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Burning off lockdown fat before the season (no judgements)

 Poster: A snowHead
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Weathercam wrote:
@Old Fartbag, bloody hell, just goes to show, I always thought you were a guy due to your moniker Laughing

Well, I've often been called a bit of an Old Woman. Toofy Grin

I have been very light all my life and been highly active - couldn't put on weight - though when lifting reasonably heavy weights in the past (eg. Bench Pressing my body weight in sets of 10), would put on about half a stone of muscle.

Getting steroid injections into my back and a lack of exercise pre Back Op, had me put on a little weight.

Now early 60s, my "fighting" weight, when properly fit, is around 10.5 stone and around 31" waist. I have a decent strength to weight ratio (when fit), so find Dips/Press-ups/Chin-ups/Pull-ups reasonably comfortable, so use body weight for strength training as much as possible.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Quote:

Burton snowboard jacket sizing has "inflated" over the years to help skew fat people's self image.

Not just snowboard jackets. I've been much the same weight and body shape all my adult life (except through 3 pregnancies, naturally enough). My normal dress or trousers size has dropped from 12 when I was 20 to 8/10 these days. It's the sizes which have changed, not me.

My BMI is 23.5 - above the mid-point of the "healthy" range for my height.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
I prefer hip to waist ratio as a measure. My BMI is 26 ( over weight) my waist to hip ratio is 0.81 which is well under the 0.95 that is recommended for men.
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My BMI is 21.3.
My waist is certainly narrower than my hips, but don't know the ratio.
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Hip to waist ratio is a new one on me. So - being big round the waist is OK as long as you have an even bigger arse?
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pam w wrote:
Hip to waist ratio is a new one on me. So - being big round the waist is OK as long as you have an even bigger arse?

I think it may be a bloke specific thing, as where the weight is deposited is considered more dangerous, depending on gender.
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There are different ratios for men and women. Basically apple shaped people have a increased chance of Heart disease, Cancer, Stroke and Type 2 diabetes
It is more common in men but can effect women
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/what-is-waist-to-hip-ratio seems to sum it up
https://www.healthline.com/health/waist-to-hip-ratio for what the healthy range is


Last edited by Then you can post your own questions or snow reports... on Sat 27-11-21 18:46; edited 1 time in total
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Old Fartbag wrote:
pam w wrote:
Hip to waist ratio is a new one on me. So - being big round the waist is OK as long as you have an even bigger arse?

I think it may be a bloke specific thing, as where the weight is deposited is considered more dangerous, depending on gender.


It is mainly that fat around organs is less healthy than fat around muscles.

So people may be overweight by a similar amounts, but the ones who carries most fat around the hips will have fewer resulting health issues.

For the vast majority, they tend to put on excess weight in a distribution that will result in the ratio getting worse.



Waist and hip measurements are certainly useful; E.g. my weight says I am only slightly better than 2 years ago (and a lot worse than 1 year ago Crying or Very sad ) but my waist measurement (and clothes fit) says I have improved (just not as much as I had ~1 year ago) which helps with long term motivation...

Also yay, 3 weeks of consistent weight loss again... Getting back on the wagon;


Just in time to get down to 90kg for the PSB where excess beer and cheese can completely revert all diet succes rolling eyes
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abc wrote:
Why is "bang in the middle of BMI healthy weight" contradictory with athletic?

Plenty of people are healthy and strong (and powerful), not skinny marathoners.


Its not. I see what I wrote could be read in different ways. It was meant to read as you don't have to be some top athlete or emancipated endurance athlete to have a BMI in the middle of healthy, so completely agreeing with you.
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philwig wrote:
boarder2020 wrote:
It shows just how skewed our image of what is healthy and overweight has became.
This. Burton snowboard jacket sizing has "inflated" over the years to help skew fat people's self image... Risk stratification for health care relies heavily on BMI. That is: it's a very good statistical predictor of some health care outcomes.
For example QRISK2 is easy to google down and commonly used in GP practices to predict risk of cardiovascular disease.
=> we can be "non-judgemental", but our biology isn't.


Yes generally BMI is very good on a population level. A few people like to bash on it because it can be poor for muscular athletes.

