New to group! Also have general help question

jhunn123

Hey All!

Good to find a decent group to help me figure out how to eat well and healthy at the same time. I read over the various sticky threads and specifically the thread titled Setting Your Calorie and Macro Targets. I went to both sites listed to determine my TDEE and it states it is 3764. If I am eating at a 20% deficit then that would be 3011 calories. That seems really high to me. Am I missing something? I am eating around 1800 calories for the past few weeks with minimal success. I just recently started logging my food on here to figure out what the hell is going on. Is it because I am not eating enough? Thoughts would be great to help me out. Stats are below.

Male/Age 27/current WT 227/HT 6'2"/moderate cardio 3x/wk / weight lifting 2x/wk

Waist: 41" at Navel
Hip: 44" at widest point
BF % 26.1%

Thank in advance! My weight is secondary to dropping my BF % to around 15% or less

SideSteel

The first thing I would do would be to get a food scale and take a couple of weeks to accurately track and log everything. Do this for a couple of weeks very meticulously at your current intake of 1800 and I suspect you will likely begin to lose weight, possibly at a fast rate.

It is very unlikely that your lack of weight loss is due to eating too little.

A second potential confounding factor would be whether or not you recently began a resistance training program. Beginning lifters will usually retain fluids in the first few weeks and this can mask fat loss. Regardless of this, I still recommend the previous advice.

Lastly, your TDEE is not likely 3764. Online estimation tools are just that, estimation tools. They are correct for some of the population and quite wrong for others.

jhunn123

I did just start up p90x. I have done several rounds of it in the past, but its been 7 or 8 months that I fell off the wagon =/

I thought 3700 seemed wayyy too high. I am going to stick with my macros as I have them and do what you mentioned. I'll let you know how it goes in a few weeks.

SideSteel

I did just start up p90x. I have done several rounds of it in the past, but its been 7 or 8 months that I fell off the wagon =/

I thought 3700 seemed wayyy too high. I am going to stick with my macros as I have them and do what you mentioned. I'll let you know how it goes in a few weeks.

Sounds good. Chances are, if you are weighing and tracking everything accurately, you'll need to increase calories. The problem is that without being meticulous about portion measuring/etc, what you think is 1800 calories could easily be 2500 calories. This is why we recommend using a food scale especially in the beginning.