Varying amounts of calories vs. varying intensity of workouts????

[winsomehill]

Do you think there is the same effect in your body to have lower calorie days, moderate days, and higher clorie days as having lower aerobic intensity days, moderate days, and higher intensity days? It shakes up how many caloris your body burns. I thought about this while doing KP&C this morning, for me this is a lower intensity w.o. But, I've been told that it's good to vary the intensity level and wondered if it was the same principal.
Heather

 

[pfive]

RE: Varying amounts of calories vs. varying intensity o...

Just bumping for responses!

But in the meantime, I have a friend who does this. If she's lifting heavier weights one day followed by 30-45 minutes of cardio, she plans her calories accordingly. I think she works off a base claorie count for her height, weight and exercise intensity. Then she calculates how many calories each particular workout burns, then does some mathematical computation that accounts for calories in versus calories out and Voila! She loses weight with this method. I think she aims for not exceeding her calorie needs for the day and then making sure to burn the 3500 (or more) calories per week to ensure a one pound weightloss. I think she also has her high and low daily caloric needs too. So the number of calories she eats per day also coincides with how intense she plans to work out that day too.

I think the actual calorie/exercise numbers and planning is easier than it sounds. Once she really broke things down for me, I thought, "okay, now I get it"! I think since she's been using this method she's lost close to 50 pounds. I would say it's been about a year that she's been following this plan, eating healthy 98% of the time and working out exclusively to Cathe 5-6 days per week.

Hope this was more encouraging than confusing. Hope you get other replies too! There's a thread on this board that lists a few sites to figure your calorie expenditure from various exercise methods, check them out. My friend figured her exercise burn calories from that first one I think.

Good luck!
Angie

 

[pixie9]

RE: Varying amounts of calories vs. varying intensity o...

Wow Angie-
This is exactly what I do almost everyday. I don't have any weight to lose now, but this method helped me shed my last 10 pounds.

Just wondering, do you know how she figured out her daily calorie needs? I've read articles that tell you to multiple your weight by 12 to get your caloric needs to maintain body weight. But I've also read that active people can multiply body weight by 20!! I multiplied my weight by 12 and then subtracted 500 everyday (taking into consideration how many calories I burned that day with my heart rate monitor). After a couple of days, it was so easy!

carolyn

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