Quote:

Waist and hip measurements are certainly useful;


The more measurements you have the better you can track progress. Photos are also very good. I do like the classic gym personal trainer win-win approach - weigh client if weight has decreased "well done you lost weight" if weight has increased "well done you built some muscle" Laughing
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@boarder2020, "emancipated endurance athlete" I presume the yoke of serfdom was thrown off by these athletes!
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Old Fartbag wrote:
My BMI is 21.3.
My waist is certainly narrower than my hips, but don't know the ratio.

Atm My hip to waist ratio is about 0.86. Hope to get that down to a more normal 0.82ish.
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Quote:

A few people like to bash on it because it can be poor for muscular athletes.

And a lot more like to bash on it because they are porky.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Good to read other people’s thoughts and experiences about this.

I put on some weight this last year or so I think mainly because of no skiing at all last winter, I lose it over a winter season if anything, not gain it. I didn’t do something else exercise wise instead last winter for one reason or another, not to the same intensity as skiing is anyhow. Especially as the gym was shut for some of the time and when they did let you in eventually you had to book an appointment which wasn’t really my cup of tea. I didn’t go much because of that I think.
I am very active though generally, always on my feet, not one for sitting on the sofa for long periods of time, at work I’m walking around a lot and up and down off the chair a lot. Up and down the stairs at work god knows how many times a day.
Always up and down the stairs at home too, doing the garden, working on the house, it all burns calories. Every day I’m moving-a lot. I do yoga most days for say 15-30 mins mainly for the stretching benefits and because it feels good. I only go to the gym once a week for weights and cardio as I’ve always enjoyed the weights since I was about 16 (42 now). At the gym I use the stepper and the cross trainer plus I do lots of core and balance exercises, I just do what I feel like doing at the time. Like I said though I’m not in there 3 times a week or anything. If I feel like it one week I might do but more often than not it’s only once a week.

Anyway I’ve never been one to worry too much about weighing a certain amount or following plans, I keep it simple and go on how I feel and how my clothes fit. BP is healthy and blood sugar levels are normal. If the waist band on trousers feels like cheese wire, no thanks it’s got to go! I’m not buying new trousers.
I almost never miss breakfast, I eat porridge oats and bananas and nuts, blueberries. Not one for cereals unless it’s Weetabix, I have those sometimes. Not had sugar sprinkled on anything or in tea or coffee since I was about 11. Ran out one day and went without and never bothered since.
I probably eat most of my daily calories if you like at breakfast time.

Lunch time is the second biggest meal of the day. I eat a lot of avocados and fish, peanut butter. Eggs. Rice and corn cakes, I like them, the Kallo ones. I also see I eat loads of veg and also not a lot of bread. I do eat it but not every day.

Dinner time is the smallest meal of the day. I couldn’t go without anything at all , I would find it difficult to get to sleep and stay asleep. I had enough of that in Hintertux the other week as most places were closed with it being pre season and I was bloody hungry at night time as I’d not eaten enough (had just a snack but it clearly wasn’t enough what with the skiing).

I do eat red meat but not very often. Maybe once a month? I eat loads of fish though.

I’d say it’s true about the fat around the middle. You can have a fat bum you can have fat thighs but if you’ve got a fat belly it’s no good for you. Plus it’s not comfortable.
Just on observations alone mind, no evidence, but almost everyone I see at work with health problems has got fat around their middle and lots of it.

