Confused about TDEE/Macros when in combination with Cutting and Lifting+Cardio

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Terraforcejenny
Terraforcejenny Posts: 47 Member
edited March 2016 in Fitness and Exercise
I originally started my goals to be active 3x a week, and keep track of my calories (and try to get back to my weight pre-depression gain). This was accomplished with biking and general cardio, and the weight started coming off.

Now, I'm exercising around 5-6 times a week (Lifting MWF, Cardio on all the other days. HIIT directly after cardio, sometimes BIkram yoga once a week or stretching somewhere in there).

I can't seem to figure out what my calorie goal should be? I'm not gaining weight but I can't tell if I'm eating at maintenance or not? Is my protein adequete? Am I doing "too much"? It doesn't *feel* like I'm doing too much, and times 'm doing cardio are usually times I would be on the internet browsing, so it seems a healthy alternative.

In addition, although I'm not gaining weight, and I can tell my body has gotten smaller (waist, knees, shoulders and butt specifically, the rest I can't quite see in the mirror or clothes), I can't tell how much weight I would gain from muscle since I started at so basic a fitness level.

So many of the TDEE calculators don't make it easy to explicitly say what type of exercise I do; I know how long I exercise, my heart rate, and general amount of calories burned (I always go for the lowest estimate here and highest for my food intake), and I haven't started body measurements yet in regards to waist, arms, etc. I can't seem to figure out if I need to change anything now that I'm lifting as well as doing cardio, or if I should try to stay where I'm at?

In addition, there are days where I've hit maintenance because of extreme hunger, and I honestly can't seem to tell the difference between this and "healthy" hunger pangs (I struggle with appetite regularity).

Can I get any insight?