need to tone up and be lean. i need help

[Boss Man]

Hi Ruth.

Going into caloric surplus is not a major problem, because it's about intake versus output on a weekly basis, so if you overate let's say 200 calories 2x a week if you had 2 rest days, it wouldn't have any long-term negative connotations, if you constantly burned let's say 300 calories a day on the 5 other days you exercised.

This would mean a deficit of 1,100 a week, so overall weight loss would be achievable, although it wouldn't necessarily be in an optimal range.

Rest days are still advisable, because otherwise you could over-train.

As for measuring calorie burn, calorie burning monitors on machines are a guide only, as you will never truly know, so don't be too hung up about that.

Exercise increases the metabolism and therefore fat burning potential can be achieved for some time afterwards when the circumstances are correct.

The main thing is to keep being patient and recognising your own self worth. I am proud of you for still sticking with it after 6 months and I want you to keep looking for the positives and keep believing, because you ARE worth it .

[aintnobody]

Hi Boss Man,

Thanks for replying.

What do you mean when you say a 1100 deficit wouldn't be an optimal range? Is it too much or too small? What would be an optimal range for 18.0 BMI and 1300 BMR with this much of training?

And what would you suggest for getting a relatively close estimate of burned calories? To tell the truth, I really am afraid that I don't burn as much as I would like to. But that would mean even more working out, right? Usually workouts (apart from cycling) last 1,5 hours a day including warm up cardio, HIIT, strength training and cool down (actually I do 1000-calorie-wokrouts, but I am aware I don't probably burn that much). These workout videos have descriptions including a range of calories burned, like a minimum and a maximum estimate. I usually try to place myself around the middle of these ranges. It would be really good to know about how many calories I burn with such long workouts and cycling, too, because then I could know how far I can go over the maintenance level of calories when eating.

Thanks for the kind words, too:)

[Boss Man]

Hi Ruth.

In relation to your initial question, I didn't say 1,100 net calories a week burned isn't optimal, I said it's not necessarily optimal, but then again it might be a highly desirable amount, as that figure was based on you having a couple of days of net gain, which is what you were implying to being with, that if you had days of net caloric gain, versus net burn, would it become a long term hindrance, so response was based on it not being a problem, as long as days of net gain were limited and the amount of net calories gained was not too much each time.

The 1,100 calorie a week figure was just an example, to illustrate the point.

Your BMR, (Basal Metabolic Rate), is the minimum amount of calories needed per day to sustain a healthy metabolism, so you could be wise to eat over that, by some way and then you can allow exercise to burn some of the added calories off.

You can, when you're having a couple of rest days, which would be advisable and preferably not back to back, reduce the calories slightly by 200-300 a day, to reflect the fact you're being sedentary.

I cannot tell you what an optimal calorie burn is per week, as most machines that monitor that are guides only. There is a way I can think of to test machines for similarities or differences, but it would involve something like this.

You use the same type of machine at the same time of day, several days in a row, but you use a different manufacturers machine each day and you'd need to be having the same diet and fluid intake on those days, and at the same times, so you were trying to maintain the same kind of nutrition, hydration and exercise conditions and the duration and intensity of the exercise would have to be replicated each time, so then the only difference would be the manufacturer not the type of machine or how it was used.

This could then allow you to see how different manufacturers ellipticals, or steppers or exercises bikes etc, registered calorie burn under the exact same conditions, to see if there was much similarity or broad variance, but you wouldn't be able to do this except under control conditions, as most gyms will have various cardio machines, but most of the time a particular machine they have more than one of, is made by the same company, not different companies, so you couldn't try what I outlined to test calorie burning monitors for similarities or differences.

Hopefully that's made things a bit clearer .