To lose my weight I put on from no skiing last winter I just ate the same things as usual but less of it, so say I was going to have some peanut butter on my rice cakes instead of loading up the peanut butter with a massive spoonful for each cake I’d put the ‘correct’ amount on Laughing. Or instead of having 7 or 8 rice cakes I’d have 4 Laughing
That works for me and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Just doing stuff like that lost 4.5kg.
P.S. I’m a girl.
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I think it's a bit unfair to blame the lack of skiing for our weight increases. Skiing burns around 440 cals / hr. For one kg of fat that would mean approx. 17.5 hours of skiing (3 days?) but that's assuming also that the calorie intake was not increased.
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@DB, it depends on how much skiing we were all doing though, for some people it’s almost the whole winter/months of it not just a week or two holiday where some of it is sat in mountain restaurants enjoying a holiday. Also some do a lot of skinning/touring as well as downhill skiing, some a lot of backcountry/off piste skiing so that level of activity/endurance is tricky to replicate here in the UK unless you walk up a lot of big hills and down again more or less every day.
For me it was about 5kg-7kg difference from not doing my usual particularly as I didn’t replicate the level of activity here at home but I agree that say 10-20kg difference couldn’t be justified not without eating or drinking more as well-for me anyway others may be different.
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DB wrote:
I think it's a bit unfair to blame the lack of skiing for our weight increases. Skiing burns around 440 cals / hr. For one kg of fat that would mean approx. 17.5 hours of skiing (3 days?) but that's assuming also that the calorie intake was not increased.


I would also give good odds that the 440 cals/hr doesn't include time on lifts etc. I also wonder what level of skiing that covers (full bore racing vs touring(skinning) vs deep powder vs pootling around resort are all acceptable forms of skiing with vastly different energy expenditures)

So you can probably double that 17.5 hrs in terms of time on the mountain... Of course if you live in the area you will knock up a lot of low level exercise and see below:



I will argue no commuting is partly to blame for my weight gain. But I have put back on 10kg over a year. When I was commuting daily was doing easily 30-60min cycling 5 days a week, which does roughly work out to the weight gain - weekly commute ~1200 kcal/week equivalent to ~1kg/month. Or ~10kg a year (basically my weight gain)...

A huge problem is when not doing targetted dieting/adjustments I reverted back to my normal stable with commute diet (n.b. better than it was at my worse, but still not perfect). Per above this was just enough margin for slow weight gain (where as when I was cycling daily it was very gradual loss)... To easy not to adjust for not doing low level exercise continually...

It also shows how easy it is to gain 10kg in a year and how small lifestyle changes need to be to lose 10kg in a year... (The nudge principles several people discuss)
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@VolklAttivaS5,

Fair points, I'm sure an Apres Ski animal will be along shortly to complain of being a shadow of his/her former self because he/she can't get acces to (please delete where not applicable) Apres Ski beer, schnitzel, Rösti, Tiröler Gröstl, schnapps, sausages, kaiserschmarrn, Croute, Tartiflette, Käsespätzle, Raclette, Goulash soup, Mohr in Hemd, Germknödel and many more. wink
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One of the better replacements for BMI is RFM - Relative Fat Mass, as it gives a result based on your activity level.

https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/relative-fat-mass

The problem as mentioned above, some don't like being told they should lose some weight, so they 'shoot the messenger' Very Happy

If you don't like RFM there are plenty of other calculators to try until you find one that gives the result you like rolling eyes

https://www.omnicalculator.com/health#s-62
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qwerty360 wrote:
DB wrote:
I think it's a bit unfair to blame the lack of skiing for our weight increases. Skiing burns around 440 cals / hr. For one kg of fat that would mean approx. 17.5 hours of skiing (3 days?) but that's assuming also that the calorie intake was not increased.


I would also give good odds that the 440 cals/hr doesn't include time on lifts etc. I also wonder what level of skiing that covers (full bore racing vs touring(skinning) vs deep powder vs pootling around resort are all acceptable forms of skiing with vastly different energy expenditures)



A quick Google search found this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763839/

Which concluded considering the time for standing in line and sitting on the chair lift kcal burned is around 279kcal per hour. Approximately 2½ hours of alpine skiing are necessary to reach the same energy expenditure of one hour of cross-country skiing or indoor cycling.
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DB wrote:
@VolklAttivaS5,

Fair points, I'm sure an Apres Ski animal will be along shortly to complain of being a shadow of his/her former self because he/she can't get acces to (please delete where not applicable) Apres Ski beer, schnitzel, Rösti, Tiröler Gröstl, schnapps, sausages, kaiserschmarrn, Croute, Tartiflette, Käsespätzle, Raclette, Goulash soup, Mohr in Hemd, Germknödel and many more. wink


