TDEE Helppp! Confused!

Hi All,

I need help, I started 5x5 2 weeks ago on the calorie goal of 1290 which MFP gave me plus my exercise calories, however when I had a look at my TDEE it says I should be eating 1961 calories for muscle gain. This seems wayyyyy to much as I am also trying to loose a bit of weight.

Can someone explain what the best thing is for me to do. Do I keep my calories low and keep lifting or up my calories and risk not losing any of my weight.

I am 5ft 6in and weight 142 pounds. If that helps.

Thanks.

Are you trying to calculate calories for muscle gain or fat loss? The former is going to be optimized with a surplus and the latter a deficit. Points of your post seem contradictory but since you say "I'm trying to lose a bit of weight," I'll assume that's your primary goal.

Since you're not rocking loads of excess fat, the female body can get pretty darn defensive against a deficit. What does that mean exactly? It's sort of a catch-all phrase for possible changes to the body such as metabolic slowdown, muscle loss, hefty water storage masking fat loss on the scale, etc.

That said, your best bet is to start out conservative with your deficit. I tend to start clients who are in similar shoes as yours at roughly 12 calories per pound of total daily calorie intake. If they present something that suggests their TDEE is lower.... such as being sedentary most of the time outside of structured exercise, a medical condition, etc... I might start a bit south of 12 cals/lb but not much.

From there, the process of being consistent, tracking, and tweaking begins. If, after a couple of weeks of consistency at 12 cals/lb nothing really changes... I might drop it by 10%. Rinse and repeat.

You have to take this process-based approach since we don't really know your TDEE, TDEE varies day to day, and the body is adaptive. So you need to be flexible and root your approach in logical tracking and tweaking.

And of course it's not solely about quantity of food... quality also matters but I don't think you're wanting to go down that rabbit hole.

And lastly, just so we're clear... you should definitely be resistance training while trying to shed some fat.... it's a strong stimulus for muscle preservation in the face of a calorie deficit.

That's the holy grail.... shedding fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. We all want to reach our optimized body composition in one fell swoop. For most though... it's simply not the way it works.

It sounds like you're relatively new to resistance training... am I right?

If so, you reside in a camp that can in fact gain a hint of muscle while dieting. The novelty of the stress imposed by resistance training can do some cool things in the face of a deficit. Generally speaking you need a surplus of calories to facilitate muscle growth. Said growth is a very intensive process, energetically speaking... so if we're dieting, by default, we don't have enough energy coming in the door to maintain the tissues we currently have. Generally our bodies aren't going to make matters worse by adding a calorie hog like more muscle.

But again, if you're new to resistance training, there's a small chance for some short lived concurrent changes.

That's neither here nor there though...

What you need to know is your best option is to rock the deficit process as I address in my previous post. Start tapping into your fat stores. While doing so, do the necessary stuff to maximize your muscle mass (either by way of maintaining as much of what you currently have or possibly even adding a bit more). You'll accomplish this by i) eating a sufficient amount of protein and ii) lifting weights that are heavy relative to your strength.

And just to get a bit more specific, in my book:

- sufficient protein would be 1 - 1.25 grams per pound of goal body weight

- relatively heavy weights would be part of a lifting program that has you hitting each of your major muscle groups at least a handful of times each week using loads that have challenged in the 4-15 rep range. Obviously there's a ton of latitude with this.... but as an example something like a full body program done 2-3 times per week would suffice... maybe 1 moderate day where you're doing sets of 8-10, one light day where you're doing sets of 12-15, and one heavy day where you're doing sets of 4-6. But again... that's one of almost limitless options.

As fat is minimized and muscle is maintained, you'll approach a level of leanness that is ideal. If at this point you're not content with your physique... your next step would be to shift focus and slide into a building face where you'd systematically ramp calories up to maintenance and beyond. The idea would be to find that sweet spot, calorically speaking, where you're eating sufficient energy to fuel growth yet not so much that lots of it is spilling over to fat.

And that's pretty much the name of the game... focus on a phase dedicated to losing fat and minimizing muscle loss, then flipping to a phase dedicated to building muscle while minimizing fat gain.