Short girl only burns 1,294 calories on rest days

[actresskat]

Hello! I'm short, overweight and really disappointed to see that over a 30 day period my calorie burn is regularly 1,294 on 'rest' days... How do other short people combat this issue and lose weight? Do you eat under the 1,200 guideline on rest days? Or exercise every single day if you're short? Would love to hear other short guy/girls' experiences...

[oh_suzanney]

Describe your typical rest day. Do you still move around and do stuff, or do you lay on the couch and binge watch Netflix?

[Dominique]

There’s a difference between formal exercise (e.g. attending a zumba class, lifting weights for 45 minutes, spending half-an-hour on a treadmill etc.) and being generally active (moving around which, for a Fitbit user, normally translates into a certain step count).

How many steps do you get on days when you only burn 1300 calories? My guess is, not that many. If so, the solution is to increase your step count, for instance by taking a 20-minute walk in the morning and in the evening. Just because you’re having a rest day doesn’t mean you need to sit all day long.

[actresskat]

Ha ha - love your humour 😉 I'm half marathon training so exercise days are between 55 mins - 90 mins....'Rest' days typically involves my fingers moving fast repeatedly across a keyboard; fulfils the mind and soul, at least... **ahem**, perhaps it's time to cough up the cash and purchase a trendy walking treadmill desk for the home office?

[Dominique]

There are 24 hours in a day. Let’s say you’re a very busy person and are spending 10 hours working/studying/whatever it is you’re doing in front of your computer. Let’s say you’re spending 8 hours spleeping at night. That still leaves 6 hours you’re awake and not working. Are you saying there is no way you can’t spent even 1 hour being active and burning an extra 400 calories?

Merely being short doesn’t cause you to burn that fewer calories. I could also complain I don’t get to burn that many calories because I’m quite old (57), and rather thin (60 kg). In fact, my calculated BMR is only 1242 calories, so if I were sitting all day, I wouldn’t burn that much more than you, in spite of being a male and taller than you (174 cm = 5’ 8.5).

As to increasing energy expenditure while in front of the computer, one thing I would personally consider (before a walking treadmill desk) is an adjustable desk that would let you work both sitting and standing. I haven’t got one myself, but I know plenty of people who have, and they swear by it. Merely standing instead of sitting causes you to expend more energy.

[actresskat]

Yes, you are right; my personal preference is to have intense working days. I often finish up at 10pm and head off to bed, so aside from wandering my home/making food, I don't go out these days. Thank you for your suggestion to incorporate an active hour on rest days to increase my BMR (rather than cut an additional 500 calories in order to lose weight). I appreciate your advice.

[oh_suzanney]

I find that on my "rest" days, I'm still pretty active even after being pretty sedentary at the office for about 10 hours. Walk the dog, do housework, dance in the kitchen while I make dinner. Still end up burning about 2100 calories (vs 3000+ that I burn on days I do cardio and approx 2500-2700 I burn on days I lift). It's on the "true rest" days (aka, Netflix binge watching days) that I only burn about 1700-1900. And yes, in that case, I just eat fewer calories. 

[actresskat]

Thanks for sharing your own stats - that's useful. Likewise, I burn 3,000-4,000 on half marathon training days, but was quite surprised that my rest days were so low when seen in the 30 day view. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of FitBit's calorie intake tool. When you try to stay in the 'green' zone and your calorie allowances change throughout the day, I always end up doing math calculations before dinnertime to figure out how much I have to play with to achieve that 1,000 calorie a day deficit. I've slowly gotten used to it, but it's rare I ever hit the perfect 'green' zone come midnight.

[lavabelle]

You can still lose weight, but it might be slower than a taller overweight person. If you work hard and watch your calorie intake, there's no reason you shouldn't be losing 🙂 Just don't compare yourself to anyone else, especially not tall boys 🙂 they will out-lose you every time 🙂 It's not really a race anyhow, it's a decision to do the best you can for your own self. 

Wishing you the best! 

Cheers

[oh_suzanney]

Yeah same here. 

I just discovered something recently that may fix it though. If you go onto the FB website instead of through the app and click on "Log" - in the Food Plan tile, there is a little gear wheel, and if you hover over it, it lets you choose either "Personalized" or "Sedentary." Try clicking it over to Personalized and see if that works better for you. 

[Dominique]

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@actresskat wrote:

I burn 3,000-4,000 on half marathon training days

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This sounds quite high for a short female who only burns 1300 on rest days. What does your training involve? When I ran a half-marathon a couple of years ago, the entire race (2 hours) only got me burn about 55 cal. / 5 minutes, ie. about 1300 calories in total:

[Mukluk4]

I'm interested in the same thing.

I'm 6'1 270ish and I usually end up in the high 3's to 5k+ and I start with a 2K BMR.

The 5K days are usually an hour session in the gym followed by a 30-40 minute run in the morning and an hour or 2 of basketball in the evening.

[actresskat]

2hrs is a great time! Here's my half marathon day stats...My running partner got a knee injury at 7km so we walked and slow jogged a lot from there on, unfortunately. Our time was 2hr50 in the end (so not fast like you!) but we're both getting fitter and I earned the 45,000 badge that day so I was happy enough with that 🙂 

Today I discovered that the weight in my profile doesn't at all match my actual weight logged daily on the app?!? When I changed it to match, the 1,200 low burn days on the 30-day chart jumped up to 1,700 (which might explain why I'm still losing weight despite these low days!)

[Esya]

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@actresskat wrote:

 Thank you for your suggestion to incorporate an active hour on rest days to increase my BMR (rather than cut an additional 500 calories in order to lose weight). I appreciate your advice.

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You cannot increase your BMR. Your BMR is the amount of calories you burn doing totally nothing (this is the definition, by being active those are calories burned on top of you BMR). The 1200 calories a day guideline is not for everyone. It can be too low for some people and too high for others. The idea is to not eat below your BMR (atleast for an extended amount of time) as that can have an impact on your metabolism. But if your BMR is lower than 1200, you don't have to eat more than your BMR, specially on days you are not active. You can use an online calories calculator to estimate what your BMR is. On days you are totally not active at all and you eat as much as your BMR you should not gain nor lose. In order to lose you could simply not eat back (all) the calories you burn on the days that you are active. Losing weight on days you are doing nothing at all is just not something you should aim for, specially not when you have plenty of active days in a week. Just don't gain on those days.

[vintagechutzpah]

I’m short too! If I’m on my rest day (my couch potato day of barely moving), yes, I only burn at 1200 calories. However, my rest day is my cheat day.

For the rest of the week, I make sure everyday to exercise at least 1 hour of burning atleast 300 calories, do 10k steps, eating at 1200 calories only and moving atleast 250 steps per hour. It somehow speeds up my metabolism and my daily burn is at 2100 calories instead.

if I wanna eat more than 1200 calories, I make sure I burn 500 calories at the gym (an extra 40 minutes running and walking on the treadmill).

take note also that almost all my ovaries on the left were removed so my hormone messed up my metabolism to become slow. I really have to work hard not to gain weight. (Exercise becomes fun though when you get used to it)

[Ces04 · Accepted solution]

I am also very short, at 4”10. I burn about 1280 a day when I have school all day and don’t workout. Losing weight will be extremely hard in all honesty and will take longer than the normal height person. I was doing a 500 cal deficit and on those days only was eating 800 calls which is recommended not to do but I say this to that, that 1200 rule is for the average person weight and height. I advise to be working out to get that cal count higher so u can be eating more. Hope this helps!