Laughing I can definitely see why people come back heavier after a week’s skiing holiday as they have eaten way more than they burned off! It’s a novelty for them to have that stuff plus they do probably drink a lot more alcohol too as they are away.
I think when I lived in a ski resort for 3 months I was having a normal breakfast like at home so not loads of bread because it was an apartment, whereas if I’d stayed in a B&B I probably would have eaten more for breakfast with lots of bread consumed as it’s right there on offer!
Skiing I was out all day probably 6 of 7 days each week. Loads of skiing and skinning, not sat in restaurants and cafes for long lunches, lots of off piste so not really a pootle about where gravity and a nice smooth slope was doing a lot of the work.
Lunch was on the mountain most days but I think you don’t want all the food that’s available when you are there for a while, one reason is the cost of course and when people are on a holiday they perhaps think ‘oh we are away for the week let’s treat ourselves’
Booze-never been a big boozer but I did have a lot more beer than I would have done at home as I wasn’t driving around, I was using public transport 99% of the time.
Low level exercise-yeah I think the walking around in ski boots helps even if they are light Alpine Touring boots, they are still heavier than normal shoes are. Then there’s the carrying of the skis, also I’d more often than not go in the supermarket straight after skiing so I’d have a rucksack on, carrying my skis on my shoulder and a shopping bag with stuff in as well.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
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For losing weight I think a good diet brings a better return than exercise although both together is best. Sliming down can be done with a more aggressive regime but ultimately you need to find the right longterm diet / exercise regime for you to maintain your ideal body. Having said that without the right frame of mind the chance of success is slim. If you haven‘t committed your mind to achieving the body you want you will start giving yourself excuses and then telling these excuses to other people (esp. on the internet). The more people you tell the surer you are that these excuses are valid. The emperor’s clothes senario will kick in but the person you will be kidding the most is yourself.
One technique is to strip off in front of a mirror and see what body you have now then imagining exactly the slimmer or more athletic body you want. Get this image into your mind and then keep going with diet and exercise until your body matches that image.
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OK, 3rd week in, my weight is 91 kg - i.e. burning off 2kg per week, which is the same as what I remember from 5 years ago. From around 85kg it slows down to 1kg/week, before more or less flattening out at 80.

I've never managed to drop below 80kg for any significant length of time, even though my 'middle of green BMI' weight is 75. Frankly I don't feel like BMI is terribly representative for me as at 80kg I have hardly any fat left.

I will be happy if I emerge at around 85kg that side of the New Year and take it from there.
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Quote:

Approximately 2½ hours of alpine skiing are necessary to reach the same energy expenditure of one hour of cross-country skiing or indoor cycling.

That's assuming the "usual" of taking the chair up and skiing down. If the skier actually hike a little (boot pack), or skate to get to some powder, or doing drills on the way down etc. that changes the energy expenditure significantly. Doing those also changes the percentage of time sitting on the chair lift...
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Just looked at the calorie consumed figures for skiing on 06 & 07 Nov 2021. Ranged from around 270 to 600 cals/hr depending on how hard I was skiing.
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boarder2020 wrote:
...Approximately 2½ hours of alpine skiing are necessary to reach the same energy expenditure of one hour of cross-country skiing or indoor cycling....


Sorry have to totally disagree with that, though does depend how hard you are doing XC or on the turbo, plus how hard you ski, type of terrain etc

But if it's just average cafe piste skiing then 6 hrs would be more akin to one hour XC skating !

Just looked at some activities recorded on Strava, hard turbo session (hour) 650 cals and same as one hour hard XC skating and 2hr Half Marathon 1,523 calls

And a hard/wondrous off-piste session circa 2hrs 758 calls but was up there uber deep snow, but there was bit of a hike, so that would affect the figures.

https://www.strava.com/activities/3050320891
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
Weathercam wrote:
boarder2020 wrote:
...Approximately 2½ hours of alpine skiing are necessary to reach the same energy expenditure of one hour of cross-country skiing or indoor cycling....


Sorry have to totally disagree with that, though does depend how hard you are doing XC or on the turbo, plus how hard you ski, type of terrain etc

But if it's just average cafe piste skiing then 6 hrs would be more akin to one hour XC skating !

