How to adjust my caloric intake for higher activity levels

linnaeus

F/31/5'4" Hey all, I've lost 25 pounds maintaining a caloric deficit and usually eating 1200-1300 calories/day, and doing some bodyweight(strength training) exercises 3 times/week, with maybe 1 or 2 cardio-related activites. I'm about 1 pound from being considered having a healthy BMI.

However over the past couple of weeks I've started adding more cardio stuff like >10mile bike rides and intense yoga classes to 1/day or sometimes even 2/day. Surely I need to up my caloric intake but I'm scared about gaining weight and losing my momentum, both on the scale and with yoga/bicycling which I have started to really enjoy.

Can anyone relate to this particular situation, what did you do, what did or didn't work etc? Any constructive help would be much appreciated.

aelunyu

Sure! I can relate to this...as I see myself get on a "reverse" diet quite often. What I generally like to do is be very slow and careful with the increases in calories. Usually since my protein numbers don't ever change, nor do my fats, it's just a slow creep upward of carbs. Usually after a few weeks of maybe adding in 25g-30g of carbs a week and maybe a little bit of fat too, I start to gain weight. For me, I continue this so I can perform better, but if you don't want to gain weight, you would stop right there, and cut back down to -25-30g carbs from the point at which you start gaining. That keeps you pretty much right at maintenance.

I hope that makes sense.

cmriverside

If you use your Actual Activity Level here, you'll get more than 1300 calories.

Set your "Goals" to "lose one pound per week" and use "Moderate or Very Active".

You can do that here:

MY HOME> Settings> Update diet/fitness profile

Just be honest - don't try to trick the system.