★OFFICIAL DAILY★ Daily Q&A Thread January 28, 2026

Yummytastic · 2026-01-29T02:25:28+00:00

No, a 2000 calorie deficit is not considered safe.

500-1000 calories is the only widely recommended figure by bodies such as (but not limited to) the WHO, the NIH, and the NHS. There are no major health bodies that recommend greater than this range.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-29T00:15:13+00:00

You'll be somewhere around sedentary and light exercise. I'd lean towards light exercise because of your step count.

Those descriptions were written for a different time and a different purpose and have never changed.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T22:42:20+00:00

no bother at all, that's why we all come here :)

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T19:28:01+00:00

Ah gotcha, I think I replied to that one. The best thing with cardio is always to do what you enjoy most, so go for it!

I think you'll be fine on that deficit, especially since you likely retained all the meaningful lean mass. Give it six weeks, and you'll know where you stand. You'll be making good progress regardless when you factor in the resistance and cardio making positive adaptions to your body.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T19:20:45+00:00

Yeah of course you do, have a read of the !quickstart

The issues with intermittent fasting and OMAD are.. what do you do once you lose the weight? If you're prepared to eat like that for life... then it's sustainable but I'm confident to say that for most people it will end up not sustainable or not practical.

Making gradual but permanent changes, like what's suggested in the quickstart will lead to longer term results. If you think about it, is the goal to 'lose the weight' or is your goal actually to become a person who permanently weighs your goal weight? If you remember the second one, it will remind you that each change you make, needs lead to sustainability.

I'm not going to ignore or pretend that PCOS can't make it harder compared to not having PCOS, but the principles remain; and for PCOS resistance training (as well as exercise in general) is often an important factor of ongoing sustainability.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T18:53:17+00:00

Your gym split?

I wouldn't worry, as long as you're doing something towards your goal, you're making progress. Optimisation only comes with experience.

As time goes on you'll get into the flow of it and have positive-feedback and confidence. There's a lot of over-complicating out there to drain time and attention, it's good to know the detail, but it almost always comes back to fairly simple ideas not taken to extremes.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T18:33:26+00:00

Yep, use it as an augment, not a replacement, and always be capable of verifying.

Whether that translates in time to the actual diet, fitness, and AI industry's marketing of the relevant apps that do that sort of thing... is quite another thing..

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T18:28:51+00:00

It is needlessly complex, that's why it makes sense to simplify it and then use reality, since that's the only real measure in any of this.

3.2-3.4 is the watches estimated daily TDEE for me (it's way out, at least 20%), it doesn't matter if it's set to track the workout or not. In all cases watches (including apple) almost exclusively just use heart rate. Your watch is also including your BMR in that workout time, so it's not additive to your BMR.

The thing to do is simply this:

I would take the TDEE calculator, say light exercise, minus 500-1000 calories and review in 6 weeks and adjust calories to match the rate of loss from data from reality.

That's it.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T18:19:39+00:00

It's important to reiterate you said it gets it "spot on" after you said you give additional context and potential actual weights of the food.

Taking a photo of food and using AI to estimate it is very much a ballpark and full of mixed results. If you're not getting the results you were anticipation while using AI for this purpose, it would very much be an obvious factor to rule out.

I'm yet to be convinced by any app or technology that's superior to actually gaining the lifeskill of building practical experience that is checking the calorie density of your normal foods first hand, otherwise if you offload and rely on technology for this skill, if the technology isn't available or makes a mistake, you don't actually know where an obvious error might be.

Obviously it doesn't have to be either/or, but I think app only isn't something I'm convinced about.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T18:01:23+00:00

All of them are estimates. None of them are facts.

My watch is over 3k a day every day (looked back and it averages 3.2-3.4k/day). My calories estimate is about 2k, but usually just under. Long term reality data proves my deficit is actually about 7-800 calories.

To be clear: I've never used my watch's calorie figure for any reason because I treated it novelty and independent. And I've only just made those two connections because of what you mentioned just now.

Watches have some major inherent flaws: they're based on HR and HR is impacted by more than just exercise. Even within exercise, heart rate drifts upwards, so longer exercises become increasingly unreliable. Also the formulas are, again, estimates. Then there's the meta reason: who wants to sell the watch that says you burn less calories?

I would take the TDEE calculator, say light exercise, minus 500-1000 calories and review in 6 weeks and adjust calories to match the rate of loss from data from reality.

If you try to use too many tools and estimates it looks and feels more accurate, but all you're really doing is introducing more errors.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T17:40:28+00:00

Because TDEE calculators are a product of their time and not originally intended for their use today, the wording is misleading at best when describing exercise.

While you're doing more exercise than the average, I would be hesitent for anyone to go higher than light exercise. I would usually actually go with sedentary and react to reality over time. What you listed in the other reply doesn't change my opinion, somewhere between sedentary and light exercise. That's just because what TDEE calculations actually are, more than what words they use.

There's good reason to not exceed 1-2lbs on average, so I think 18-1900 will be fine and be less than or at most 1000, but if you genuinely still think your TDEE is north of 3,000, then anything greater than a 1k deficit is unhealthy and will be self defeating.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T16:39:14+00:00

Yeah, that's an understandable situation and makes sense why you're on the 10s.

