Should I eat more or less? HELP!

lorenalorena

So I'm 23, weight is 129 lbs and height 5' 3", and my BMR is supposed to be around 1200.
I exercise two hours, 5 days a week (45 minutes cardio, and a month ago I added an hour of weight training and a body conditioning class).
Anyhow, I was eating 1200 to 1400 calories but now I'm eating 1500 to 1700, but I feel like I've gained weight (I also feel like I'm retaining water because I just started training harder a month ago). So do you think I should eat more? less? the same?

AdrianBry

the only thing that can give you the RIGHT answer is YOU and your food journal (which I'm guessing you're using MFP for)

It's going to take trial and error to see what calorie amount works best for you to lose weight, gain weight or maintain.

I could tell you eat more or eat less or the same but I'd have a 33% chance of being right the first time, 66% chance the second and then finally a 100% right answer the last time and that's essential what you have to do with your MFP calories tracker/food journal

cdahl383

Have you actually weighed yourself during this timeframe to monitor your progress? It's possible to gain a little from weight training from adding muscle, but if your clothes are fitting better you're most likely moving in the right direction.

You don't want to just eat your BMR in calories, that is the absolute minimum your body needs to function while doing nothing and just maintaining basic functions. If you are exercising, walking, thinking, talking, driving, or doing anything more than just sleeping then you should be eating more than that.

I would try plugging in some numbers in a calorie calculator to give you an estimate of where you should be. If you want to lose weight, subtract 20% from that number and eat that for a few weeks and monitor your progress by weighing yourself weekly in the morning before you eat/drink anything. You need to get the activity level as close as possible as that will affect your outcome (i.e. sedentary vs very active, etc). You seem like a pretty active person, so you'd want to enter some sort of higher activity level and then go from there.

joshdann

You don't want to just eat your BMR in calories, that is the absolute minimum your body needs to function while doing nothing and just maintaining basic functions.

While it's true that your body's BMR is a measure of how many calories you burn in a sedentary day, it's not true that you have to eat that many calories to survive, assuming you have fat stores to burn in conjunction with food.