and response.
Oh. What makes you think so? I am 32y male, my height is 5’9 and I weight 160lbs. I just finished a cut eating 1950kcal/day and increased my Calories to 2200/day. So far my weight has remained the same but it has only been a few weeks so I gues it is early to say. Maybe I am just understanding some conceptions wrong since English is not my native language.
The total daily energy expenditure for someone of your size is likely closer to 2700 kCal/day based on the datasets used to generate the NIH BodyWeight Planner.
Yes, that is true. But from what I gathered from your podcast is that I should trust how my weight reacts to the amount I am eating rather than Bodyweight planner.
Thank you for your response and all the great content you provide!
I appreciate you answering my questions so many times! I swear this will be my last one.
I am not trying to disagree here. I think I am just misunderstanding something.
I finished a cut by eating 1950kcal/day at the end.
I bumped my calories by 250kcal/day to start. It has been 3 weeks and my body weight has remained roughly the same.
I plan to increase my calories over time and eventually go on a caloric surplus to gain ~0,5kg/month. But I don’t want to do it too aggressively to avoid to avoid gaining too much fat for no reason.
I was planning to do this by increasing my Calories in bumps of 250kcal/day and waiting for a month or so to see what happens before I adjust it more.
Eventually I’m sure I will be eating 2700kcals/day and more but I am taking my time.
Is my logic here flawed?
You were losing weight at 1950 Cal, which is well below maintenance as evidenced by the fact that you were losing. Usually after weight loss phases I like a period of weight maintenance where weight doesn’t change for ~4 weeks or so before adding Calories.
I don’t know if there were other questions in here I’m missing, but your actual TDEE is likely higher than 2200 Cal/day.