How do calories work? I bike 5 miles, I lose ~120-150 calories. But a small snack can be more than that?

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Trying to lose weight and putting it in numbers is demoralizing. I’ve started riding a stationary bike for 5 miles and then doing minor weight lifting after and I maaaaybe lose 200 or so calories. Is that not a good exercise? I’ve been doing this almost everyday starting 2 weeks ago. But it’s starting to feel useless if it’s such a minor amount of calories burnt. Is this a good trend to continue? What am I missing?

Edit: everyone here has been incredibly helpful, and surprisingly consistent with one another. I feel much more confident about what I’m doing and what I need to do. Seriously, thank you all.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You can never out-train a bad diet. It’s way easier to eat 500 less calories a day than it is to burn it off with exercise. Just start with the basic 2000 cal/day diet. Do that for a week and see if you lose weight/fat. If you aren’t losing, drop it down to 1800; do that for another week. Keep going until you find a calorie range that you lose weight at and just stick to it.

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