A very interesting thread. Wanted to add my own experience.
In the past 4 years I've been completely anal about tracking everything I ate. For almost 2 years this didn't make me lose fat, but I wanted to find out and if possible, predict what my maintenance would be. Boy , was this ever elusive!
Since every time I thought to have discovered it, things changed.
What I wasn't realizing was that going balls to the walls in the gym would make me feel so exhausted that I was barely able to function outside the gym, as I needed over a day to recover from the excessive training intensity & volume.
Which always led me to overeating. One of my favourite (partially true, partially untrue) quotes is "there is no such thing as overtraining, only undereating".
Well, and boy did I overeat after hard workouts.. still do actually.
I'm still glad to have done this, as the alternative would invariably be : get ill.
For the longest time I thought moderate intensity cardio was an absolute must.
But finally, deleting all indoor cardio and going back from lifting EOD to 3x/wk ... seems to bring me the best results sofar. At least if my Omron isn't playing tricks on me.
So, in general, while it sucks when you're fond of lifting, it is more a matter of working smarter, not harder. And then the results will come automatically, provided you watch your intake.
Instead I'm spending more time cleaning my home and do all of my errands within town on foot and walk to the gym as well, where I used to cycle everywhere. This I'd already started nearly 2 years ago, and while I thought it only made a small difference..
I'm now fairly sure it made a much bigger difference than I thought it did. Oftentimes I am walking w groceries or parcels and spending close to an hour, where I'd spent less than 20mins on the bicycle.
The main reason for the difference in how it feels is of course, spending less time in the anaerobic zone. Excellent way to get fit, but a lousy way to lose fat if you're easily overreaching.
PS: a final example of how NEAT adds up. August 2007 I spent 2 weeks driving around France and camping at night. Being the OCD who I am, I jotted down everything I ate, but had no real clue how many calories I was getting in.. Since the cheese & sausages as well as the chocolate on sale in France is so good, I was absolutely shocked when doing the calculations at home. I'd eaten 2500-2700 kcal a day.
And guess how much I'd gained? Nothing, zilch, nada!
Contrast this to the 1900-2200kcal i burn on average here. The only difference was that I was being very lightly active all day, walking for little bits every 30 minutes or so to watch the gorgeous views etc.
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