Energy balance

These notes combine advice from 43 reviewed passages across 27 workouts.

Overview

Coach’s advice

Energy balance is the relationship between the calories you take in through food and the calories your body spends. Food and calories sit on one side of the scale, and the expenditure side holds more than just exercise: daily activity such as NEAT counts as well. Weight change depends on this whole balance, which is one reason some people stay stuck even on extreme diets. Training alone is not enough.

Coach’s advice

A daily calorie deficit between food intake and training produces comfortable weight loss, and getting used to that pattern is part of the process. Weight gain can also happen with a regular lifestyle and may be normal.

Calorie needs and daily intake

Coach’s advice

A person needs roughly 1,700 to 1,800 calories a day for ordinary living. Many people now consume 2,500 to 3,000 because of additives in food, and what the body does not expend tends to turn to fat.

Coach’s advice

Calorie needs rise with training load: about 1,800 for ordinary living, about 2,500 for an athlete, and toward 3,500 for heavy wrestling or a similarly demanding sport. For these cases, figures like 8,000 to 10,000 are off the mark. Weightlifters also run high calorie needs.

Coach’s advice

Poor eating patterns can push intake to 4,000 or 5,000 calories, while roughly 1,800 of that goes to keeping the body alive. Burning 2,000 through exercise is difficult, and 1,000 is already a good amount for one workout, so a large surplus is hard to offset with training.

What burns calories

Estimated calorie expenditure for these workouts generally falls between 600 and 1,000 calories, and high-intensity sessions can reach about 1,300.

Coach’s advice

The high-intensity intervals in these workouts likely burn calories and can contribute to weight loss, even in sessions that are not dedicated fat-burning work.

In golf, calorie expenditure depends on whether you walk between shots or ride in a cart. Riding from shot to shot keeps the burn very low.

In running and swimming, athletes in short events such as the 100 and 200 meters tend to carry bigger bodies, and body size drops as race distance grows. The difference comes down to a calorie calculation.

Coach’s advice

Fast food is not automatically a problem for an athlete who spends a lot. Someone who takes in a large load, such as 2,000 calories at once, may still expend around 3,000, so the balance can work.

Eating to support training

Coach’s advice

When a workout burns a lot of calories, eat more deliberately. Pay closer attention to food and keep fat low so the energy gets replaced.

Coach’s advice

Raising training volume raises the body’s energy needs, and appetite grows with it. Adjust what you eat deliberately as the training increases.

Coach’s advice

After hard training you may feel that something is missing. That feeling is the body asking for energy, and it is good to answer it: the muscles want fuel so the body can meet its energy needs.

Coach’s advice

A body that keeps asking for food while you train hard is usually signaling a real calorie need. Unless you are preparing for a fitness competition, give it what it wants, and give it in a good way: eating only chocolate would not be healthy, and adding more meals covers the need better. Start a diet from what the body asks for rather than from an arbitrary plan.

Coach’s advice

Set a balance between high-calorie food and exercise. If you eat a burger, plan the cost at the same time, such as 120 push-ups when you get home. Then the choice is honest: skip the food or do the work.

Coach’s advice

Gaining size requires eating beyond fullness and getting more sleep.

Why severe restriction fails

Coach’s advice

Cutting food sharply lowers energy and daily activity. Someone who would burn about 2,000 calories may burn closer to 1,500 when eating too little, training quality drops, and the intended calorie deficit fails to form. The food you cut can end up contributing to weight gain.

Coach’s advice

Energy can drop within a day of cutting food, and the body works to protect its energy. A poorly managed restriction can therefore still fail to create a calorie deficit.

Coach’s advice

Trying to get by on a very small number of calories, such as a hundred, makes the body conserve energy: movement slows, training has no strength, and muscles do not develop.

Coach’s advice

Going hungry for three or four days affects training and muscle development very negatively. Without muscle development, calorie burning stays low and weight can rise.

Coach’s advice

Staying hungry while sitting still accomplishes little, because cutting food also cuts daily activity.

Coach’s advice

Two hours of strength exercise a week does little if the rest of the day is almost motionless. When food is also cut and movement stays low, expenditure stays low and what is eaten tends to remain.

Coach’s advice

Reducing food brings at least some loss of strength.

Coach’s advice

This kind of diet guidance is aimed at people who train at a moderate level or above. At higher training levels, heavy dieting is not needed.

Coach’s advice

An extremely strict diet with intense training adapts the body to a lean state. Once the strict period stops, eating increases and training stops, and the weight returns.

Food choices and portion control

Coach’s advice

Chips, cake, junk food, cola, and similar soft drinks can cause very rapid weight gain.

Coach’s advice

Small desserts such as baklava, katmer, and ekmek kadayıfı may also cause rapid weight gain.

Coach’s advice

Shawarma stuffed with large amounts of mayonnaise is calorie-dense enough that people who eat it regularly can end up visibly overweight.

Coach’s advice

A piece of chocolate carries enough energy to keep someone running for about an hour. Taking in too much sugar works like a drug and is not good for the liver.

Coach’s advice

Carbohydrate foods carry calories that stay with the body unless they are burned off. Cutting out carbohydrates removes a major calorie source, so weight loss should follow.

Coach’s advice

When a prepared portion sits in front of you, eating half of it is a simple way to cut intake. It is roughly the equivalent of going a bit hungry, and keeping carbohydrate and fat low helps.

Coach’s advice

A small reduction in food can be enough.

Fasting and calorie tracking

Coach’s advice

One-meal fasting is a stress on the body. Some of the claims made for it have merit, but it suits people who do almost no exercise. If you do a sport with high calorie needs, the technique is difficult.

Coach’s advice

Calorie tracking does not need to be precise. Use portions you already know, such as four eggs in the morning or 200 grams of meat in the evening, add entries on top, and accept that days vary.

Coach’s experience

He has eaten sugar regularly and has periods where he reduces it. He likes sugar and says his body asks for that energy, and he found it very hard to get used to sugar-free chocolate.

For his own training goals, he needs to eat even when he is full to gain size, and he calls that the hardest part of the process, one he does not enjoy. He would be satisfied with a gain of about four kilograms, expecting roughly three of muscle and one of fat.

He does not follow a diet himself; his eating stays as it is because he trains a lot.

In his own coaching, he measured estimated expenditure with most of his students and found it usually between 700 and 1,000 calories, reaching about 1,300 in high-intensity workouts.