Poll: Am I Eating Enough?

jeffball

So here's the story - I'm 29 and currently 2.5 weeks into the P90X workout program. I'm following the Carbs, Fats, Proteins diet percentages as if God himself wrote the manual. My diet plan and stats are below:

Staring Weight: 199
Current Weight: 188
BMI: 24.1
BMR: 1,888 Cal
Body Fat % (measure with calipers on right side): 10%
Daily calorie intake: 2,200
Breakdown: 30% Carbs, 20% Fats, 50% Protein
Analysis: 165g Carbs, 49g Fat, 275g Protein

So it's known my main goal in this is not to necessarily loose weight but to live healthier and get in shape. Prior to staring P90X I was drinking roughly 3 12oz Pepsi cans a day with a daily dessert limit of about 12 Chips-Ahoy cookies. I didn't eat breakfast at all so lunch and dinner were my only source of food intake. And take was a regular occurrence in my household.

Now here comes the interesting part - I've used the customization i MFP to allow me to tailor my diet to the requirements of the P90X program. Although P90X says I should be eating about 2,400 calories a day I reduced it to 2,200 because I felt overly stuffed at the end of a true 2,400 Cal day.

But as I'm progressing with the workouts and sticking them a bit better as I regain strength I'm wondering if 2,200 is keeping me in a "healthy" range of living. I recently read the post from Banks concerning eating your workout calories and I understand why it's important but there's no accurate way I've found, as of yet, to enter exercises from the P90X workout program into MFP.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/10589-for-those-confused-or-questioning-eating-your-exercise-calo

On a daily basis I'm also taking a break from my lovely place of work to go out to the park and play frisbee with some guys. The 25-30 minutes spent doing this is intense to say the least. We're always soaked with sweat when we return to the office for the plop down in a chair and get back to work mentality. That alone, according to MFP, would constitute about 230 extra calories required for daily intake and I just don't know that I have it in me to eat that much.

Suggestions are welcome as I've enjoyed my time looking through the community of help and support that MFP offers.

jmb1510

Having done P90X I would say in the end your are probably not eating enough. When I did it I was eating 2400 calories a day because I wanted to lose weight. If you don't want to lose weight, then you need more calories, especially if you are doing the frisbee thing. But the real test is what does your body say? If you have plenty of energy and are seeing the results you want, then keep doing what you are doing.

Also, how can your BMI be 24.1 with a body fat of 10%? You must really look like Chuck Norris. I have a BMI of 26 and my body fat is 25%.

erickirb

Calipers are not a very accurate way to test body fat unless the user is very experienced then it may be close but still not exact.

jeffball

How in the world did you do P90X and still come out with 25% body fat? Is that possible? Thanks for the note on maintaining the 2400 calorie load throughout the process. What type of results did you end up with? Are you continuing on to 180 and so on or just moving to regular maintenance?

You're correct - the accuracy of the caliper does rely on the user of said device. But I made sure I did it correctly and checked multiple times over multiple days to ensure I was obtaining an accurate reading. I don't think it's low knowing me - I'm not much fat at all. I've always had an overly active metabolism. If some how I am doing it inappropriately it's not fudging the numbers more than 2-3% which won't affect my calorie intake which is the main point of my original question.

Again - my main goal is not to lose weight although that will be a welcome side effect of this process.

jmb1510

I have gained weight since then. It was a great program, but I didn't learn the life changes that I needed to make. I have made more changes using this website over 3 months then when I was on P90X.

mworld

Im 6' 3.5" and started at 226 23% bf and now after first round of P90x I'm down to 215.5 and 20% bf (all based on my wacky tanita scale pos). I was eating 3000 calories per day the first month of the program untill i felt that it was 'wack' and came on to this site and did the numbers...it gave me 2070 cals a day before exercise and the numbers have worked beutifully for me and I lost a pound a week...so all my weight loss was phase 2 and 3 using MFP numbers.

hope that helps,

jeffball

That's great info! Thanks for the share! So do you attempt your best to "eat your exercise" calories on a daily basis to keep up your health or are you generally sticking around 2070-2200 now? 3000 a day is pretty wack! I commend you for being that dedicated if you kept it up for any time at all. Awesome you made it through the program. I hope to get there soon enough and start it all back over. It's funny but true but I'm not looking forward to phase 2 as I've gotten so used to phase 1 exercises.

mworld

Yeah, its a pretty awesome program, and I can't believe how many pullups I do now from only being able to do like ONE when i started lol. Gets easier fast when you both lose weight and get stronger.

So i don't really try to eat back my exercise calories in any sort of methodical way, but i do use those calories and they can be kind of like vehicles for having a nicer meal that I wouldn't normally indulge in (for instance a good steak)....i try to listen to my body mostly and not really use the calorie tracking to restrict me so much as to show me where I may not be getting VALUE in terms of satisfaction per calorie etc.

edit: also about the calories, I never allow myself to record some ridiculous 1000 calorie number, because then i would be back to where i started with the 3000 calorie diet. So on a day that I really push it and maybe even do some running (double up) i will recorde 600-700 of exercise....i just know that 3000 calories is not something i should have consistently since that activity level isn't something i'll do consistently long term.

jeffball

Thanks for the share... it's helpful to have a type of litmus test to put myself against when working towards my goal of health.

hiddensecant

Since your main goal is fitness, I wouldn't worry about the 200 calories unless you start losing more weight than you're comfortable with.

Are you using a recovery drink? That could be an easy way to get in the calories if you end up deciding that 2200 isn't enough.