calorie intake for triathlon training

Work out your tdee, and go from there. You'll need to recalculate as your training steps up though.

TDEE = total daily energy expenditure. someone will be along in a bit to give you links to a website where you can work it out.

not sure how accurate it really is. I work out a lot - marathon training, cycling, gym. I find it really hard to eat 'the right amount' as some days i'm ravanous and can eat thousands of calories (usually bike days) and other days im ok. I just try and eat healthy and low fat as much as possible and monitor how i feel and what my weight is doing.

i've been a triathlete for 22 years and completed my first half ironman this year so hopefully I can help. Basically you need to work out your BMR or basal metabolic rate which is the minimum amount of calories your body needs just to stay functioning. There's a good guide here: http://www.livestrong.com/basal-metabolic-rate-calculation/.

If you don't exercise and you eat less than your BMR calories you lose weight its as simple as that. Now the useful thing with MFP is that when you have set up your profile when you add exercise you have done it tells you how many calories you have used which is then added to your total for that day. So it's quite easy to work out how many calories you should be having but as a rough guide here's what the disciplines work out to: Swimming for an hour vigorous sets of free-style roughly 600-700 calories, biking for an hour 14-16 mph is 1,000 calories an hour and running at 12 minute pace for an hour (I didn't say I was quick!) is around 900 calories.

You said its a 3-9-3 and I'm not familiar with that distance but if its 300m swim, 9 mile bike, 3 mile run, then to be honest you don't really need to worry too much about your calories for training especially if you're monitoring them on MFP. More importantly is increasng your carbohydrate intake before long sessions and resting as much as you train as that's when your muscles adapt to what it is you're doing. If you don't increase your carb intake you will run out of energy although if its a short distance I doubt if that will be an issue. Your muscles need carbohydrate to convert into glycogen which then fuels them (your body will turn glycogen into fat if you don't use it) so if you're feeling sluggish my guess would be its not the calories that's the problem its what you're eating.You can have 3,000 calories a day of salad and your body will struggle to turn that into fuel as easily as carbohydrate.

If you can let me have details of your training plan (PM me if its easier, I'm happy to help) I can give you a bit more specific advice on nutrition but for short distance races as I say nutrition isn't so important as eating a healthy balanced diet. If you want to lose weight as well then use more calories than you consume on a daily basis and by tracking them using MFP that's easy to do as I have found :-)

If you plan to 'go long' which is anything above half ironman then the training is longer and fueling on the move becomes an issue in training and on the race and if you're thinking of doing that in the future little and often is the key. I use High5 4:1 carbohydrate drink on any session longer than an hour for the swim and bike (its a bit too gloopy for the run but by then its a case of two energy gels and plain water after 30 minutes). On the bike I also have plain water and for long sessions I have a chewy fruit bar and if I'm really desperate energy gels.

Hope this helps and good luck in your triathlon!