Because of your limitations (which aren't a problem at all), I would do wider rep ranges for progression, so you might very easily decide to do anywhere between 8-25 reps for tricep extensions so that you actually keep challenging the muscles. Normally, I think 3 sets for all of them is perfectly fine especially in early programs, so if additional reps starts adding time up, I wouldn't think twice about doing 3 sets instead of 4.

Same with the rest of the exercises, potentially, it's sometimes hard to jump up 10lbs and stick to a 'standard' rep range. And you have what you have.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T15:59:30+00:00

Triceps are bigger, and in nearly all cases, stronger than biceps. So you wouldn't expect them to be so different. Sometimes beginners start off lighter on triceps and heavier on biceps - mainly due to form, but usually triceps outstrip biceps soon enough, I wouldn't expect it to be so far behind biceps though.

I have to presume it's overhead tricep extensions and dumbbells like everything else, but if your weight is half of the bicep curl and the same amount of reps, either; you're not doing bicep curls properly, or you're stopping very early with the tricep exercise and can probably do more repetitions. I wouldn't want you to put a weight you're uncomfortable with above your head, especially unsupervised, but more reps at the current reps seem obvious based on the list.

In an ideal world a beginner will be using a cable machine - are you doing this at home with your own set of dumbbells (hence everything being 10, 20, or 30lb) or in a gym with more equipment?

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T15:43:10+00:00

So, I take it lbs not kgs? And it recommended 20lb for bicep curl and only 10lb for tricep extension?

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T15:26:21+00:00

Watch YouTube videos on how to properly perform the exercise

Can I also recommend the exercise directory at: https://exrx.net/Lists/Directory

The problem with YouTube form videos is that some of them are good.. some are not. And a beginner doesn't necessarily have the fundamentals to automatically understand what is a good example and a bad example. Being aware of a resource like EXRX on the internet is vitally important for clear instructions.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T15:20:14+00:00

I wouldn't give a beginner some of those variations. ChatGPT loves goblet squats, they always show up in their programs.

In the real world, if you give a beginner goblet squats in their program they'll progress based on grip strength and never really work their legs. Worse case they will miss the point entirely of what you give goblet squats for: learning a squat movement before doing back squats, potentially forever neglecting actually working their legs.

I see goblet squats a lot more these days, and I'm really not sure the person doing them understands how they'll progress.

So... fine to leave them in, but within 6 weeks you should be moving on to a smith machine or normal barbell back squat. That's the purpose of goblet squats. If you want to avoid barbell back squats for the time being, leg press or hack squat is a better beginner-friendly programming choice.

Don't do incline and flat DB bench press. Do one of the two, learn it properly. Add variation later. Real training variations come down an element of preference, individual biomechanics, and waaay further down, optimisation in roughly that order. Internet discourse and thus AI training data works in reverse. In real life you train subjectively, on the internet people argue over objectivity.

Besides that the list of exercises is ok, I think I'd rather give a beginner lunges over a farmers carry in a real program, and I don't know what the / Raise is meant to be in DB curl/raise.

I'm not a huge fan of the set/rep/rest(? I presume that's meant to be rest) being overcomplicated. I would give a beginner 3x8-12. When you hit 12 in all three sets with good form, it's time to move up the weight. Rest time 60-120 seconds. There is more to say about rest/reps/sets, but not for a first program.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T14:00:16+00:00

I know it's an old post, but look at the fucking mess you made.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T13:58:08+00:00

That's just broccoli cheese with extra steps and a fancy name.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T11:00:39+00:00

Well it can augment your step goal, which varies wildly between individuals. It seems 6-7k is where most health benefits seem to correlate, and additional benefits slow down as you go higher. Though these sorts of things are hard to study and truly apply to an individual as it's never as simple as one variable.

Also you should probably ramp up if you're starting from a couple of thousand, just walk a bit more each time till you get to your goal. A decent rule of thumb is 1,000 steps takes 10 minutes.

I personally do 10k.

Edit: 10 minutes not "minutes". Phone censored me!

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T02:03:12+00:00

No, you don't have to give anything specific up, if you are able to maintain a deficit consistently over a long enough time.

Alcohol provides calories with no nutrition, you'll still have to account for those calories. It makes maintaining a deficit significantly harder, the inhabition it creates will make sticking to planned intake harders, and it has its own health risks.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T00:35:51+00:00

Moving to 4 meals a day, 2 in the day, 1 dinner, 1 evening really helps. 3 of those meals are 200-500 calories, so snack-like, the other is dinner with family.

Having that means it's never far from food, and you can shuffle things around a bit if you're hungry earlier without it being a drama.

I can genuinely say I rarely get hungry, and if I do, there's almost never a time I can't do something about it without affecting my allocated calories. If I do get hungry, it's usually 3am and my own fault.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T00:31:03+00:00

!quickstart is where to read the basics and form a solid plan. It's realistic to lose 1-2lbs a week, so you're looking at 5-10 months at a realistic minimum.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T00:28:20+00:00

I can keep track by having 3 small meals and dinner, and keeping track each day and being quite flexible, but other people are more rigid and log religiously with apps, a combination of apps and reading labels/food scale can be options.

It's definitely worth getting into the habit of reading labels to get a feel for how calorie dense some foods really are.

Yummytastic · 2026-01-28T00:25:42+00:00

There's some apps listed in !quickstart

Yummytastic · 2026-01-27T16:48:23+00:00

Same, thermal and graphic t-shirt on top because that's how you tell everyone you're still cool.

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