Default Can you build muscle on a calorie deficit?

what did you use to calculate your tdee?

i just put my numbers in to my fitness pal.

I lift 2-3 days in a 7 day period, I play hockey twice a week minimum. One day is an intense game, the other is a 1 hour practice and only the last 15 minutes is intense (scrimmage). I may add another light day of skating or HIIT.

Other than though i do nothing. i sit at my job all day. Then I drive 3 hours. I'm sitting any where from 9-15 hours a day 5 days a week. I do have kids and hang out with them, but nothing strenuous.

When i put my numbers in to the website here I say that I am sedentary. It says I should eat 1740 for a 1 lb. a week deficit.

I've looked on other websites and it's close to the same.

Try either fat2fitradio.com or scooby. You aren't sedentary as you are getting exercise 3 to 5 days per week. That makes you moderately active. Fat2fit doesn't factors in activity so no eating back. I forget about Scooby and how they handle it. I just plugged you data into fat2fit and it has your BMR at 1880 and give you a 2442 calorie level without eating back at a lightly active activity level. I thought your numbers seemed low. Maybe I made a mistake so check me out.

BTW, I mistakenly deleted a freind request from you. It didn't have a message and I didn't realize it was you til too late. I'm sending you one.

Cool

I did look on fat2fit and it says if I want to reach my goal weight i should eat around 2100 calories a day. That's how many I'd need to maintain 170 lbs.

so if they say I need about 2442 a day is that just to maintain my weight? I'd still need to subtract the 500 a day to lose 1 lb per week? I don't think I could eat 2442 a day and just burn off the 3500 calories a week through exercise. I just ordered a polar ft7 so i can get a better idea of how much I'm burning.

Thanks for your help.

I'd try going to the 2100 and seeing how that went. I'm guessing your TDEE is about 2600 give or take. See how it goes. If you are not losing, drop by 5% or 10% until you are. I've expereinced a funny thing over the last few months. It doesn't matter how much I eat within a range of 1700 to 2600. My weight only moves slightly but my body fat reduces. BTW, the HRM will be helpful for cardio activities but will be fairly useless for weight training. They are designed to measure heart rate and have algorithims to extrapolate calorie burn from that. The strenght training calulations here on MFP under cardio are acutually pretty close. The fat burning benefit to strength is not the burn during but the demand on your metabolism for recovery resources for some period after. Referred to as Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption or EPOC. Also referred to as afterburn!