Ok, might be a stupid question but....

If there were 2 people doing the same exercise but one person weighed 150lbs and the other 250lbs wouldn't the larger person burn more calories?
I was thinking this last night while walking on the treadmill and seeing the calories burnt on the treadmill screen, wouldn't everyone be different?. Us larger girls have more weight to move and lift, you would think we burn calories faster then a smaller person.
What do you all think?

Not a stupid question on this site!

There would be less burned by the 150# for exactly the reason you stated. However, the machines (tread, bike, stair, ellip, etc) do not take into account the weight or sex, etc of the user so the calories burned are just estimates. High estimates if you ask me. Some of it is marketing to get someone to buy their product because it shows them a high calorie use on that machine. Psych!! It is more encouraging to me to see 200 rather than 100 while I'm on the machine but I take it with a grain of salt.

My treadmill actually asks for weight. As I've lost, I've tried doing some of the same workouts I did 50 pounds ago and it shows that I'm burning less. I'm sure it's not entirely accurate, but it gives me something of an idea of what I'm burning. I just figure it's a ballpark figure.

I've also seen online calculators for how much you burn doing various exercises. They ask for your weight. However, even with those, it's still an estimate in my opinion because if, for example, you have more muscle mass, you actually burn more calories doing that exercise than someone who does the same exercise and is of the same weight but has a higher percentage of fat than you do (I just found this out, by the way). Either way, exercising is great!

These factors, weight and what not, are why I don't eat my calories back. I walked 9 miles yesterday and according to the site I put the walk in I burned 1252 which is only "exercise" burned. That doesn't account for the additional standing time or my weight. If I ate that back plus my 1200 daily calories I would totally blow it. Use the "calories burned" as an estimate and just don't eat it back unless you KNOW you have some extra room. I knew it was okay to eat more yesterday because I'd also not eaten dinner the night before (no electricity in the house to cook) but I will never eat back my calories unless my body is really telling me to.

Yep! Not a stupid question and all.

Wanna hear something shocking? I read this in the maintainers library section. Apparently those of us who have been obese will always be considered "formerly obese" and even once we reach normal weight, we will always burn fewer calories than our "always-thin" counterparts by I think as much as 30%. This may be frustrating, but for me it's better to know than to not know.

Yikes, really? I agree with you, always better to know than not, but...ouch. It's not really surprising, though; I've read through the maintenance forums (hey, I figure I'll need to know about it someday, right? ) and the successful maintainers generally describe their maintenance plans as looking quite like their weight-loss plans with slightly larger portions.

At any rate, "formerly obese" is still preferable to "presently obese" so I really should stop shilly-shallying and get to my walking!

I think the comment about us formally obese caloric / metabolism burning thing versus our skinny counterparts is that you really can't ever permanently change your metabolism without help but skinny people obviously have abnormally high metabolisms. I mean, how else could they eat what they want all their lives and never gain? It's not that we can't ever be normal, it's that they are abnormal. JMO.

I get your thinking, but it's actually more scientific than that. I don't think we are necessarily broken, but this research explains to me why only 5% of us are able to keep the weight off. I'll have to see if I can hunt down what I read. It explains it far better than I can.

Found it! I'm not very good at posting links so I'll just post it the way I know how. It's a sticky in maintenance, actually, and is the very first post. Well worth the read!

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/livi...intenance.html

It would be a great read, especially since one of Yahoo's featured stories today was ways to boost your metabolism (timely). I guess what I'm saying is that skinny people will always have a high metabolism but it doesn't mean if I start moving and eating better I can't get to normal (or I hope I can). As I haven't read the research, and I know you are trying to quote from memory and I suck when I try and do that, I'd like to read it to see if they tracked normal people or just the uber skinny ones. Just curious by nature.

Interesting stickie and thank you for bringing that up.

I don't know if anyone around here has the answer but I also wonder if the reduced energy expenditure aspect is gradual during the weight loss period as we also suspect?

Can we compensate for the reduced EE rate with a hormonal replacement - say maybe a higher thyroid prescription so that the RMR is 55% and thermic is still 5% and the EE is more like 45%?

Finally is there a cummulative effect of the loss of EE by yo-yo dieting? For example, I reduced from 200 to 135 (thereby EE is now 42%) and then ballooned back up and now reducing back down. I was restarting at 42% will there be an additional reduction is EE rate?

Jesse - the always been skinny people have a normal metabolism; the formerly obese have a lower metabolism FOREVER!!

I linked it above. I think we may have posted at the same time, so I thought I'd draw your attention to it.