CALORIE INTAKE FOR 18 Year Old Female

selenenatalie

I am an 18 year old female. My usual workout routine consist of waking up at 5 AM for an indoor cycling class. Then having a gym workout with weights around 2-3 PM. Then after still pitch or have softball practice. So Im pretty active but want to lose a little bit of weight. What’s a good amount of calories I should eat without feeling fatigue as an athlete.

Panini911

Be honest and maybe talk to a reasonable third party on if you actually need to lose weight or not. Possibly recomp/muscle building and toning are more what you are looking for.

enter your stats in MFP. select 0.5lb/week rate of loss. Be honest about yoru activity level (likely NOT sedentary).

IT will give you calories to eat daily to lose 0.5lb/week WITHOUT purposeful exercise. So you will get a reasonable estimate of calories burned during exercise (spin, gym, ewight, softball) and EAT BACK THOSE EXERCISE CALORIES.

Get a food scale to properly weigh and log your food intake.

Be patient. 0.5lb/week is often hidden in daily/weekly/monthly water fluctuations so get a weight trending app and look at your trend over 2-3 weeks.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1399829/step-by-step-guide-to-losing-weight-with-myfitnesspal


and get a FOOD SCALE, crucial tool for most of us here
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10634517/you-dont-use-a-food-scale/p1

NovusDies

selenenatalie wrote: »

I am an 18 year old female. My usual workout routine consist of waking up at 5 AM for an indoor cycling class. Then having a gym workout with weights around 2-3 PM. Then after still pitch or have softball practice. So Im pretty active but want to lose a little bit of weight. What’s a good amount of calories I should eat without feeling fatigue as an athlete.

How sure are you that you are not losing weight now? Keep in mind that your weight will fluctuate up and down quite a bit on the scale:

http://physiqonomics.com/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-weight-and-fluctuations/

For the sake of argument let's say it would be better for you to drop a few pounds. Unless you are actually gaining weight right now I doubt you need to be counting calories. If you are mostly maintaining your weight just cut a few calories from your normal day. There are typically some really easy ways to cut out 250 calories from your day like:

1) Eliminating/replacing an unnecessary caloric drink. An example would be switching from regular soda to diet.
2) Eat one less slice of pizza
3) Eat half your dessert or switch to fruit for a time
4) Replace a high calorie snack with a lower calorie option
5) Don't snack on auto-pilot

That list is not for you to do all of them in a day any single item would probably be enough if you are currently holding steady on your weight.

ETA: If that doesn't work over the course of a couple of months you can always count calories.

csplatt

It’s going to be difficult for you to really know your daily calorie burn with that level of activity! If you are an athlete, maybe a trainer at your school or nutritionist could help you select a calorie goal for each day?

For me, my desk job makes it really easy to guess how many calories I need for maintenance, etc. and logging my fitness burns is based on a heart rate monitor. But if you are a serious athlete, I am thinking this won’t be the place for you to get healthy guesstimates!

NovusDies

csplatt wrote: »

It’s going to be difficult for you to really know your daily calorie burn with that level of activity! If you are an athlete, maybe a trainer at your school or nutritionist could help you select a calorie goal for each day?

For me, my desk job makes it really easy to guess how many calories I need for maintenance, etc. and logging my fitness burns is based on a heart rate monitor. But if you are a serious athlete, I am thinking this won’t be the place for you to get healthy guesstimates!

That is my concern. The OP will need a lot of calories to maintain that level of activity and if the MFP estimate is too low it could throw a serious wrench in her life.

People lose weight all the time with simple elimination and the OP seems like a good candidate for it assuming her weight is stable right now. If not then she will probably have to count calories for awhile to see how much she is eating before she can determine how much to cut.

Azurite27

As others have suggested, check with a doctor or trainer to determine if it's healthy or reasonable to lose weight. Then, if you are mostly maintaining now, I would suggest just logging your food for a couple weeks for what you're eating now. Don't make any changes, just log to see what your caloric intake is now. Then slowly lower those calories, but by no more than 250 calories a day.