Back ground: Female 6foot 62-66kgs on any given day of the week. Gym, weights 3x the other 3 days are cardio (30min-1hr) and one day rest (at the moment I'm in exams so I'm only doing 3x weights). My weights sessions burn on average 600 calories and I'm yet to find out how many calories with a cardio session because I only got the HRM recently.

After entering my details into a very basic website it spat out this information:

To maintain weight
macronutruents grams calories
carb 289 1155
protein 152 608
fat 69 622
total calories 2385

To lose weight
macronutruents grams calories
carb 207 829
protein 152 608
fat 50 447
total calories 1884

How do I know if this information is correct?? Can I see someone that can give me a definite answer as to how many calories I need in a day just to maintain my weight?

I'd only be looking to 'lose weight' (reduce body fat %) if I jump over 65kg which I am at the moment only because I've been super lazy and non stop eating.

I've tried to work out an eating plan with the help of CalorieKing and some basic excel knowledge haha.

Please comment/criticise/advise.
(I didn't know how to copy and paste from excel without getting the cells out of line)





*MEAL 4 IS ACCIDENTALLY SHOWN TWICE, IT'S ONLY EATEN ONCE.

These are meals that I love eating so sticking to this isn't going to be a big problem. I'm a fairly big eater, in that I can and will eat until I'm physically in pain but I also think that this looks like enough food to fill me up (mostly because of the big stirfry for lunch) I'm pretty good at only drinking water (2.5L a day) if anything though I'd have a glass of full cream milk. Regarding the increase of protein, how much more water should I be drinking to complement (or combat??) that?


I haven't included things like butter on my toast/bread or oil in the calculations. Swapping the dinner meal with rinsed mince+salsa and some steamed vegies or a beef salad would probably have to happen, as much as I LOVE chicken I may just get sick of eating it 14 times a week :wired:.

SO, just to reiterate my goal, it is to have an eating plan (makes it easier for me to have it mapped out in front of me) for me to maintain my weight and stay around 62-64kg and give me enough energy to do the exercise that I do. What I specifically want your help with is where and when to have the fats/carbs/protein is it enough in each meal or should I have more in this meal and less in that etc.

Thanks folks :thumbup:
Renee

1800 calories doesn't really seem like enough even if you want to lose weight. I would suggest eating more and making your deficit with more intense exercise. It's important to get enough to eat to keep your metabolism going. You can still have your 500 calorie deficit each day, just achieve it through exercise instead of calorie cutting.

i think you need to give it time.

Good point about making a deficit through exercise and not reduced cals intake. You'll see in my eating plan that I'm eating about 200cals which is almost smack bang in the middle of their lose weight/maintain recommendations.

At the moment I'm in exams so I'm limiting my exercise to 3 weights sessions a week - no cardio. So it's hard for me to make too big of an impact with exercise so I'll have to watch what I eat more closely.

LFN: in regards to giving it time... I only started eating according to that plan today. That wasn't a write up of what I'd been eating it was a write up of a proposed plan to follow.

I've had to make some adjustments already (at the end of day one). Lunch meal is WAAAAAAY too big. My bf said there's no way he could have eaten the whole thing .. I made a dint in it but it's just massive. I've dropped the pasta down to 75g from 150 and picked up some extra calories and calcium by having milk in my post workout shake instead of water.

I ended up eating the vegies/chicken of the lunch meal that I couldn't eat for lunch - for dinner. I'll probably steam some extra vegies because I've only eaten half the serving of vegies I planned to eat.

Haven't been hungry at all today... Is it ok to keep eating my meals even though I'm not hungry for them??

I've been keeping tabs on the amount of water I drink a day and am clocking up 2.5L a day. Is that enough water for how many grams of protein I'm having per day?? (which is 215g)

Renee

Do mean 600 calories ' per session ' - or 1,800 calories per week ( i.e 3X 600 ) ?

Or, 200 calories per session - i.e 600 calories per week ?

Also, how did you come up with 600 exactly ?

If you want a very rough estimate, I have seen a calculator ( see below ) that suggests you multiply the number of minutes you do aerobic cardio, sports etc. X 8 calories. You may want to give that a try in the interim


This formula below is one ( of many ) you might want to try and figure out how many total daily calories to ballpark for each day - this one is a bit different as it attempts to account for some of the cardio and weight training ( both of which you do at some point during each week ) calories separately...........

A - Your weight in pounds

B - Take A X 11 = RMR calories

C - Take B X 1.6 for your daily activities calories

D - Number of minutes you weight lift per week X 5

E - Number of minutes you do aerobic cardio, sports etc. per week X 8

F - Add D & E....divide by 7

G - Add C & F to get an estimate of your daily maintenance calories

.......to which, if dropping body fat % is a concern, you can cut your ' maintenance calories ' by 20% or so as starting point toward helping you shed some fat.

btw - what is your current body fat % anyway ?

In other words, how many lbs of fat do you wish to lose ? And over what time period ?

Nah 600 calories per weights session. My HRM tells me


If you want a very rough estimate, I have seen a calculator ( see below ) that suggests you multiply the number of minutes you do aerobic cardio, sports etc. X 8 calories. You may want to give that a try in the interim




This formula below is one ( of many ) you might want to try and figure out how many total daily calories to ballpark for each day - this one is a bit different as it attempts to account for some of the cardio and weight training ( both of which you do at some point during each week ) calories separately...........

A - Your weight in pounds

B - Take A X 11 = RMR calories

C - Take B X 1.6 for your daily activities calories

D - Number of minutes you weight lift per week X 5

E - Number of minutes you do aerobic cardio, sports etc. per week X 8

F - Add D & E....divide by 7

G - Add C & F to get an estimate of your daily maintenance calories

.......to which, if dropping body fat % is a concern, you can cut your ' maintenance calories ' by 20% or so as starting point toward helping you shed some fat.

btw - what is your current body fat % anyway ?

In other words, how many lbs of fat do you wish to lose ? And over what time period ?[/QUOTE]

I have no idea what my body fat % is, I don't know how many lbs of fat I want to lose but I was happy with my body fat when I was 5kgs lighter (Which was only about a month ago) Time period would be 4-6 weeks to lose 5kgs. I'm in exams at the moment so I'm only doing 3x weights a week, with 10mins cardio after the weights session.

Cheers for the calculator!

Well I suppose it depends on how long you weight train......but that estimate of 600 calories per session seems a bit high to me.

In the vast majority of cases - i.e for the average gym rat - there's no need to go beyond 1 hour of weight training per session IMO. So, assuming that calculator below represents a reasonable basis to ballpark weight training calories, you'd be looking at somewhere around 300 calories expended for an hour of weight training.

Dropping 10 or so lbs of fat in 6 weeks certainly is possible.

Best of luck.

Sorry I messed up the quoting in my last post!
My weights session consists of 5min row warm up around 40SPM. 10-15min stretch. Then 45-60mins weights with my heart rate ranging between 191 and 140. Then I usually finish with 10min cardio, if I'm riding HR is 160 and running HR about 187. I have only input the guidline MHR (eg 220-age) so maybe that's why it's a little off but I don't know how it can THAT far off. How can I double check???

Cheers Wrangle