How much to eat when lifting

bradp1979

Once a week, I go to the gym and do my full-body weight-lifting thing. I do high-weight deadlift (80-90% of 1-rep max, 3 sets of 5), then pull ups and dips (3 sets of as many as I can do of each). It works most if not all of the major muscle groups and leaves me exhausted. This week even more so because I established my new 1-rep max for deadlift (300 :happy:). My question is this: how much more should I eat on the days that I lift? I'm not spending hours in the gym, usually just about 30 - 40 minutes, but I do work all the major muscles in the body and am exhausted and sore afterward.

Lately, I haven't been eating back more than a few of my exercise calories tracked by my FitBit, and I don't log the hour in the gym, mainly because I don't really trust the accuracy of what it says for how many calories are burned with my 15 minutes of deadlift, 10 minutes of pull ups, or 10 minutes of dips.

I am not asking for a solution to any problems; I'm doing pretty good overall. I've lost 17 lbs in the 59 days I've been doing this, and 2" off my waistline. Just wondering what a group consensus might be as to how much more I should eat on lifting days.

On a side note, why do I weigh 1 to 1.5 lbs more the morning after I lift? Combination of lactic acid buildup and water retention?

Acg67

Once a week, I go to the gym and do my full-body weight-lifting thing. I do high-weight deadlift (80-90% of 1-rep max, 3 sets of 5), then pull ups and dips (3 sets of as many as I can do of each). It works most if not all of the major muscle groups and leaves me exhausted. This week even more so because I established my new 1-rep max for deadlift (300 :happy:). My question is this: how much more should I eat on the days that I lift? I'm not spending hours in the gym, usually just about 30 - 40 minutes, but I do work all the major muscles in the body and am exhausted and sore afterward.

Lately, I haven't been eating back more than a few of my exercise calories tracked by my FitBit, and I don't log the hour in the gym, mainly because I don't really trust the accuracy of what it says for how many calories are burned with my 15 minutes of deadlift, 10 minutes of pull ups, or 10 minutes of dips.

I am not asking for a solution to any problems; I'm doing pretty good overall. I've lost 17 lbs in the 59 days I've been doing this, and 2" off my waistline. Just wondering what a group consensus might be as to how much more I should eat on lifting days.

On a side note, why do I weigh 1 to 1.5 lbs more the morning after I lift? Combination of lactic acid buildup and water retention?

Depends on your goals and if your goal is lose fat and gain muscle, just pick one

bradp1979

Pick one of what? My overall goal is to lose fat. I'm not super concerned with building muscle; I'm doing the gym once a week to ensure that I'm losing fat and not muscle. I want to tone up while burning fat.

bradp1979

bump

jemhh

Are you basing your calories to eat off of the MFP recommended calories? If so, you might consider switching to using your TDEE less a certain percentage. IIFYM is one website (link to calculator below) that will allow you to calculate that. Using the calculator, you choose how many times a week you exercise. Then it gives you various options for losing weight, maintaining, gaining weight. For example, you might choose the "recommended" option under losing weight, which would give you your TDEE less 15%. This is the number of calories that you can eat every day. If you prefer to eat a bit more on training days, you could always reduce that number and then add the difference to your training days. I can't really recommend a certain number because I'm not sure how many calories you usually eat but, for example, if you like to have a certain snack after training, you could start by using the number of calories in it and see if that helps with your hunger.

http://iifym.com/iifym-calculator/