This is a fun story, but I feel that without the actual prompts and responses it feels a bit hollow.
I burn roughly 2000 calories for doing a 20km run, a bit more than an hour and a half of running, heart rate of 170 to 190bpm. There is 1300 calories in a large big mac meal [1]. Its stupid easy to consume excess calories. For the next day or two after a 20km run I feel so famished that I could eat 6000 to 8000 calories a day after that.
[1] https://www.calorieking.com/us/en/foods/f/calories-in-meals-...
I know some triathletes who would beg to differ.
For someone just getting started...I agree.
Thats my point 4k calories is not much. Its super easy to consume it 4k calories, its a shit load of effort to burn 4k calories.
Check out this, eat and burn 10k calories in a day. You can guess which one is harder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZTz9LDFg1E
To recontextualize the math, losing 26 lb of fat in 90 days is about the same as a 1,000 calorie deficit per day.
By no means impossible, but certainly an effort, including the dietary aspect of ignoring how your body will want to eat more-than-before to compensate.
Anecdotally, I'm currently doing a lesser 400-500 deficit per day (-4lb/month) just through dieting. Not for the first time, I did it for a year a long time ago, then slowly backslid.
26 over three months does sound like a lot but not impossible. Anecdotally, I broke my leg and had surgery in January and gained 20 lbs over 9 weeks of being on crutches. I’ve been slowly getting back to being active and running again. But also have been strict with my diet at the same time. I’m down 7 lbs just this month. I don't see why I won't continue that or make even more progress next month.
If I was just reminded of how hard it is to burn 100 calories - it's not. So I think there's perhaps a subconscious nuance here.
What I've heard is that 2 pounds a week is the "safe recommended limit" for weight loss. 3 months is 12 weeks or 24 pounds, which is about 26. 2 pounds a week works out to, give or take, a 1000 calorie deficit. That's very, very easy to achieve if you're working out regularly. At the height of my exercising period a couple of years ago, I was burning > 3000 calories a day. There were some days I had to actually eat extra just so that I wasn't hilarious under my required calorie amount. On a 3500 calorie day, eating a healthy 2500 calories is proper work.
10 lbs of fat is 36,000 calories. Which is:
- 82 miles of swimming
- 240 miles of running
- 700 to 900 miles of biking
26 lbs obviously being 2.6 times that: 200+ miles swimming, 600 miles of running, 2400 miles of biking.
So as you point out, 26 lbs lost isn't going to happen even if he ran that 1 mile every day for 3 months. The ONLY way is substantial caloric deficit through dieting/reduced food intake.
Fun fact: If you stop eating completely, your metabolism goes down.
Still, with a basal metabolism of 1500 calories (daily) and no food, you would lose 160g of fat (daily). You can add exercise to lose more fat, and keep your muscle.
You could also stop eating (only water allowed) for 74 days and lose around 10 pounds (combined fat and muscle)
This is the reason diets don't work longterm. It takes great willpower (which the person didn't have much of to begin with) for a really long time (probably for life)
You can lose 10 pounds in 35 days by just eating at a healthy calorie deficit.