Can someone help me out with calorie intake?

CyclngChick

As a bit of background, I've always been into competitive sports. I raced bicycles competitively for 8 years, ran & played soccer. I was always pretty thin/athletic at around 115lbs (I'm 5'7" btw), but maybe with a little stomach going on from all endurance sports and no weightlifting (at all).

Since getting a real job with less time to train I decided to take up Crossfit (about 5 months ago). This was going well (I go 3x per week) and I was still able to keep doing my other activities per week like running 2x per week (6-8 miles per run), biking (to work a few times a week plus a 2 hour mountain bike ride at least once a week) and rock-climbing 3x per week.

When an 8 week body challenge started, I signed up and asked my coach for advice on how to lose the weight around my middle. He advised eating 1500 calories a day to lose weight. This started out fine for about the first week or so, but then I got really hungry and tired and started doing worse in the Crossfit workouts. From this I started binge eating and actually ended up gaining weight (I'm now up to 130lbs and my pants are tight).

I have since worked my way out of the binge cycle, but now I'm all confused about how much I should be eating... Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you!

Jennbecca33

Hi there, so glad you found the EM2WL forums! We recommend using this Scooby site to calculate your TDEE:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/accurate-calorie-calculator/

I'm not sure your age, so I can't calculate it for you, but with your high amount of activity, you would need to choose the highest activity level to calculate your TDEE. I don't want to speak negatively of the coach who gave you the "1500 calorie" advice, but that was very bad advice. You were - and still are - at a healthy weight for your height - maybe too low of a weight at 115 and 5'7. There was no need to tell you to drastically cut calories and recommend weight loss to get rid of a little belly. 1500 cals is way too low for someone with your high activity level and you can see the negative results it had! Much better advice would have been for you to eat at maintenance (since you were already at a low weight), lift heavy weights and focus on body recomp. That would have taken care of the little belly in no time.

So this is still the best advice for you - even though you are 15 pounds heavier - you are still at a very healthy weight for your height. Eating at maintenance, which will probably be around 2500 cals daily once you calculate it, and incorporating heavier weight training will reshape your trouble spots. You will lose inches doing it this way. You would also have much better results if you would replace some of your cardio with the heavy weights - too much exercise is a big stressor on the body, especially lots of cardio. If you are really determined to lose a few of those pounds you gained, a very small 10% deficit would be all you would need to lose very slowly...but again, you are already at a healthy weight. I hope this helps! Please post back with any other questions you have!