Help with how many calories i should be eating

StephWieler

I am completely new to the food aspect of lifting. However, i am doing stronglifts 5x5, and am starting to train to run 5K.

I am 125 lbs, 5' 2''
BMI: approx 22.9

My goal is to gain muscle and lose a little bit of body fat..
I just have no idea how many calories i should be eating or how much protein, carbs and fats I need.

I am sorry if this is a dumb question Really appreciate the help Let me know if you need more details.

From the research i did i came up with this... what do you think:
1800 calories a day
carbs: 287.5 gram
protein: 125 grams
healthy fats: 25%

SideSteel

I don't think your math works with your macronutrient suggestions. Carbs and Protein have 4 calories per gram and fats have 9 calories per gram.

Assuming you set your protein at 125g and fat at 25% of total calories, you'd end up as follows:

1800 calories
125 p
50 f
212 carbs

And I think that's a fine place to start.

I would expect this calorie intake to be somewhere in the ballpark of maintenance or possible a slight deficit. You would ideally want to determine whether you would prioritize muscle gain over fat loss or vise versa and make sure your total energy intake jives with that goal.

So for example if you would like to lose fat I would monitor what happens with your body-weight over the course of a few weeks and adjust energy intake up or down based on that.

Finally, with the above macronutrient intake I would note a few things:

- You could probably reduce protein if you preferred. I don't think I'd go below about 105g or so and there's nothing wrong with staying at 125g provided that you're getting enough fat and carbohydrate and you're meeting preferential needs with remaining calories.

- After a week or two if you find that you're having difficulties staying near your fat target you can always reduce carbohydrate and move additional calories to fat. Preferences and training performance can cause this to vary a bit in that some people do much better on higher carbohydrate intakes and some people do better with additional fats. Allow yourself some leeway to move calories from carbs to fats as needed, just pay attention to how you feel and the results of that.