Metcons and weight management

[norm]

I’ve always heard that you cannot outrun a bad diet. However, with the nature of high intensity and E.P.O.C., does this adage still apply?

 

[orthodoxlady1994]

@norm 100% still applies. In fact we often see new members gain weight initially. This is often because their metabolism spikes due to the increased workload of wods, and therefore they're hungry all the time. It takes them some time before they can rebalance their diets, during which time they gain a few pounds. (which come off relatively quickly after they get things under control)

Think about it this way. While it varies greatly due to duration of workouts, I would say that the average 180lb male burns around 500 calories in an average CF workout. There will be some residual effect due to a higher heartrate for the few hours post-wod, and from the increased muscle mass, so let's say that adds another 200 calories burned. So he's burned an extra 700. Great. But if he eats an extra 1000, he still has 300 excessive calories.

Here's what I've started telling athletes. If you're serious about losing weight, tracking macros is by far the most optimal way to do it. However for many people, that is difficult to do for more than 2-3 months. So if you're not capable of that, here are 2 things which work almost as good.

1. Cut out alcohol. An IPA is 200 calories with almost no nutritional value. Same with wine or bourbon. Wanna lose weight? Eliminating alcohol is the easiest way to do it.
2. Track protein specifically. If your goal is 1gram per 1lb of bodyweight, that's going to be a LOT of protein. I've found that when athletes focus on just hitting this one macro, they often aren't hungry throughout the rest of the day. So even though they aren't tracking them, they don't consume too many fat or carb grams. And tracking one macro is usually easier than tracking all 3.

 

[ecclesiastian]

@orthodoxlady1994 I think this is great advice, protein is the most important to track if you can't track everything.

Only thing I'd say is I think an estimation of 500-700 for a workout/PWO is a bit high.

 

[lilypham0606]

@orthodoxlady1994 Listen to this person.

People are notoriously bad at knowing how many cals they eat and our brains job is to marry inputs to outputs. Tracking macros and running a deficit with high protein (around 1 g per lb of bw) should put you on a good track.

For a variety of reasons I also recommend the following.

Get 8 hours of sleep a night (keeps hunger hormones in balance)
Drink 1 gal of water a day - thirst can be mistaken for hunger and your system runs better when hydrated.

If you run a deficit and stall, raise your cals back to maintenance for a couple of weeks as a reset then drop back down into a deficit.

If you're looking for literature that breaks down how our body uses energy read the book "burn" by Herman pontzer PhD. It's a discussion about metabolism and how it reacts to different stimulus, amongst other topics.

Good luck!

 

[leemills]

@orthodoxlady1994 This! Nutrition is super important. Track your protein, eliminate alcohol if you consume it. That will get you 85%+ there!

 

[aaron2025]

@norm You're probably thinking of the 'afterburn' effect, which is real.... but is worth about a large banana of calories.

It's best to think of exercise calories as bonus calories lost. They really aren't worth tracking.

 

[paullivesgaussabides]

@norm Calories in and calories out.

You do the math

 

[jbross]

@norm I would say so. I do think Cardio calories benefit more than high intensity calories though when it comes to weight loss.

I've been doing 5-6 days of CrossFit a week the last 9 months. Granted I've been replacing a bit of fat with muscle and I am getting slimmer, my weight hasn't really dropped that much.

Alternatively, two years ago, my primary exercise was biking 50-100 miles/week along with 2 days at the gym (nothing really concentrated) and the weight loss was much more consistent.

In both instances, I never tracked calories, but maintained the same diet - mostly healthy, some beers on the weekends, and the occasional splurging at events.

My goal this year is to get 4-5 days/week of CrossFit with 50-100 miles of biking. Once I can get into that groove again, I expect to start losing more consistently while trying to make some more consistent healthy choices.

 

[ecclesiastian]

@jbross You're right, but in my experience not because of the exercise done but the affect it has on you.

A hour a day of Crossfit, especially high intensity workouts, will leave you much hungrier afterwards than a low intensity cardio session.

I went from Crossfit 5-6 days a week to running in lockdown, and the weight plummeted because I could go out and run for 2-3 hours burning a couple thousand calories but not feel like I had to eat all those calories back to satisfy my hunger. It also didn't beat my body up too much.

Try 2-3 hours of Crossfit a day and see what it does to your body and hunger. IN fact part of the point is, it's easier to do low intensity for much longer

 

[antcart]

@norm Yes, it still applies. You can burn anywhere from 11 to 17 calories per minute from running, but the exact numbers vary based on how much you weigh and how fast you run. So its 70-ish minutes to run off 1000 junk calories.

Wear a chest strap heart rate monitor and get an idea on how many calories you burn during a metcon (my MyZone heart rate monitor gives me that) and figure how many junk calories you can have in a day.

 

[dawn16]

@norm Exercise and it’s after affects don’t burn enough calories to keep up a bad diet

 

[thorntonreyes81]

@norm Yes the adage still very much applies. It's ALWAYS calories in vs. calories out. The difference can come in terms of where those calories come from. You're body will more appropriately handle a larger amount of carbs when you're working out intensely compared to if you weren't working out at all.

 

[heatherpedz]

@norm Only way to «outrun» a bad diet is to train like a professional swimmer, cyclist, marathon jogger etc, where it is difficult to get in the same amount of calories you expend. Even if it is high intensity the duration is way too low, mat fraser probably burned 20% of the calories phelps did during his training.

 

[copenator]

@norm To lose weight, longer sessions or higher volume will be better than a quick metcon. Different stimuly for different results. That being said it still comes back to cals in and cals out

 

[onceemt]

@norm No.
Metcons are usually too short and too high heart rate.
You’d need to add hour+ of zone 2 weekly (or more) to burn at a deficit.

 

[mwood]

@norm What if 99% of weight management was diet? Read "Burn" by Herman Pontzer.

 

[emsw]

@norm Yes

 

[anon77777]

@norm EPOC is not significant at all

 

[veve13]

@norm Keep in mind that caloric burn from an incredibly intense 6-minute metcon versus a 30-minute, lower-intensity metcon is still pretty significant.