Calorie intake on 5x5
dave_h_70
Posts: 13
Hi all, I'm starting the Strong Lifts program soon and been looking into the amount of calories I should be on. Reading one of Mehdi's blog posts he suggests body weight x 18 calories, that would mean around 3300 for me and that sounds like a hell of a lot. I don't want to put on too much fat while getting stronger and on that amount it seems like I might. What are you guys finding you need calorie wise?
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I"m always curious to see how other people answer these questions.
Short Answer: If I were looking to gain, I'd try around 250 kcal over maintenance with protein requirements varying by individual lean mass.
For me, that would put me around 3200 calories on days when I go to the gym.
But since I'm not looking gain, I attempt (with a small amount of success) to keep a 500 cal/day deficit, which is close to a 20% reduction from my maintenance, depending on how active I am.0 -
Think one of my problems is how to split up the macros. If I set my goal to weight maintenance on here it gives me around 2500 calories a day with a protein intake of 97g where most things you read says you should be getting 1g of protein for every pound of body weight to build muscle. Does anyone know a good calorie calculator aimed at building muscle rather than loosing weight?0
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I think the default protein levels it sets here are fairly low and based on % and ratios. For building muscle, I've read around 1.5g of protein per lb of LBM (instead of just body weight). Of course, you'd also want to be in a slight caloric surplus.0
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I too am stumped on this I just dropped a good bit of weight and aint ready to bring it back, that being said I want to gain strength and tone up as well. a few folks who have done at least 12 weeks said it is cool to increase calories on workout days, so I add them to my clas on here under cardio and work it as normal, seems to be going really well and I definitely feel the benefits of high protein diet on recovery days. I think this is a subject where Stronglifts Gold Membership would come in handy but F that I aint got 200 bucks, I'd rather use it for iron!!! I will search other forums and post what I find tomorrow!!! Can't wait I swear it is like christmas eve 3 days a week, ready to get it in!!0
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I've been playing around with the manual settings where you enter your goals, I set it to a 40/40/20 split of protein, carbs and fats which is a popular body building macro split but at 2700 calories a day that gives me 270g of protein a day and that's got to be too much! More research is needed I think! lol Chatting to a friend last night it turns out she know a guy that is International fitness model and a nutrition expert so I've dropped him a line to ask for some advice and I'll pass on any I get :-)
Hey Cortez, sounds like your loving the 5x5 program and doing well on it, didn't realize the gold membership cost $200! Wont be joining that! lol How long have you been doing it buddy? Also how many calories do you put on here for your workouts?
Evan, I've read the same about 1.5g per pound but didn't realize it was on LBM, how do you work that out your own LBM?0 -
http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-diet-muscle-gains-strength-building-fat-loss/
Hey homey, this link may help, according to this calories are not as important as what you eat and when. I have no clue about the LBM calculations, I am abit new to this scientific weight lifting, I am from the old school lift as much as you can as long as you can from high school football training, so I am learning everyday. I did my final workout for week 4 and have been true to it doing it exactly as written and I do feel myself getting stronger. Gotta head to work, more later bro.0 -
Ya I've seen that post on the stronglifts site, I'm not sure I'd go with his eat what you like way as I think a bit of structure to my diet will help me a lot, that's one of the main reasons I came on here. I think keeping track and making changes as you go along till you find what works for you is probably the best bet. I've just ordered a set of fat calipers to measure body fat and am going to start measuring a few areas with a tape, waist, thigh, neck and bicep ect to see what changes are happening. If I see positive results I'll stick with what I'm doing diet wise, if not I'll make changes. I guess the perfect balance would be body fat going down, waist and neck getting smaller, thigh and bicep getting a little bigger and very importantly have the energy for training and recovering well. keeping an eye on all that along with the 5x5 program should give me an idea if my diet is working!0
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I agree, the whole eat anything clause had me really confused, the thing for me is that I busted my hump watching my food and cals to drop 20 lbs and I am not in a hurry to go piling it back on besides I changed a lot of bad habits that I want to stick to, so I am gonna try it my way it seem to be working so far.0
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Just to clarify on the StrongLifts.com Gold membership.
I think the quoted $200 is for a full year. for something that'll make a smaller dent in your bank balance, I think it's currently $19.99/month.
I'll probably be joining the next time Mehdi opens it up.0 -
Starting strength has a free forum. That wil put even less of a dent in your bank account.0
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Hi guys, I'm on week 4 and been doing a lot of research on th edietmside of SL and building strength in general. I weighed179 when I joined MFP, set my weight goal to 160, thinking Ijust needed to lose weight to look better. I started riding my bike and going to the gym and lost about 5 pounds on 1700 net calories per day. (eating back calories as MFP guides). I rediscovered SL 5x5 and started it again. I stalled out on weight loss for 3 weeks and did more reading--Lyle MacDonald's site, Fat2Fit, Starting Strength. Figured out I was at too much deficit at 1700 + exercise cals. This week I am eating at TDEE or maintenance at 2400/day and lost 2 pounds in 3 days. I'm going to eat at 2400 all week, then try a week at 20% less. Check out this excellent thread on this forum: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/654536-in-place-of-a-road-map-2-0-revised-7-2-12. The Fat2fitradio.com site has excellent calculators for calorie targets.
Let me know how you do!
Let me know0