Just looked at some activities recorded on Strava, hard turbo session (hour) 650 cals and same as one hour hard XC skating and 2hr Half Marathon 1,523 calls

And a hard/wondrous off-piste session circa 2hrs 758 calls but was up there uber deep snow, but there was bit of a hike, so that would affect the figures.

https://www.strava.com/activities/3050320891


Well you are welcome to massively disagree, but the study did compare three intensities of each form of exercise. Their average skiing worked out at 279kcal per hour, your intense skiing with some hiking worked out at 379, which seems to line up pretty well although I'm not sure I'd put full confidence in Strava estimated kcal burned (other than cycling with a power meter which should be accurate). Your other numbers seem to correlate reasonably well with their findings, so I'm not sure what you disagree with so much. Unless it's the fact you can massively manipulate the kcal burned e.g. super intense bike Vs very easy ski or vice versa, which is true but a bit of a pointless comparison.

Downhillskiing is never going to be a great kcal burner for a few reasons:
- gravity is doing a lot of the work
- lots of "wasted" time sat on lifts. (For most people you can add general faffing, waiting for group, taking photos, queues, coffee stops, long lunch etc.).
- the better you get the likely more efficient your technique becomes, hence even less kcal burned.
- it's really hard to control intensity. Firstly you are constrained somewhat by terrain. Secondly yes you can race some gates or attack some bumps which will get kcal burned up, but are likely too intense to maintain for a long period. On piste simply going faster doesn't work - in fact may be detrimental to kcal burned (straight line is certainly less dynamic than lots of turning and you will increase time on lift ratio).

We are very poor at judging kcal burned, most people considerably overestimate. I suspect skiing is even worse for it as we probably overestimate kcal burned plus actual time skiing confounding the error. Plenty of people gain a few pounds on a catered ski trip, whereas I'm yet to see anyone gain weight on a week's triathlon training camp, where on paper they are doing far fewer hours! (Of course not as much alcohol on a triathlon camp Laughing )
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Quote:

Plenty of people gain a few pounds on a catered ski trip, whereas I'm yet to see anyone gain weight on a week's triathlon training camp, where on paper they are doing far fewer hours!

Maybe not in a triathlon training camp. But I heard plenty of people said they gain weight in a week long bike tour (50mi+/day)!

I also wonder how many ski racing camp attendees gain weight.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
This is interesting and makes some of those discussions less important still:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/30/burn-baby-burn-the-new-science-of-metabolism
Specifically the parts about how metabolic burn is similar for vastly different amounts of "work done"
because the body appears to be designed to "compensate". Oops.

The detail matters, but it leads to this:
“The reason we’re gaining weight is not only because there’s more food available than we have
evolved to expect, but because they’re modern, industrialised foods, designed to be overeaten.”
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I seem to have recorded some alpine skiing back in Jan 2020. My watch estimated around 400 cal/hour burn which I assume was based on my av HR for that hour of skiing, which is around the same I get for a kettlebell class, but less than a HIIT class I do.
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@philwig, I have always thought (true or not) that your weight is 80% what you are eating and how much of it and 20% how active you are. It could be even be 90/10.
You can eat healthy foods instead of junk foods but eat too much of any type of food and you will gain weight assuming energy expenditure levels remain constant.
Obviously with some foods like vegetables you would have to eat a lot more of them to get the same amount of energy compared to say, meat.
They all contain calories though.
If I want to lose weight eating less has by far the biggest effect on me (rather than exercising more) but generally the two together works best.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Quote:

@philwig, I have always thought (true or not) that your weight is 80% what you are eating and how much of it and 20% how active you are. It could be even be 90/10.


The classic saying is "you can't out train a poor diet". Its generally true. There are too many super palatable high kcal foods that are going to vastly outweigh exercise for the majority of people. It's simply too easy to eat 1000s kcal compared to how much exercise needs to be done to offset that.

