Yep, absolutely. When people start exercising and find out how few calories they've actually burned, the solution is always simple. It's much easier to limit the intake than burn it off later.
Keep in mind that the more muscle you build, the more energy it takes to move that muscle therefore the more calories you'll burn during your activities through the day. It's not necessarily about the calories you burn during the workout but the aggregate impact downstream.
I could be wrong though I don't go to the gym lol.
What you learn quickly is that the effects of calorie burning are real but way less than what people think. You can go destroy yourself running to the point you're half dead and that's gonna burn like 300 calories (like, one protein bar).
But yes on topic of the gym there's a few downstream effects, the bigger you get the more you eat to be on equilibrium. Also strength workouts keep your muscles "activated" for up to 48h during which you also burn a bit more calories at rest.
And finally of course there's the whole bulking/cutting thing, the basics is that basically, no matter how much you lift you're not gonna grow muscle unless you also have a calorie surplus in particular protein. During this process it's unavoidable to also put on fat so you bulk for a while (eat a lot+ workout a lot and improve personal records) then you cut (eat at deficit, maintenance workouts) so the fat recedes and etc.
You are kind of wrong, in that the effect of the extra muscle is pretty minimal. See this video on the topic:
What about muscles? Muscles burn 3 times more calories at rest than fat. This sounds impressive, but tissues like your brain, skin or intestines burn way more. In absolute terms, a more muscular body composition makes a difference for how many calories your body burns, but it’s relatively small. Muscles matter a lot for health, longevity and performance, but not that much for weight loss.
Yeah, I just mean it's easier to manipulate the intake side of the equation. Burning a couple hundred calories is a lot of work; choosing not to drink a soda is easy.
It’s important to note that “maintenance calories” are the vast majority of the energy you use on a daily basis. Exercise is just a small portion of the calories you burn.
Exercise still does a lot in the long term. Just 3x30 minutes of moderate exercise per week would make you lose 10 pounds in a year while eating the same as before
NGL when I commuted on train/subway, my fat ass would take the stairs nearly everytime.
Not because it's healthier, but because all the other fatasses on the already-too-narrow escalator have absolutely no concept of escalator etiquette, and I got a fucking train to catch because our subway ran 20 minutes late.
I take the stairs because you can't take the escalator with a bike but I can easily carry my bike up the stairs. Well, at least when other people don't crowd around me then complain when they get smacked in the shin by a pedal. Like wtf did you think would happen? I am clearly carrying a bike and it's not exactly soft.
I hate the concept of escalator etiquette because there's the smallest amount of space and people feel the need to carve it up for those who can't be patient or use the wide stairs. there's no reason someone can't use stairs if they are in a hurry.
The reason to use the escalators when you're in a hurry is because it's twice as fast if you walk up them.
If you want to take the escalators to be lazy, that's fine...stay to the right and out of my way. Same rules as the highway. Not complicated.
How fucking entitled are you that you "hate the concept of escalator etiquette" and you think it's acceptable to not let people pass you? Were you a bollard in a former life?
It took me a moment when I saw the pic to come to terms with the fact that, for as many times as I've seen kcal previously, I somehow never realized it was was short hand for kilocalories. 🤯
Apparently a kilocalorie(kcal) is equivalent of a thousand calorie, and because the actual calorie value is so small in terms of nutrition, the term basically used in the same way as kilocalorie.
A typical hamburger is about 500 kcal so you would have to go up those stairs 100 times to burn it off in theory.
But science is now saying that burning off calories isn't related to excersise... you burn the same amount doing or not doing physical activity. So I don't know if this is relevant anymore.
Unsurprisingly, fitness is always more complicated than it seems.
You are certainly correct that runners don't burn (much) more calories than a couch potato. But weightlifters do, vs a couch potato of the same weight.
The thing about cardio is that the calories go directly into effort. The calories burned are roughly proportional to the effort (distance). But the moment you stop, the calories stop getting burned.
If you are doing weightlifting, the calories spent at the time to lift a heavy object are minimal. But it instructs your body to add muscle to better handle all the heavy lifting you do. Once you have that muscle, you burn a ton of calories 24 hours per day just keeping it alive. It becomes part of your base metabolic rate. It burns nearly the same calories whether you're at the gym, or sitting on the couch. And it will continue to burn those calories until your body decides you no longer need that extra muscle mass and it atrophies.
Last i saw on this is that there isn't a 1:1 relation between increased calorie burn by increased exercise and total calorie burn. There are some but also the body diverts energy from one task to another. Still the best way to loose weight, maintaining a calorie deficit, is to eat less. Way easier said than done.
You know how lot of people report exercise makes them feel better? Releases dopamine, relaxes them. A result is that they actually fidget less, their heart rate slows, and other energy burning processes in their body relax.
The buffer is relatively large in fact, like possibly over 200-400 calories per day depending on the person. I think of it as the body’s flywheel for keeping an energy balance.
One should keep exercising, for the numerous benefits. There also is a point where you are burning calories that need to be made up (either through eating or weight loss), ask any endurance athlete. Just not likely to hit the threshold in 20 mins on the treadmill, which is what many people do for exercise