Finding my maintenance

adamnordstrm

I am struggling to figure out my maintenance caloric intake. I have tried a few different websites and they all define “activity” differently which is where I think the confusion is. The range they’re providing me is 2500-300kcal.

I am 6’3, weigh 95kg, am 29 years old, and have a fat percentage of roughly 20%. I work and office job and only get about 4k steps a day. However, I gym 5x a week lifting heavy for about 120minutes. This involves compound lifts and isolation.

My goal is to continue building muscle but to burn the fat and so want to eat maintenance caloric intake. Essentially I want the calories burned at the gym to be the only contribution to my deficit.

How many calories should I am for?

Lietchi

Calculators just give you statistical averages.
The only way to know your true TDEE (not some average number produced by a calculator) is to track your food intake for a month (1 menstrual cycle for women) and track your weight trend at the same time. Preferably a period without changes to your routine.

Add up those consumed calories and then add 7700kcal per kg of weight that you lost (or six-year of gained). And then divide that number by the number of days: that's you average daily TDEE.

AnnPT77

What Lietchi said. That's my basic method.

You can use any one of the so-called calculators as a starting point for that experiment. I like this one because it has more activity levels with better descriptions than many others, and lets a person compare various research-based estimating formulas, with and without a body fat percent estimate:

https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

The user interface looks a little complicated at first glance because of the wealth of information and options there, but if you step your way through it, it's fairly easy to understand/use.

One thing to be clear about: MFP's built-in estimating method uses a different approach than most outside calculators. MFP intends for us to set activity level based on our life before intentional exercise, i.e., things like job and home chores, the daily humdrum. Then we log exercise when we do it, and eat those calories, too.

Most outside calculators are TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) estimators. They average in a person's planned exercise.

Either of those methods can work fine, but things get confusing when people don't get clear in their mind which one they're using, and how to use that particular method.

If you'd like to take a look at a more detailed discussion of how various MFP-ers figure out maintenance calories, there's a thread in the Most Helpful Posts part of this topic area, direct link here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10638211/how-to-find-your-maintenance-calorie-level/p1

Best wishes!

J72FIT

I am a fan of Brad Pilon's method for calorie estimate. You take your height in centimeters and then multiply by (men 14-16)(women 12-14). Gives you a range to play with. It is just an estimate but in my experience a pretty good one. That said, your best bet is what Lietchi said. Good luck!