Hello everyone, just joined up on this forum. I have been browsing through many of the topics for about a week or so now and alot of the information seemed very helpful. Anyways, just to give you alittle bit of a background about myself. I'm a 18 year old male, full time college student. I played Hockey for ten and 1/2 years, that kept me pretty cut. After starting college, I wasn't able to make time for it anymore. Recently, about a month ago I joined the local gym. I also started to watch everything I eat. I cut out all white bread and stick to whole grain now. Cut out all soda, fast food and sweets. I'm 5'11, when I started at the gym I was 197. I'm now about 193 a few weeks later. I go to the gym seven days a week, an hour to an hour and a half at a time. Five days of weights, two days of cardio. Although everyday I go when I lift I do alittle bit of cardio at the end. In the morning I take a multivitamin. Before I go to the gym, I drink NO Xplode. After the gym, I drink a protein shake. I have been eating alot of fruits also. I just wanted to know about how many calories I should be consuming a day. My goal is to reach about 180 and then bulk up from there. Right now I'm just looking to lose weight and become cut. If anyone has any suggestions that would be really great. Look forward to talking to all of you. Thanks in advance for the advice!

It's always going to come down to calorie consumption vs. calorie burn.

1lbs of fat is 3500 Kcal's worth of stored nutrient energy.

If your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate - what you burn in a day not including exercise and activity) is 2000, and you burn 1500 calories a day from exercise and general activity, that's a total daily burn of 3500.

If you eat only 2,000 calories a day, that means every day you're accumulating a caloric deficiency of 1,500 calories. So after 3 days you'll have utilized more than the 3,500 calories stored in a lbs of fat.

You can calculate your BMR here (approximation): http://html.channel4000.com/sh/healt...c/bmrcalc.html

As far as your daily caloric intake and activity burn, you'll have to figure that out based on what you consume and your activity level.

Thanks for the quick response. I used that calculator, put my age in as 18, weight in as 194 and height in as 5'11. It told me that my BMR was 2060 and then when I apllied my BMI to my activity level as very active, it gave me my BMR as 3502. Does this mean I should be eating 2060 calories a day? Just getting into all of this fitness stuff so trying to understand as much as I can. Thanks.

Edit: I'm not so sure I should put Very Active for the BMI activity level. I go to the gym once a day for an average of an hour to an hour and 1/2. Does this mean I should be eating 2060 calories a day or 3502 calories a day? Also, if I am trying to loose weight and get cut should I be eating less then this or no more then this? Thanks again.

Again, read what I typed. Whatever you end up in deficit every day - i.e., how ever much more you burn than consume - is going to go towards burning body fat for energy. So to lose weight, consume less than you burn. Once the amount you burn over what you consume (your caloric deficit) reaches 3500, you'll have lost a lbs of fat (assuming fat is bioavailable enough for your body to break that down and not muscle, instead).