1600 calories for female trying to gain muscle
pateljh
Posts: 4 Member
Hey all 
I am female, 5' 2", 125ish. I have been skinny fat all my life and just started working out about 2 months ago. I have a trainer and we do body weight excersises, sprints and weights. No long cardio. I definitly feel stronger. I am starting slow so I do not hurt myself, but I can already see muscle growth (bicep and quads yay!). Honestly, without a trainer I would never work out. Do you think I should add one day a week to do Stronglifts or something similar by myself. I'm not really sure what a realistic goal is for me. I am trying to build muscle. Right now I am at 1600 calories a day and I can't figure out if this is enough or too much. All the calculators give me different numbers and I'm not even sure I could physically eat much more. Any help would be greatly apprecaited!
I am female, 5' 2", 125ish. I have been skinny fat all my life and just started working out about 2 months ago. I have a trainer and we do body weight excersises, sprints and weights. No long cardio. I definitly feel stronger. I am starting slow so I do not hurt myself, but I can already see muscle growth (bicep and quads yay!). Honestly, without a trainer I would never work out. Do you think I should add one day a week to do Stronglifts or something similar by myself. I'm not really sure what a realistic goal is for me. I am trying to build muscle. Right now I am at 1600 calories a day and I can't figure out if this is enough or too much. All the calculators give me different numbers and I'm not even sure I could physically eat much more. Any help would be greatly apprecaited!
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How many days a week are you training with your trainer?
How long have you been training with them? Did you do any resistance training prior to that?
What type of weighted (body and otherwise) exercises are you doing?0 -
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I shoot for 3-4 days a week, ive been training consitently for about 2.5 months. I did some resistence training on and off, but never really worked out before this. I have been doing squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg press, bench press, flys, curls. Those are the one we do the most.
Since I started the excess fat I had developed on my waist and thighs has melted off. There is just a little left. I am not trying to get skinny, I still want my curves, and just want to tone up. Since I turned 28 things were starting to jiggle :-x0 -
I shoot for 3-4 days a week, ive been training consitently for about 2.5 months. I did some resistence training on and off, but never really worked out before this. I have been doing squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg press, bench press, flys, curls. Those are the one we do the most.
Since I started the excess fat I had developed on my waist and thighs has melted off. There is just a little left. I am not trying to get skinny, I still want my curves, and just want to tone up. Since I turned 28 things were starting to jiggle :-x
Sorry it took a while to get back to this.
I don't think we have enough information to give you a concrete recommendation.
If you are lifting 3 to 4 days per week already, and if your trainer is escalating the intensity of the exercise over the course of weeks (are you getting stronger?), and if you are training your entire body multiple times throughout that week, then you probably don't need additional training stimulus. Now if your trainer has you doing shoulders on 1 day, followed by quads on another day, followed by back on another day, etc etc then you probably could improve your programming to get faster results.
As far as total calorie intake goes that's primarily goal and result dependent. Without more information I could give you this very broad method:
1) If you want to lose fat, you should generally see your weight going down at a rate of about .5 to 1% change in bodyweight per week. You should monitor your results and adjust intake or activity to land in that slot.
2) If you want to gain muscle, you should generally see your weight either stay the same or go up very slowly. The faster you gain the more chance you have of maximizing the rate at which you gain muscle but that rate will be quite low as a female and any excess gain will come in the form of added fat. As such, my personal opinion is that keeping your weight somewhere between steady and 1lb/month would be a reasonable slot to land in. As with the above, your strategy to do this would be to monitor the rate at which your weight changes at your given calorie intake, and adjust the intake according to those results to land you in the desired slot.0 -
Thank you for your response.
I have been getting stronger! It is a great feeling He does have me training the entirely body multiple times a week. We do increase intensitity slowly as the weeks progress.
The reason I am having trouble determining calories is because I want to lose fat and gain muscle. I am not concerned about my weight on the scale but I would like to gain muscle and lose love handles and a bit of backfat without losing my curves. My fear is if I drop my calories I will lose curves and not gain muscle, and if I eat too much I will just gain more fat or remain stagnant.0 -
Following! This is my question exactly!! I have body fat to loose but want to gain muscle...I'm not new to lifting exercising, have seen change, but want to be leaner/stronger. If feel like its something to do with my intake!Thank you for your response.
I have been getting stronger! It is a great feeling He does have me training the entirely body multiple times a week. We do increase intensitity slowly as the weeks progress.
The reason I am having trouble determining calories is because I want to lose fat and gain muscle. I am not concerned about my weight on the scale but I would like to gain muscle and lose love handles and a bit of backfat without losing my curves. My fear is if I drop my calories I will lose curves and not gain muscle, and if I eat too much I will just gain more fat or remain stagnant.0 -
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Posting to get back to the top so we do not overlook this.0
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The reason I am having trouble determining calories is because I want to lose fat and gain muscle. I am not concerned about my weight on the scale but I would like to gain muscle and lose love handles and a bit of backfat without losing my curves. My fear is if I drop my calories I will lose curves and not gain muscle, and if I eat too much I will just gain more fat or remain stagnant.
Bump. I am interested in hearing what you say about this.0 -
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As there are a few people looking for information here and the thread was started a while ago (and we have been crapola at responding timely), I thought that I would write down the general recommendations for women. As always, individual facts and circumstances will lead to slightly differing advice, however, as a 'rule of thumb':
1) If you are relatively new to training (3 - 6 months), then there is the potential for 'newbie' gains, even while at deficit. If you are in this category, then, depending on your goals, you can continue to cut or and you still should see some muscle gains. You should see strength gains also as these are less dependent on whether you are at a deficit while still adapting.
2) If you are not new to training and still have a reasonable amount of fat to lose, you generally would continue to cut, but would do so with the expectation that you are looking to maintain muscle mass, as opposed to gain. Note, if you are overweight or obese, you still may have some potential to gain muscle mass - although this, as with most things, if variable and the possibility will depend on various factors such as leanness, training program, genetics, size of deficit, gender, age etc.
3) If you are at or close to your goal weight and looking to recomp (lower BF% but not actually looking to lose weight), then you would eat at maintenance and continue to get enough protein and make sure you have a good training program that incorporates progressive loading. Basically, you would lose some fat and gain some muscle - thereby leading to a relatively static weight.
4) If you are at or close to your goal weight and looking to bulk, for women we generally do not recommend that you look to gain more than about 1lb a month. This is because women just do not gain muscle that quickly, so much higher would lead to gaining a disproportionate about of fat to muscle.
Note: maintenance is not static and you will find that you may need to tweak calories and/or activity in order to maintain (or gain) weight as you recomp/bulk.0 -
Thanks for the answer. I know it's common sense but it is amazing how easy it is to get confused with all of the advice out there. It's also a big mental switch (at least for me) to go from obese to cutting for 9 months to eating maintenance without being afraid I will blow up like a beachball. This post is just what I needed to remind me that as long as I train, watch my cals and my protien, and watch the scale and the tape measure I can't go that far wrong..
BTW love the new profile pic.0 -
Thanks Sara. Like indunna said, it's common sense but I needed to read this to remind myself that it really is this simple :flowerforyou:0
