1000 push-ups a day to lose body fat?

Question

I am trying to lose some body fat. Currently 173 cm, 82 kg. I am on a "no carbonated beverages" diet and keeping my calories as low as possible. I am not trying to lose weight. Gaining muscle is good for me.

I currently do not have access to a gym and I can't go out (too cold outside), no chin-up bar either. Can't do jump-roping to wake up the neighbors (the suburban jail cells we live in these days, sigh).

So I decided to have a personal goal of 1000 push-ups a day. I'm currently at 150 a day. I'm not sure if this counts as high-volume training and I have no clue about the outcome once I reach 1000.

How much will 1000 push ups a day help in losing body fat? Am I overdoing this? Or is doing pushups just not an effective compound exercise?

Answer 1

How much will 1000 push ups a day help in losing body fat?

Not enough to out exercise a bad diet, here is a great breakdown from quora on the amount of calories 50 press-ups do.

doing 50 push ups, depending on your body weight won't burn that many Calories, 10 at the most

Am I overdoing this?

Yes

Is doing pushups just not an effective compound exercise?

It's a compound exercise but only in 1 direction.

Your plan will lead you to:

• develop shoulder issues (probably)
• develop muscular imbalance (definitely)
• develop muscular endurance (definitely)
• gain a small amount of muscle mass (dependant on nutrition)

Answer 2

Push-ups are an effective compound exercise if you have no way to incorporate weights into your training. However, if you are looking to lose fat and build some muscle along the way, it would be a better option to start a caloric deficit and increase your daily push-ups.

For the sake of recovery of your pectorals and triceps however, I would recommend to squat every other day instead of your push-ups. This way you will burn the same amount of calories while giving your muscles some more time to recover. 1000 times any exercise will be hard to start doing.

Let's say you can do 30 push-ups every time and only need 1 minute of rest, you would be doing 1 exercise for over an hour. This will burn bodyfat but it's not the most effective way to do so.