Could use some advice

mcr5073

So I'm having a hard time figuring out how many calories I need to eat a day. I've been reading and I see that often, if you increase, but not enough - it seems like it backfires!

5'8 156lbs 24 yo female (GW 130)

I'm a full-time student so my workouts are variable -- I try to lift 3x/week and 1-2 light cardio if I can... I also try to do short 15 min NiKE workouts on my phone when I can.

My problem is that I'm not sure where to put my activity level.

IF I do BMR/TDEE for sedentary --> BMR = 1534 and TDEE = 1841 (15% less = 1565) .. So I would try to eat 1565 daily, and then when I lift add 200 or do cardio, add 80% of what I burn back

BUT... if i set my activity as Light activity...
BMR = 1534 TDEE = 2109 (15% less = 1793) and just NOT eat back any calories from exercise unless burn drops me below 1534

As of right now (I just started yesterday and BOY, am I FULL!!) I have my calorie count set to 1550/day and will eat back exercise calories
* Yesterday I ate 1550
* Today I did 15 min bike and 40 min lifting and plan on eating 1700 today.....

My Macros are 40-30-30

Please help if you have suggestions on what Is the best way for me to get this started... THANKS!

KarenJanine

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

I ran your numbers through Scooby's calculator and got the following:

BMR 1533
TDEE 2377
TDEE -15% cut 2020

I put you as 'moderate' exercise which is 3 to 5 hours of exercise per week. Using this calculation to lose weight you would eat 2020 cals every day and NOT eat back exercise cals as they are already taken into account in your TDEE calculation.

Alternatively if you wanted to calorie cycle depending on your activity levels from day to day you could set your goal at say 1600 cals and make sure you eat back your exercise cals to NET at least above your BMR every day.

You say today you plan to eat 1700 cals which is only 167 cals over your BMR, but you've done 55 mins of exercise and I would expect this would make your net drop below your BMR (i.e. 40 mins of lifting and 15 mins running would almost certainly burn more than 167 cals). Therefore I would recommend eating back more of those exercise cals until you are at least netting above your BMR.

Greenrun99

I am going off your numbers as I didn't run anything, but I would just do 1800 daily and no exercise calorie eat back. You are on the high end of lightly active/low end of moderate I would guess.. depending on how light you say that cardio day is.. Exercise calories are hard to determine even with HRM but your way would work, but you are not sedentary, but if you need to work your way up to where you should eat..that is something you can do.