Is it possible to burn 5,000 calories a day without fatigue or injuries?

[Gershon]

This thread is a challenge to myself. I'm currently burning about 2,500 calories a day as measured by the Fitbit Surge. I've found through strict calorie counting and weight changes the Surge is accurate for me regardless of the types of activities. The Zip measures about 15% fewer calories.

Time to get to work. 🙂 

[Dominique]

If you’re a guy, young, tall, heavy and very active, then yes, you can burn 5000 calories a day. For instance, Michael Phelps is said to burn 8000-9000 calories in average.

I just had a look at my stats: in my three years of using Fitbit, there has only been 12 days when I’ve burned more than 4000 calories, my highest day being 4799. That coincided with my highest stepping day: about 54,000 steps. That was during a 10-hour hike in a national park last July. I’m a guy, not so young (55), not so tall (174cm) and not so heavy (65kg), so there are several odds against me and I would need a very high level of activity to burn 5000 calories a day.

[Gershon]

Dominique,

I'm 62, almost 63. I'm a bit overweight, but I'll shed that quickly.

I added the restrictions of without fatigue and without injuries. I'll define fatigue as sore muscles or tiredness that continues to the next morning. I'll define injuries as soreness or fatigue that does not go away when I become active the next day.

This goal is right on the edge of unrealistic for me. We will see what happens over the coming months. I promise all my data will be real. 

[shipo]

I'll be 59 next week and routinely burn over 5,000 calories in a day (but by no means every day); that said, I did work up to it.  My calorie burn comes from a combination of distance trail running, walking around the farm where I live and the campus where I work (lots of meetings and such), and shoveling a ton (literally) of horse poop per week.

[Ukase]

Is it possible for you? Perhaps. Only you will know once you've tried.

For me? Nah, I'll be fatigued, for sure. 

[JohnRi]

The zip only looks at step count, your Surge looks at your heart rate too.

Is it possible to burn 5000 calories a day?  Yes it is.  Have I done it.  Not even close.  I think 3800 is my max.  25,000 steps...  I walked 12 miles that day, had over 360 active minutes. 

I'm 6 foot tall, and at that time I was 240 lbs. 

Can you do without injury?  Yes you can.  But...

I think it is possible, but unless you are like @shipo who is insane active every day, most of us normal people with sedentary jobs, it's not possilble every day.  You simply do not have the time.  I think you would have to be active 6+ hours a day, every day.  With a normal 8 to 5 job, you'd have to sacrifice sleep to do it.

For us normal people, you'd pretty much have to work, sleep, eat, and exercise every remaining minute of the day. 

Just not practical for most of us.  Shipo works for a living.  I sit around in front of a computer all day waiting for things to go wrong so I can fix it.  If nothing goes wrong... Then it's a long inactive day...

When I got my Surge, I was 270 lbs.  I burned 3200 calories a day before exercise.  Add exercise, I was up to 3600 range.

Today I'm 221 lbs.  I burn 2400 calories before exercise.  With exercise I burn 3000-3400 calories. And I have to exercise 90 to 120 minutes to do that.

Watch those calories, get daily exercise, and you will lose the weight.  I know for fact that's what I did.

[FitBeforeFifty]

Like everyone else says, it depends but the short answer is it would not likely be sustainable.

I can't answer if you could but I'll describe whether or not I could:

I'm small for a guy, 5'7" 151 lbs and 49 years old. I burn about 2100 calories per day just doing my day job and fiddling around the house. The most efficient exercise I do is running where I can burn about 700 calories per hour (I burn about 100 calories per mile). So, I would need to average 29 miles per day or 203 miles per week. I can safely say I could not do this without injury.

I've sustained 50 miles per week for months without injury. 203 miles per week would not be possible for me.

[shipo]

---

@FitBeforeFifty wrote:

I've sustained 50 miles per week for months without injury. 203 miles per week would not be possible for me.

---

Agreed; back when I was 57 I did a 100 mile week for the first time in my life; it was a hot week with several of the runs done in the upper 90s (with lots of humidity), and by the end of the week I was gassed (and of all things, my nipples were raw).

[GershonSurge]

I'll use GershonSurge for this account. Don't bother looking at my profile yet as I've been lazy the past few months.

