Burning Calories - Weight Loss

Grumpy_chap

dranzer01 said:

Is a 40-45 min cardio/treadmill session 4/5 times a week a good, steady rate of losing weight (excluding doing any form of weights?)

Yes, broadly.  You also need to include rest and recovery days.
So, my current schedule is:

• Mon - weights
• Tuesday - fast run
• Wednesday - rest day
• Thursday - pulsing run (sprint plus recover stages) or rowing machine or swim
• Friday - weights
• Saturday - rest day
• Sunday - spinning or long, slow run

Your goal is weight loss, so whatever exercise you do needs to be connected with a balanced diet and overall calorie deficit. 

You could run a marathon everyday but consume an excessive quantity of fast food burgers and milkshakes and the result will be weight gain.

Cardio also aids your general fitness.

Weights will increase strength and give you the power to achieve more for the same cardio effort.

jimi_man

Hi

A little late to this thread but I can echo what has been said above. I decided a year ago to lose some weight and went on the NHS website which has a load of good info. I downloaded their app and used it religiously as they do a 12 week program which you can just keep doing. They recommend 1 to 2lbs a week loss (maximum of a kilo a week in new money). When you input all the consumption and the exercise it's surprising how close to this figure you get. It varies week by week as your weight varies anyway, but over a period of time it balances out.

Also be aware that as you lose weight, then the amount of calories you burn in exercise reduces (you have less weight to carry about) and you also need less to sustain you on a daily basis. I went from 101 kilos to 79 kilos and that's where I am now but I allow 2200 calories a day as a basic rate, as opposed to around 2400 or so when I was heavier.

I monitor my exercise with a one of these (Garmin) fit watches so I know roughly how much exercise calories I've burnt.

dranzer01

Yep.... Ive been noticing that the calories burnt from beginning has now decreased (a tad) now....

It is also true that the fluctuation in body weight. I initially weighed myself and I was 108 then it went to around 107.4 , then i weighed myself the follow week and it went to 108.6'ish

Grumpy_chap

dranzer01 said:

It is also true that the fluctuation in body weight. I initially weighed myself and I was 108 then it went to around 107.4 , then i weighed myself the follow week and it went to 108.6'ish

That kind of fluctuation in body weight is really static (assuming that is kg), though I see you've moved down from your staring weight, so be pleased with that.

It is best to try to weigh yourself at the same time each day and wearing the same type of stuff - for me that means morning before shower, it's also a time that will be less impacted by external factors.  Remember, even a pint of water weights about 500 g (0.5kg) so very inconsequential things can change weight within narrow bands.  Rather than looking at individual weigh-in, it is best to look at trends to see your overall direction of movement against target.

Are you able to run on the treadmill without holding on yet?
Are you tracking your calories to monitor deficit?

Grumpy_chap said:

I was intrigued by the apparently high calorie burn the OP was reporting for his exercise so I just did a run.  

Treadmill reports 341 calories versus Garmin reports 256 calories.  I was hoping the two results would be near enough as to make no difference, but 30% is a large variance.  I don't know whether that is typical or which is more accurate.

I know the Garmin data syncs with MFP and the calorie adjustment in there for food intake seems to work well in predicting weight movement.  I am inclined to think the Garmin will be more accurate as that is measuring heart rate so has information on personal effort level.  That's just my hunch, though, and I can't support with science.

I did another run this week where I logged treadmill calories (339 cal) against Garmin calories (233 cal).  Whatever the truth, the magnitude of the difference seems to be broadly similar.

The other oddity is that my run this week was faster than the previous comparison so I would have expected to see more energy to go faster but both means of measurement showed this week as less energy:
7th June = 5.46k, 25:50
29th June = 5.47k, 25:32 (+0.6kg body weight)