Help with intake please

misssiri

Hi,

Struggling to find the sweet spot and am hoping for some input. Here goes:






Provide your stats (height/weight/age/bodyfat% if you know it/etc)

5'6", about 135, 37yo, bf about 20%

What's your current gross intake of calories, on average?

My intake is 2100-2300

What's your current average intake of protein, carbs, and fats, in grams? (GRAMS, not percent!)


protein 100-130; carbs 150-200; fat 80-100 grams

Do you use a food scale and measure everything?
Yes



Do you track all of your intake, daily? (Everything?)
No, I'm not good about tracking meals out. Trying to limit that to once/ week. I think I did not track at all on Saturday 3/9 and Friday night 3/15

Do you take cheat days or days off?

One meal per week, usually want a stack of pancakes on Friday night before Saturday morning long run

How much weight have you lost so far and over what time period?

I lost 15lbs from 11/2011 to 2/2012. Kept it all off until I found that I could not maintain without 6 days/ week cardio and I wanted to move to strength training. Have gained about 5-6 back in 5 months. (when I lost I was eating the 1200 +plus exercise calories with one cheat day/ week plus one extra binge/ week because I was so hungry)

Describe your activity (exercise and non exercise) and did you change that activity withing the last couple of months?

Training for half marathon (3 days total/ week up to about 25 miles right now) and stronglifts 5x5 2 days/ week. Have found I need 2 rest days with the running. Beyond that, I have a desk job and am pretty sedentary besides the normal chores around the house, errands, etc. If winter ever ends, maybe more time outside hiking, etc?

How long have you been stalled and if it is not a complete stall please be very specific as to how much you have lost over the stalled period.

I'm not stalled necessarily, I'm trying to figure out how much to eat to sustain my activity level without gaining and also a level where I can make strength progress. I pretty much am growing out of my clothes which is really frustrating so I think I may be eating too much. But with the running, I need it. Also, I have put about an inch back on my hips/butt and that has contributed to the clothes not fitting. I have all of my fat there so I would love to think it's muscle sitting next to fat but I don't know if that's how it works.

Need to go open my diary. Thanks in advance

Sarauk2sf

Tagging

SideSteel

Are you having any training performance issues at your current intake? It sounds to me like your intake is very close to correct.

misssiri

Not really. I don't feel like I'm seeing much in strength gains though. Maybe I'm not pushing myself with more weight if I don't have a spotter? Think that could be it?

Yesterday I over ate a bit too much chocolate but most days I feel like I use every last bit of fuel I'm eating. It's just frustrating to feel like I'm growing out of my clothes.

Sarauk2sf

Just to confirm - have you been gaining weight? It seems from your explanation that you have been gaining inches.

misssiri

Just to confirm - have you been gaining weight? It seems from your explanation that you have been gaining inches.

Yes I have gained weight. About 4-5lbs in 3 months. It seems as though it maybe there was some gain around the holidays and then I began to add more miles and days to my running and it stayed around. I noticed the inch gain in my hips as soon as I started doing squats with weight. I really haven't been taking measurements otherwise. It seems like this inch is what is making my pants tight.

SideSteel

I'd like to see you reduce caloric intake by about 100/day total and give this a couple of weeks. Monitor athletic performance and bodyweight and PM one of us if something unexpected happens.

Given your macronutrient distribution I would actually expect the potential for better athletic performance by reducing fat (EDIT so that this makes sense: The alternative is reducing CHO. I don't like that idea given your numbers) so we're going to have you drop 100kcal out of fat, leaving protein and carbohydrate the same.

So you'd be around 2000-2200 kcals
100-130p (what you were at before)
69-79f (about 11g lower than before)
150-200c (what you were at before)


Now ideally, I would expect a potential for better performance by further reducing fat in favor of carbohydrate while leaving total intake the same. This isn't universally true for everyone but I believe "most" people perform better favoring CHO for fat.

I think a more ideal breakdown would be around the following

2100 kcals
110p (minimum)
50f (this would be your minimum)
300c

But the issue here is that if you make this change I would expect the potential to bloat up a fair amount.

What I would like to do first is to go with the bolded part above. Lets see if your weight/measurements stabilize by giving this a few weeks (follow up in a couple of weeks via PM).

We can then entertain the idea of increasing CHO in place of fat at the same caloric intake to see how that helps performance. Ideally we'd do this incrementally and not with a 100g CHO increase in 1 shot.

misssiri

Thanks! I will do it.

Do you think consistency is best or averaging it out? For instance, 2000 one day and on a long run day 2500 maybe as opposed to 2100 every day?

That make sense?

SideSteel

Thanks! I will do it.

Do you think consistency is best or averaging it out? For instance, 2000 one day and on a long run day 2500 maybe as opposed to 2100 every day?

That make sense?

I think you can and should go by preference and performance. Choose whichever is more enjoyable and gives you the best performance while averaging out to the intake listed.

Sarauk2sf

Locking for now as part of a process that we are using to track open threads. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/914180-thread-locking-and-intake-follow-ups


Please PM either myself or SideSteel in a few weeks when you are ready to give us an update, or earlier if you have any further questions, and we will unlock it so you can post.