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A caloric deficit that includes working out will always be superior than a caloric deficit via just [undereating] food and no activity. Your body can absorb and utilize nutrients better post-exercise. Oxygen uptake is also elevated post exercise so you’ll be burning more calories at rest (excess post-oxygen consumption aka oxygen debt) and it’ll help you reach a caloric deficit way easier.
Working out will also increase muscle mass/strength which leads to bone strength as well. Inactivity will lead to weak/porous bones and you’ll be more prone to osteoporosis as you get older (we lose about 1% bone strength per year after age 40).
TLDR: work out and stay active
Eating at maintenance/BMR and exercising more is healthier and more effective.
You can actually recover from the exercise, the exercise should increase or maintain LBM meaning you’ll burn more naturally at rest, you don’t really risk being low in nutrients because calories aren’t so low.
it’s sustainable long term, when you eventually come off the deficit you won’t have to worry about regaining a so much weight.
Your exercise (even if it’s walking) can EASILY burn 250-350+ per day. So that’d be your deficit made without having to eat so low.
Define “healthier”…
We ARE BORN to move and be active… And being inactive is associated with many issues and dysfunctions in the body.
So in terms of vitality, the option where you are active (and also may depend on the type of activity of course) is probably always gonna win against the sedentary one, regardless of nutrition.
Second, it really depends what those 1000 or 1500 calories contain and whether you get all the required nutrients and amino acida within those.
So its hard to give a definite answer perhaps, but I vote for door number 2.
The defecit is the same. Let’s say you’re starting from 2,000 calories.
Cutting to 1,000 is -1,000. Cutting to 1500 and burning 500 is still -1000.
Both are extreme and not advisable, but if you had to choose one, I’d say eat more and work out more.
1500 kcal it’s already a big deficit even if you are laying on bed the whole day. 1500 and exercising to burn 500 calories it’s a torture, it’s not a diet. Only Chris Bumstead could do that but was only for a short period of time before the mister Olympia. None of these options it’s healthy
The joke “If you don’t use it, you lose it” is very true with muscle. Many old people walking around are plagued by years of stagnant or reverse muscle growth that they struggle to get off a chair or sofa
So yes. Exercise is critical to ensuring your muscles either a) maintain their strength or b) grow stronger. The last thing you want is c) your muscles degrading because your body realizes they are not in use and calories are better spent elsewhere
For all intents and purposes it’s the same. However statistically people are more likely to be successful with weight loss long term if they exercise.
It’s really hard to maintain weight loss on caloric intake changes alone. It can certainly be done but human behavior shows that’s the unlikely sustainable path.
Of course the exercise is beneficial. The only problem with your plan is it’s very hard to burn that many calories working out. Any information you find on the number of calories burned will be overestimated. If your goal is weight loss, cutting calories in your diet is the most effective way.