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.
In: 209
Calorie deficit is only 1 part of weight loss.
Physical activity is another part of weight loss.
You can lose weight by doing nothing but create a calorie deficit. -200 a day. Every 20-25 days or so, 1 lb of fat dropped. That would amount to around 15lbs a year, just by not having that 1 donut, each day, everything else being the same.
Through exercise, you are causing your body to burn more calories, but this has a *cumulative* effect if you keep exercising. When you go for your run or what ever, once you are done, your body doesn’t immediately go back to normal calorie burning rates. It will continue to stay elevated for some time afterwards, so though you burned 200 on the bike, you are going to burn more like 250-300 once your body finally comes back baseline, but that’s the cumulative effect, the baseline begins to increase. Through exercise, you will increase muscle mass which increases your baseline metabolism. Maybe right now your base line is 1500. After a month, your baseline could push up another 50 calories, and so on. It will slow down when your body adapts to your routine so you got to keep increasing distance, resistance, arms weights, etc, to keep the body challenged and keep this cumulative effect going.
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