Working out my calories

lydialaura8189

Hello! So I’ve been counting calories on and off for a while now, and am currently trying to maintain my weight. I’m struggling to estimate my activity levels as I have a desk job but walk around 12-15k steps a day minimum, do 40 minute sessions at the gym three times a week and run a 5k once a week (for context I am 5’7, female, 23 and weigh 125 pounds). I have been maintaining on 1,950 a day but tend to go very overboard on weekends through a combination of food and alcohol and average about 3,000 calories on these days, so twice a week. I had my activity set as lightly active to maintain, but I’m wondering if setting it to active might be more accurate and hopefully would lessen the weekend binges. So basically my question is, what activity level would you set your calories if you were me?

sijomial

Active (or even higher) would be more accurate but remember that activity setting doesn't include your purposeful exercise.

But if my weight was stable for a month or more I wouldn't adjust anything.
How long have you been eating to that goal (and eating more at the weekends) and what has your weight trend done in that time?

wunderkindking

You need to look at your calories vs what your weight does over a month or two. The answer for what you, as an individual, needs is in the math.

If your weight stays the same, your calories are right to maintain. If you gained, you need to reduce by that number of calories (3500 per pound) divided by the number of days your experiment period is. If you lost, do the same math (3500 per pound divided by days) and add them.

ALL calculators are estimates and very few people are far outside them but they're not dead on precise for a lot of people, either.

westrich20940

Are you binging on the weekends *because you are hungry/starving/craving....or simply because it's the weekend and your lifestyle then lends itself to eating more calories (going out to dinner, dinner/food at a social party, drinking)?

If it's the latter --- then I think you're good. You know that on the weekend you'll eat more and on the weekdays you eat less...and you said you are maintaining at that level - right?

If it's the former - then it would probably be beneficial to up your activity level from whatever you currently have it set to, up one more and see how that goes....but in that case, you have to eat the same calories on the weekend days as the weekdays. And then do that for a couple months and then see if you gain/lose/stay the same.

There's no issue with eating a different amount of calories on weekdays vs. weekends, as long as that works for you. Like...if you think you will still eat more/drink a lot of calories on the weekend days, then upping your calories on the weekdays is just going to end up with you netting more calories in general and you said you've maintained your weight on what you're doing now.