Advice needed - how many calories should I be eating?

rachelmhairi

Hi! I'm looking for some help on my calorie intake.

A bit of background: I'm 5ft4 22 years old and currently weigh 135lbs. I run an average of 15-20 miles per week and crosstrain two days per week (50 mins per session). I'm a flight attendant so have a fairly active job where I am standing/moving around for most of my shifts which can last anywhere from 5 - 14 hours. I don't drive so walk pretty much everywhere as well.

I want to lose weight but also have enough fuel for my workouts (especially my running). I've set my mfp activity level to not very active at the minute, and mfp has given me a recommended intake of 1200 to meet my weight loss goals. I'm worried mfp may be a little too generous with calories burned through workouts.

Basically what I want to know is - what are your opinions on how many calories I should be eating to safely lose weight, given my activity level, so I can set custom calories on mfp.

Any guidance would be much appreciated as I seriously haven't got a clue where to start!

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PAV8888

I can guarantee you that losing 2lbs a week is not the right goal.

You're at a normal weight and athletic. Look at recomp. At most look at setting a 10% deficit off tdee. Which if.you achieve you won't even be able to tell is taking place due to water weight changes!

Look at recomp. Please do!

LivingtheLeanDream

You aren't overweight so you should be aiming to lose 0.5lb per week.
I'm a few inches smaller at 5ft 2 and lost weight consistently at a rate of 0.5lb per week eating 1650-1800 calories, I'm active.
You are active in your life as well as doing your running so you should easily be able to eat as much as I did if not more - try it for a few weeks and see.
Realistically you aren't probably needing to lose more than 7lbs if even that?

rachelmhairi

Thank you for your responses!

PAV8888 - I just had to google recomp. This sounds good as I want to lose fat and retain as much muscle as possible. My TDEE is 2104 so around 1890 sounds good at 10% deficit.

RunRutheeRun - Thanks for sharing your experience. I think I'm going to shoot for 1890 for a few weeks and and see how it goes. I'm hoping to improve my running mileage so hoping this will give me the fuel I need to do that while hopefully (fingers crossed) losing lbs (fat) slowly and steadily as you have suggested.

Thanks again.

LivingtheLeanDream

Glad to be of help.

All the best.

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terbusha

I would say that you are pretty active and should definitely be eating more than 1200 cal/day...especially with all the running you're doing.

What I do and what I recommend to people is to eat at a calorie level that allows you to make good progress towards your goal. If you are trying to lose weight, eat so you drop 1-2 lbs/week. This assumes an average calorie burn from you getting in all of your workouts. This will be different for everyone, so you'll have to do some trial and error to figure it out. I'd start ~1600 cal/day. Hit this goal, along with your macros and getting in your workouts, for 2 weeks. If you lose 1-2 lbs/week, you're good to go. If you lose too much, increase your intake and repeat. If you don't lose enough, reduce your intake a bit and repeat. After a few cycles, you'll figure out what works for you in your situation.