Heavy Yard Work - Questions

I need some advice. 

We just had 11 tons of rock dumped in our driveway that I am using to go around the outside of my house, did the other half last year.  I am shoveling it into a wheel barrow, hauling it around the house and then dumping it and spreading it with a rake.

I had my heart rate monitor on this morning while I was working on it and burned 1771 calories in 154 minutes.  I put that into my activities since I am set at seditary and normally am working in my office during the day at a computer.

My question is do I eat all these extra calories, normally I go to the gym and burn around 500-750 a day, this is way more then that and I have many more rounds to go.  I also will not be going to the gym on these days I am doing this since that would be overkill and also not give me much recovery time.

If needed my stats are 199 lbs as of this morning (down just over 50 since Christmas).  5'11" male 36 years old.

Thanks for the help.

Eat as many of the calories back as your body wants.  I had a few days last summer where I burned insane numbers of calories doing yard work and while I ate more than normal those days, I didn't eat back all the calories and wound up with larger-than-normal deficits.  Since it wasn't every day, it didn't hurt.  On the other hand, if you want to eat back all those calories, that won't hurt either.

I'd say eat if you are hungry.  Your body is a pretty good manager of what you need.   Like susiecue said, you probably won't eat as many calories as you burn these days that you work, but you will be used to eating less, so it will seem like a lot to you. 

Thanks for the help, on my second trip out to work on the rock I burned another 1800 calories.  My burn meter went over 5k, never seen it that high before.  As I type this I am eating some ice cream that is putting me just to 3k calories for the day.  So a 2k difference, but there is no way I could eat another 1k of food.

 I am pretty sure I have not eaten that much food since Christmas time and I am stuff, glad I don't have to eat this much that often anymore :)

Update - Well the work didn't help with weight loss.  I tried to get to a 2k at most deficet each day and I ended up gaining 2 pounds over the weekend.  I am hoping that I am just carrying a lot of extra water from all the sore muscles and sweating.  I hit the 5k burned mark all 3 days and was eating at least 3k calories each day.  Normally I am at around 2700-3000 calories burned and eat about 1900-2200. 

Anyone have any thoughts?  I don't get weighed at the gym till later this week so won't know if it is water for sure till then.  I am just disappointed in the end result for all the hard work I did as it goes to weight loss but by yard work is finished until my wife finds me another large task to complete. 

It might just be water gain - just two pounds can fluctuate pretty easily depending on a lot of things.  Maybe you gained some muscle??  And it seems to me that sometimes it take a couple of days for the deficit to actually show up in weight loss, but I'm no expert.  I would stick to your guns (i.e., your diet routine), drink plenty of water, and not worry about it.  After all you did the yard work to please your wife, not as exercise, right? 

The most fat that can be burned in a day's time is 31 X (weight of excess fat). So, if, you are roughly 30 lbs overweight (that's a total guess), the most you could burn is 930 cals in a day. I'd eat back up to that (1770- 930). Creating too large a deficit can stall your metabolism.

BTW, we live near the desert and rock is our primary form of landscape. That, and tumbleweeds! Slinging rock is a helluva workout! 

Original Post by tomatotomata:

The most fat that can be burned in a day's time is 31 X (weight of excess fat). So, if, you are roughly 30 lbs overweight (that's a total guess), the most you could burn is 930 cals in a day. I'd eat back up to that (1770- 930). Creating too large a deficit can stall your metabolism.

BTW, we live near the desert and rock is our primary form of landscape. That, and tumbleweeds! Slinging rock is a helluva workout! 

 

 Okay, what??  Can you please explain what this means?  I never heard there was a maximum amount of fat you can burn in a day.  How do you determine what the weight of excess fat is?  I mean, I think I am 15 lbs overweight, but someone else might think I am only 10.  Is there a scientific method or some reference on this subject you could point me to?  What I hear you saying is that if I am 15 lbs overweight x 31 = 465.  Are you saying that is the most calories I could burn in a day is 465?  Or the most "fat calories" or what?   Thanks!   

It's not quite right.  The most fat you can burn in a day is 31 calories times the number of pounds of body fat you have (not "excess body fat").  That's an absolute maximum that most people shouldn't try to approach on a regular basis, but it works as a rule of thumb for the occasional extreme day like juice's yard work day.

Juice weighs 200(ish) pounds.  If he has 25% body fat (I'd assume not much lower if he's trying to lose weight), that's 50 pounds of fat.  At 31 calories per pound of fat, that's a 1500 calorie deficit.  Of course, since it's just a one-off day, he can pull a couple hundred more calories out of glycogen stores so I really don't think he has to worry about muscle loss (which would be the worry if you regularly exceeded your maximum deficit).

Regarding the 2 pound gain on the scales, I'm pretty sure that's just water retention from the unusually large amount that you used your muscles that day.  It should go away in a few days.

Aaaaahhhhh *light bulb goes on*.....  I was able to Google using that info and find this info below. Very interesting!  Thank you susiecue

Since there is a limit to the rate at which the body can get energy from fat, if the calorie deficit is too large the body will take energy from other tissues. According to a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology (1,2), it is estimated the average, moderately active person’s body can get approximately 31 calories of energy per day per pound of fat. This means the maximum one can reduce their calorie intake below maintenance levels without losing muscle is approximately 31 for every pound of fat on their body.

Thanks susiecue for breaking it down for me and the last time my body fat was checked I was at 24.5% so good guess on that also :)

Hopefully things will balance out in the next couple days, but dang I have been hungry all day and I normally do not have those issues, maybe my body is still running at higher pace after the weekend.

What was your average heart rate while working with the rock?  Did you stay in the aerobic zone?  If not, your heart rate monitor's estimate of calories burned is not going to be very accurate.

Original Post by juice35:

Hopefully things will balance out in the next couple days, but dang I have been hungry all day and I normally do not have those issues, maybe my body is still running at higher pace after the weekend.

I'm not surprised.  You probably used up most of your short term energy stores, so your body is looking to replenish them.  I find I'm normally hungrier the day after a really active day for precisely that reason.