First, let me say 5,000 calories/day may not be sustainable for me at this time. Maybe it will never be sustainable. 5,000 calories is a starting goal.

The temptation is to look at running. My base metabolism while sleeping is about 60 calories/hour. This means I burn about 1,440 calories a day if I sleep 24 hours. Everyone has their normal activity count. Mine is about 2,500 calories.

Many people will say they burn about 100 calories/mile of running. Then they will say something like, "I have to run 25 miles a day to get to 5,000 calories. Let's say they get about 3 miles from random steps and they calculate 22 miles/day. This level of activity is not sustainable for most people.

Let's look at a different calculation. I burn about 5.5 additional calories/minute while doing activities similar to housework. It's about 7 additional calories while cutting the lawn. Let's just use the 5.5 calories. I'll need to burn 3,560 additional calories/day to get to 5,000. This works out to about 10:48 hours a day doing activities similar to housecleaning.

I sleep about six hours a night. This leaves me 7.2 hours a day to be inert.

[shipo]

---

@GershonSurge wrote:

Many people will say they burn about 100 calories/mile of running. Then they will say something like, "I have to run 25 miles a day to get to 5,000 calories. Let's say they get about 3 miles from random steps and they calculate 22 miles/day. This level of activity is not sustainable for most people.

---

The number of calories burned per mile of running varies significantly by weight.  For me, a 200 pounder, when I run do a long run at a 10 minute per mile pace, I burn roughly 151 calories per mile.  If I slack off and hit say, 210 pounds my calorie burn per mile bumps up to 159.

[GershonSurge]

This is my fourth day in a row just under (3,980) or over 4,000 calories. It's becoming easier each day.

I started the first three days with a five mile walk, and today, I increased it to six miles. The other exercise is either yard work or housecleaning. Both of these are the equivalent of fast food job.

I'm using the Fitbit Surge with the heart rate monitor to measure the calories. Last summer, I tracked calories eaten compared to calories measured on the Surge, and found it took right at 3,500 calories to lose a pound. Therefore, I think the Surge is accurate enough.

I also checked the Fitbit Zip. It undercounted calories by 20 to 25%. 

As I get in better shape, I may gradually increase to 5,000 calories/day.

[Dominique]

Just curious: what is it you’re trying to achieve by burning 4000, or even 5000 calories, a day? Are you trying to create a larger deficit in order to lose weight faster? Or do you want to burn more in order to be able to eat more? It strikes me that burning 4000-5000 requires to have a lot of time to spend on exercise (my understanding is you don’t have the kind of job that would allow you to burn that many calories during the course of your workday), and that you could spend that time in a more optimal way (I assume most of your regimen to burn 4000-5000 consists of walking/running). 

[GershonSurge]

Dominique,

Sometimes, I pick a crazy goal for the sake of learning what it takes to achieve it. This is one of those times.

I'm retired, so it doesn't interfere with anything. Except for the five to six mile walk in the morning, all my exercise so far has been house work, gardening and yard work. It doesn't take as long as I thought to reach 4,000 calories. Yesterday, I started my walk at 3:42 am. I walked for an hour and fifty-five minutes. That burned about 1,100 calories Then I did house work until 12:10 when I cinched my 4,000 calories for the day. I ended up with about 4,339.  I did take breaks during the work time.

Part of it is to maintain a larger calorie deficite so I can lose weight faster. I only want to lose 23 pounds, so going more slowly wouldn't be a big deal. I found during an experiment last summer that it's easy to run a 2,000 calorie hunger-free deficit with extra calories from exercise and a particular diet I'll describe in a later post.

I'm a writer, and there is a book somewhere in this experiment. It will likely be non-fiction, but I'd like to figure out how to turn it into a novel since novels are more fun to write. I'm not concerned about sales because I write for fun. However, I am usually in the top 1.5% of the writers on Amazon.

What is an optimal use of time? Each person has to decide for themselves. In my case, it's to maintain my health and to enjoy life. 

[Dominique]

---

@GershonSurge wrote:

What is an optimal use of time? Each person has to decide for themselves. In my case, it's to maintain my health and to enjoy life.  

