Help me determine my calorie intake PLEASE!

irunsf85

I am a 26 year old female weighing in at 120 lbs and 5'2". I would like to lose about 15 lbs, bringing me down to 105 which is still within healthy weight but on the lower end of the scale.

Currently, I run 4 days a week and average 20-25 miles/week but will be gradually increasing to train for a marathon at the end of the year. I also am going to start strength training 2x/week and do some crosstraining 1 day/wk between 30-60 mins. My TDEE at "sedentary" lifestyle is 1800 cals. Currently, I am eating 1300 NET calories, so that means I eat 1300 cals/day + exercise calories burned and use MyFitnessPal app to help track my cals. I determine the amount of calories burned from running by using the net exercise calories equation posted on Runners World.

(.63 x wt) x mile = cals burned. This helps me from over-estimating the amount of calories burned through exercise since I know a lot of calculators tend to.

Can you please help me determine if I am eating enough calories in the day to keep up with my lifestyle and lose those unwanted pounds? Previously, I was eating 1200 cals/day and not eating back my exercise cals. I found that this often lead me to binges so I decided to up the cals since I was plateauing. The reason I want to lose some weight is because I carry a lot of the excess weight around my waist.

kdiamond

How long have you been at your increased calories? These things take time. Also, that is a LOT of running. I understand you're training for something, but you need to eat more to balance out all of that running. I'd say bump it to 1800+ on the days you run, and stick to 1400 on the days you do nothing.

irunsf85

Hi kdiamond. Thanks for responding. I actually just started upping my cals yesterday but I wanted to post here to make sure I was on the right track. On the days that I run, should that be 1800 NET cals or total calories?

irunsf85

Bump