Starting weights - how many extra calories to eat?

Jamtab
Jamtab Posts: 18
in Fitness and Exercise
I'm kind of new to this. I started at 142 and weigh 131 now, I've lost the weight from eating exactly what MFP has said to to get to my goal of 125lbs. I always eat back my exercise calories. I also do 30 minutes of cardio 5 days a week. I don't want to be the skinny- fat chick, so I want to start weights, I plan to start with dumbells at home. I will aim for 3 days a week. My body fat from online calculators says 18.4%, my TDEE for light-moderate activity is 1928-2173. I eat about 1400 calories on my non-exercise days and about 1900 on my cardio days. Do I keep doing the same amount of cardio? How much extra calories are you supposed to eat, is there a certain amount, percentage? I still have a few more pounds on my belly especially I want to lose, so I want to lose maybe 5 more pounds total but start gaining muscle mass too. I'm just confused as to how much to eat extra, do I just eat the extra on weight lifting days? Thanks for any insight, sorry for so many questions at once.

Replies

  • Emtabo01
    Emtabo01 Posts: 672
    I've heard to eat at maintenance for a while, I'm not an expert though.
  • Jynus
    Jynus Posts: 519 Member
    I've heard to eat at maintenance for a while, I'm not an expert though.
    Are you doing strength training? Or more cardio type circuit training? If it's the former then don't bother doing anything different for first few weeks then slowly start adding more calories as you progressively get heavier. someone untrained just can't push enough to really create calorie burn. Don't know how to properly move their body. As that changes, calorie demand increases so you need to compensate. If it's the latter, you're basically doing intense cardio and should log it as such.
  • adiposer
    adiposer Posts: 2
    You really don't need to add more food to your daily intake just because you started lifting weights, if anything, maybe an additional high protein snack post-workout -- especially for a female who is trying to get to 125. If you were to start power lifting - like body building to put on some SERIOUS muscle, then yes. The difference between cardio and strength training is that cardio is a little more measureable because the calories we expend are related to our increase in heart rate, along with our weight and height, DURING our exercise. As our body comes back to a resting state (a normal heart rate) we don't really burn any extra calories because we've ceased the activity.
    Strength training is different in that the more muscle you have, the more you burn throughout your day. So yes, you will have an increase in calorie expenditure during your exercise as well, albeit not as much as your cardio at all, but you will also spend calories post-workout.

    Muscle weighs more than fat. Energy = calories. Therefore, our body spends more energy sustaining our muscle.

    Btw...I am a female too and have been weightlifting for years so I can attest to everything I said above. I mostly use MFP to monitor my food intake.

    Hope this helps.
  • Determinednoob
    Determinednoob Posts: 2,001 Member
    In your case you probably don't need to add any right away. In my case I went from 1400-1600 cals per day to 2600-2800 per day when I started lifting after previously doing nothing and having stayed the same weight for awhile. I stayed the same weight at that point too.

Categories