Quote:

But I heard plenty of people said they gain weight in a week long bike tour (50mi+/day)


I don't doubt it. 50miles is not that far, even as a very novice cyclist I can ride that in a little over 3 hours in zone 2 which is "only" around 1200kcal. Not hard to consume an extra 1200kcal especially when you probably have a few cafe stops! In these situations people tend to overestimate how much they need to eat to replace what's burned. The classic being someone walking out the gym and treating themselves to a lucozade and chocolate bar which may habe more kcal than they just burned.

Quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/30/burn-baby-burn-the-new-science-of-metabolism
Specifically the parts about how metabolic burn is similar for vastly different amounts of "work done"
because the body appears to be designed to "compensate". Oops


I think the guy has been misquoted in some way!
"To explain the theory, Pontzer gives the example of a keen amateur cyclist who takes part in 100km bike rides at weekends. Overall, that individual still won’t burn more calories on average than a sedentary person, but their average energy expenditure will be skewed towards providing fuel for the muscles. The sedentary person will burn a similar number of calories, but on background bodily functions which we do not notice, including less healthy outlets such as producing inflammation and stress."

I guarantee you they don't average the same number of kcal burned over the day! Also exercise is perhaps the quickest way to produce inflammation and stress! (Neither of which is necessarily bad). It's true that your body will try to conserve energy, so yes your BMR may decrease during exercise, however the scale of this is vastly smaller than the kcal burned exercising. If you want to see an extreme example of this bodybuilders that have dieted down to single digit body fat will stop subconsciously blinking - they are essentially in starvation mode and body is trying to save energy.

Quote:

My watch estimated around 400 cal/hour burn which I assume was based on my av HR for that hour of skiing


Optoelectronic heart rate measurements from watches are notoriously inaccurate. They are "ok" at rest, worse during exercise, and even worse for interval style exercise where the heart rate goes up and down quickly - probably reflective of skiing. Even if the heart rate data is accurate your watch may or may not be using a suitable equation, and it may be including BMR kcal in the number it shows. IME most watches overestimate because that's what the users want - I'm a member of the coros watch group on Facebook and it's hilarious how many people compare two watches and when they dont match automatically blame the watch that estimated a lower distance, less vertical, or less kcal burned as being "wrong".
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@boarder2020, I agree about the accuracy of wrist based HR monitors. I wear HR chest strap for all my gym based workouts which does seem to give a consistent reasonable reading. There is a chance I used a chest strap on that day as I have used them skiing, but I can't be sure of that so for the sake of 'accuracy' I'll use one next week when I'm skiing and report back.
Of course you then have to trust the algorithm that calculate calories used which is another issue. Interestingly when using machines that have a calorie reading on them. When comparing to my watch my watch records about 75% of the calories that the machine does.
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boarder2020 wrote:

"To explain the theory, Pontzer gives the example of a keen amateur cyclist who takes part in 100km bike rides at weekends. Overall, that individual still won’t burn more calories on average than a sedentary person, but their average energy expenditure will be skewed towards providing fuel for the muscles. The sedentary person will burn a similar number of calories, but on background bodily functions which we do not notice, including less healthy outlets such as producing inflammation and stress."

What was he talking about?

Doesn't the cyclist still burn calories on "background bodily function"???
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abc wrote:
boarder2020 wrote:

"To explain the theory, Pontzer gives the example of a keen amateur cyclist who takes part in 100km bike rides at weekends. Overall, that individual still won’t burn more calories on average than a sedentary person, but their average energy expenditure will be skewed towards providing fuel for the muscles. The sedentary person will burn a similar number of calories, but on background bodily functions which we do not notice, including less healthy outlets such as producing inflammation and stress."

What was he talking about?

Doesn't the cyclist still burn calories on "background bodily function"???


I think the journalist interviewing them didn't quite understand and misquoted. There is clearly no way somebody that exercises regularly won't burn more total kcal than a person that doesn't. If that was the case the tour de france riders eating 5000kcal+ each day would be pretty fat by the end.

I think the point the guy was trying to make is that your BMR goes down when exercising (the classic example being digestion which accounts for around 10% of BMR but is decreased during exercise) . So let's say your BMR is 2500kcal per day and if you eat that you will maintain weight. When you exercise BMR decreases (energy saving) so let's say you burn 500kcal through exercise your total kcal expenditure for the day isn't actually 2500+500 as the 2500 figure is probably slightly lowered. But it's fairly obvious that the lowering of BMR is nowhere near the kcal burned during exercise.

