I know, it makes me feel wistful seeing people drop weight like that. But they're going through something crazy to get there so fast, and honestly is probably not that great for them. And their skin is definitely not going to catch up easily!
I did mine, and it came out to be 1571. This is almost 270 above what my metabolic test showed, and I attribute that to (1) I had crappy lean body mass when I did the test, and lean muscle burns the most calories. Also (2) when you've been dieting a long time (which I have T_T ) your body's metabolism gets more efficient! Unfortunately, a "more efficient" metabolism means that your body is burning fewer calories to accomplish the same things. It's not uncommon to have a 200 kcal lower daily metabolic calorie consumption due to extended dieting
Yeah, arms....I felt like my arms consist of a few fibers of muscle in a sea of fat. (lol that's a horrible mental image!) I've really pushed up the arm weight training, and it's slowly improving. But my arms are one of the things I hate most about my fat distribution. T_T I also force myself to stop and do a round of arm weight training. Lean muscle burns more calories, and I need to strengthen my joints.
Exercise wise, I like the elliptical. I inherited craptacular joints. Being obese so many years only made that worse. So I "jog" on it. While I read, I lose track of time, and easily can go for an hour. (I do "interval" mode on the machine, where it spends a few minutes at lower resistance/incline, then ramps up for a few mins.)
I keep myself in the weight loss range of heartrate, as it shows on the machine, instead of cardio. There are online equations that can give you the heart rate that you should aim for to keep in that range. It seems strangely slow sometimes, like a very slow jog or very brisk walk at times (depending on the resistance and incline on the elliptical).
But the metabolic concept is that you remain in the range where you are able to still provide enough oxygen for fat metabolism (Beta oxidation). When you get into the cardio range, you start pushing past the point that you get sufficient oxygen to meet demands, and you start doing a percentage of your "work" in anaerobic respiration to get enough energy. That percentage that is anaerobic CAN NOT burn fat, it burns the rest of your glucose sources and then your proteins (your body only stores proteins in the form of muscle). Later, after you work out, your body uses glucose and fat and protein from your DIET to rebuild your muscle. That's why you need enough calories to rebuild muscles!
"Cardio" is called that because it's an intensity that conditions your heart and blood vessels and lungs and tissues in general to operate more efficiently; tuning it to more effectively provide increased oxygen to meet increased demands. It is extremely good for your body, ESPECIALLY for lowering blood pressure and even reducing athersclerosis. But it isn't as effective at burning FAT. Since I'm focusing on fat, I spend most of my workouts at the fat-burning level.
Hope this helps! I'm becoming a little obsessed with learning more and more about these things. It was one of my favorite parts of school this year. I think I may want to focus on weight management as a physician, since I have the personal experience of how f'ing difficult it is
I had a Ph.D. in exercise physiology explain to me how to maximize your exercise time - one way is interval training. Go at a steady medium intensity pace, then ramp it up to a brief 1-2 minutes of intense effort, to the point that you are out of breath and sweating, then go back down. Repeat every 3-5 minutes or so, but not too frequently or it is less effective (and you'll burn out sooner). When I'm focusing on cardio, for example, I'll be in interval mode. For 1-2 mins I will greatly increase resistance and moderately increase incline, and go for 1-2 mins until I am pushing exhaustion, then go back down.
