Ark AdamE
Ark, I was agreeing with everything in your posts until this sentence I either misread or misunderstood:
"Also don't include calories burned into your daily targets."
If you choose sedentary, as most of us probably should, and we're eating at a deficit then burn 400 more calories in a workout, it's fair to eat up to 400 more surely? That's the way MFP does it. It's probably better too to take in say 2500 good quality calories while burning 400, than to take in 2100 with no additional exercise. You have the benefit of the workout and the benefit of more nutrients, while still at the same deficit.
AdamE, that 2310 maintenance target sounds much more reasonable. Yes, you can build muscle in a slight deficit. When you're gaining weight you'll gain both muscle and fat, and when losing weight you'll lose both too, with muscle loss mitigated by high protein intake plus lifting. You don't need a calorie surplus to build muscle, you need an energy surplus, and that can come from your fat reserves (to a point, your deficit should be 10%-20% not higher).
You can get a clearer sense of your current maintenance levels (it will decline as you lose weight) by weighing yourself daily, taking a 7-day average of that, and compare it with your calories. Or we can save the effort and conclude that you aren't in a sufficient deficit because you aren't losing weight, so try going down 200-300 daily and see how that works for you.
Your watch may have been over-stating calories burned, and you may have been double counting those with the initial calculation set above sedentary level. Cardio machines often over-state calories burned by up to 10%, so I take off 10% from what my stationary bike says. For weights, it's hard to get a good estimate how many calories a session burns. I think this article provides a decent ballpark. Bear in mind you'll burn 1 MET at rest, so if you estimate you're doing 4 MET's for an hour, that's 3 additional MET which in your case is just under 300.
At rest (like when you're watching Netflix), your body is working at 1 MET, the equivalent of burning 1 calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour. (For a 150-pound person, that's about 68 calories burned lifting weights per hour.)
When lifting weights, your body works at anywhere from 3 METs (if you're putting in light effort) to 6 METs (if you're really working your butt off). For a 150-pound person, that's anywhere between 200 and 400 calories per hour.
Of course, though, "everyone is different," says Aleksandra Sulik, CPT, trainer at Life Time SKY in New York City.
A number of factors—including how much you weigh and how much muscle you have—all influence how many calories you burn lifting weights. In fact, one person may burn more than 100 calories more or less than someone else during a 30-minute weights sesh.
Dumbbells are about to become your new best friends.
www.shape.com