I don't think at this point anyone can seriously believe exercise does not increase total kcal expenditure.
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Oleski wrote:
OK, 3rd week in, my weight is 91 kg - i.e. burning off 2kg per week, which is the same as what I remember from 5 years ago. From around 85kg it slows down to 1kg/week, before more or less flattening out at 80.

I've never managed to drop below 80kg for any significant length of time, even though my 'middle of green BMI' weight is 75. Frankly I don't feel like BMI is terribly representative for me as at 80kg I have hardly any fat left.

I will be happy if I emerge at around 85kg that side of the New Year and take it from there.


Well done;

Gotten down to ~91 kg in last 2 weeks, so going at the (for me) sweet spot of 0.5-1kg/week that should be sustainable. Hopefully I can survive the PSB and then Christmas week with family without too much harm and then keep it up until the Gnarlibug.
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pieman666 wrote:

Of course you then have to trust the algorithm that calculate calories used which is another issue. Interestingly when using machines that have a calorie reading on them. When comparing to my watch my watch records about 75% of the calories that the machine does.


If you have a machine that measures watts you can convert it into kcal, you then divide this number by efficiency (most energy is lost through heat and other things rather than the actual movement) to get total kcal. In cycling efficiency is around 20-25% depending on the individual. So let's say you put 100kcal of energy into the pedals, you burn 400-500 total kcal. Most formulas will use the median efficiency, and most of us are not extreme outliers at either end, so for most people it's suggested converting power (watts) to kcal will be within 5%, and for the extreme outliers with extremely good or bad efficiency you are looking at an estimate within 10%.

A good heart rate formula that includes age, sex, weight, max HR, resting heart rate will usually be within 10-20% accurate. If you include measured vo2 max in the formula you can get it down below 12%.

There are quite a few studies looking at watches predicted energy expenditure. They all find that they are pretty poor. Here's a study from 2020 https://mhealth.jmir.org/2020/5/e16716/

Findings- Apple Watch Series 4, Polar Vantage V, Garmin Fenix 5, and Fitbit Versa should not be used for energy expenditure. I won't bore you with the stats but they did not perform well at all.

I suspect that the machines that don't measure power directly just use previous research to estimate kcal burned i.e. previous research paper found treadmill running burns X kcal per minute at this speed. Potentially not awful if you are a good match to the participants in the original study, but hardly super accurate either.

As for heart rate equations producing a lower number it can certainly be the case for fit people. Imagine two identical people one is a pro cyclist the other has never cycled. You put them on a bike and tell them to cycle at a fixed HR, let's say 110bpm. The amateur might get up to 150W, whereas the pro will be over 200w. It's clear that for equal amounts of time the pro is using more kcal, although basic HR formulas will suggest they are burning the same. You can get around this a bit by using formulas with resting heart rate in as they look at rise rather than just absolute number based on some probably terrible max HR estimation, but it's still not perfect.
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Grumble grumble failure grumble

90.2kg according to scales on morning of PSB 0.2 bloody kg from a nice round pre ski target...


On the other hand yay, lost 2-3kg in 2-3 weeks so resumed diet efforts are working and I am lighter than last ski trip (even if heavier than a year ago Embarassed )
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Don't know about you lot ..but I got puffed out and sweaty just putting my boots on ! Even at my fighting weight, 3 stone ago, my doctor told me my bmi had me as obese .. (ridiculous as are most ratios ). Food is the most abused "substance". Exercise the best anti depressant. So, as was said before the advent of the multi billon dollar fitness and nutrition industry.......... Less in, More out ... Get healthy.
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I monitor my fat percentage ( using calliper technique).
I can drop 2 % quite quickly with

Minimise carbohydrate and substitute protein eg lentils for rice
I can also accelerate this with 18/6 fast or eat all your food in 6 hrs
I try light exercise three times a week during the fast period to burn up carb stores quicker
Not too onerous
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