---

Sure, I’m not going to tell you what you should or should not be doing. However, if you have – say – six hours to spend on exercising every day (probably a conservative value for someone our age to burn 4000 calories or more), it would be sub-optimal IMO to spend all of them doing only one kind of activity, for instance walking and/or running. More isn’t always better (diminishing returns beyond a certain point). I would personally carve out one hour and use it for resistance training, as I feel it would give me more bang for my bucks health-wise, even if it burns less calories than cardio training.

[GershonSurge]

Dominque,

There is the resitance crowd and the cardio crowd as well as all gradations in between. They all seem successful as long as there is enough exercise. Authorititative research on resistance is more recent. Ken Cooper, who founded the aerobics program, recommends a higher percentage of resistance as we get older.

I like to backpack, which is why I walk so many miles. I also use the time to plan the next chapter in a book or listen to a book.

The 4,000 calories is easier than I thought it would be I had it cinched eight hours into today with plenty of breaks. By cinched, I mean I can mostly do nothing for the rest of the day, and I'll reach 4,000 calories.

In the next posts, I'll be passing on some diet information. My diet includes no animal products or oils like olive oil. It's starch based with fruits and vegetables. 

The picture below is of today's lunch. Potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, and carrots. It's in a family sized serving bowl.

[shipo]

---

@GershonSurge wrote:

In the next posts, I'll be passing on some diet information. My diet includes no animal products or oils like olive oil. It's starch based with fruits and vegetables. 

The picture below is of today's lunch. Potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, and carrots. It's in a family sized serving bowl.

---

You lost me there; I like my meat, dairy, and olive oil too much for that.  I'd rather eat those things and put in an extra thousand steps or two per day.  🙂

[GershonSurge]

Shipo,

We've all made our own diet decisions by now. It will be necessary to consume some fat to maintain weight a high activity level. When I have that need, I may find some animal products are required.

Getting 4,000 calories a day is cutting into my writing time, so it will take a few days of short posts to develop the reasons why I eat the way I do. After I lose enough weight, I may be forced to change some things. 

For now, my opinions on the optimum diet for health come from Dr. McDougall who wrote "The Starch Solution."  I trust this book as it has references to many peer reviewed studies. I've read all the ones that are online. If anyone is interested, Dr. McDougall has a website and a forum. 

[GershonSurge]

Carbohydrates can't turn to fat. Carbohydrates control hunger.

This post may be somewhat controversal. I trust Dr. McDougall more than anyone else concerning healthy food. If you want his complete story, I suggest reading "The Starch Solution." 

The controversial statement is: Carbohydrates cannot turn to fat. This includes sugar.

Before you jump on me, please click the link at the top of the post and at least read the section titled: Excess Starch Does Not Turn to Body Fat, The human body does not have a process to turn excess carbohydrates into fat. Instead, it turns it to heat.

The body has the capacity to store about two pounds of carbohydrates in the muscles and liver. At some level below this, we get real hunger pangs that we feel in the stomach. Some are addicted to refined sugars, and they may have cravings all the time.

My opinions:

Note: I reserve the right to change my opinions at any time as I learn new and accurate information.

First, let me state Dr. McDougall would not agree with almost anything I say about higher exercise levels. He and his staff as well as most of his followers on his forum are against calorie counting. Calorie counting works for me, so I use it. It doesn't mean everyone needs to.

If the body cannot turn carbohydrates into fat, then a person cannot gain weight unless they eat fat. This is why I keep my fat intake less than five percent of the calores eaten. Sometimes, I hit 10%. This is only possible by avoiding all animal products, all added oils, and all nuts. 

What about energy?

Our muscles and brains work most efficiently on glucose, which is not found in animal products or oils. Yes, we do need fats to survive and to be healthy, but most of us have sufficient fat stores to meet this need.

[shipo]

Then there is the whole school of thought which says, "Eating fat cannot make you fat." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/fat-health_b_4343798.html

[GershonSurge]

I do not consider the Huffington Post to be a reliable source. I don't have time to look for the underlying primary source to see if it's quoted correcty or even if it's a reliable peer reviewed study. However, if a person doesn't eat any carbs, the body goes into ketosis, and people lose weight by making themselves sick.