Please help with calorie settings

Spitspot81

I have never felt confident about increasing my calories in order to gain muscle, however I feel that I may have reached the point where I need to in order to gain some shape.

Yesterday I completed my first marathon, I have spent months ignoring the weights and focusing on cardio. This in turn has helped me to drop down to a reasonable weight, but left me with lose skin that needs filling out with muscle. I now plan to focus on a gradual overload programme.

My question is do I set my mfp goals to maintain or gain weight. The phrase gain weight fills me with fear, however I am
Aware that I will not benefit from newbie gains as I have previously weight lifted, and I know that I cannot build whilst in a defect.

My stats are
Age 37
Weight 120lbs
Height 5ft4
Approx bf 22%

Any advice great fully received

NovusDies

You can just change your MFP settings but it may be more accurate to determine your average rate of loss and then adjust the calories manually. If you go manual I suggest evaluating your rate of loss from the last 90 days.

PAV8888

Evaluate your rate of loss from past while. 90 days sounds good.

You're transitioning from marathon training to less activity.

You've been overweight before based on my understanding of your discussion.

Skin does tighten a bit over time and your weight loss based on the discussion is recent.

When doing a lot of cardio some people experience appetite suppression (of course other people experience runger). It sounds; however, that you may be one of the people who experience appetite suppression.

My personal belief is that in your place I would avoid transitioning into an immediate full gain program but would instead look for a maintenance not upset if drifting slightly upwards program.

So I would set myself up to maintain and start training and *not* get too upset and correct with a deficit if I noticed a slight weight increase.

Would also set some parameters in terms of how much of trending weight increase I would accept and in what time frame.

AnnPT77

Since you're feeling anxious about gaining, I'd suggest finding maintenance calories and staying there for a while. Over in the "Goal: Maintaining Weight" part of the forum, there's a thread (in the "Most Helpful Posts" area) about various ways to find your maintenance calories. Perhaps it may help:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level

It's true that if you reduce your running, you'll have some calorie changes from that to factor in, making it a tiny bit more complicated to use some of the methods discussed in that thread.

As far as gaining muscle, the two main alternatives are recomposition (maintenance calories, constant bodyweight, slow fat loss as muscle slowly increases) vs. bulk & cut cycles (oversimplified: eat at a surplus, gain a little fat and some muscle, then reduce calories to lose all the excess fat but lose a minimum of the added muscle). EIther of those, to be most effective, requires a well-designed progressive strength training program, and a diet with adequate protein.

So, if you agree with my suggestion that it might suit you to maintain your weight for a while, you'd be considering the recomposition process to slowly increase muscle (strength increase is faster ) and slowly lose a bit more fat. There's a great thread about how to do recomposition (also over in "Goal: Maintaining Weight" - "Most Helpful Posts"):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10177803/recomposition-maintaining-weight-while-losing-fat

Later, if you decide to do bulk & cut cycles, you can. These are decisions we can change our minds about, depending on our goals and preferences at the time, right?

Best wishes!