Sunday, July 12, 2020

Calorie minimums and the difference between exercise and fasting

I'm sure many of you are aware of the benchmarks for calorie minimums: if you're an average man, you should eat at least 1500 calories a day and if you're an average woman you should eat at least 1200 calories a day. Similarly, I'm sure many of you are familiar with the wisdom that it's generally safe to lose 1-2 lbs OR 1% of your body weight in fat per week. My question is at the intersection of these principles.

I'll use myself as an example. I'm a 6', mid-20s, 200 lb man. This puts my TDEE at around 2300. So if I want to lose 1 lb a week, I would simply eat 500 fewer calories per day resulting in 1800 calories daily, no problems with the established benchmark. However, if I want to push it and lose 2 lbs a week (and conveniently enough, 1% of my body weight is also exactly 2 lbs) I would need to cut 1000 calories per day and my allotted calories would be 1300 per day which comes in just below the 1500 calorie benchmark.

Now at this point does the minimum calorie benchmark rule take precedent over the weight loss per week guidelines? If so, what's stopping someone from eating their minimum 1500 calories and then doing 200 calories worth of exercise so they can meet their weight loss goals? In other words, what's physiologically different between eating 1500 calories and exercising 200 away as opposed to simply eating 1300 calories. Are these equally unhealthy or is one worse than the other?

Quick edit: if one is worse than the other, an explanation of why would be really interesting

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