P90X nutrition guide

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Hey everyone! I just started P90X today and according to their nutrition guide, I'm supposed to be eating 1800 calories a day. I want to follow the guidelines but since this is new to me and I wasn't able to keep up with the people on the dvd very well, I don't think I burned enough calories to justify eating so much. Should I just suck it up and eat all 1800 calories or should I lower that number a little?

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  • flea2449
    flea2449 Posts: 500 Member
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    Does it say for both the regular and the lean?
  • hpsnickers1
    hpsnickers1 Posts: 2,783 Member
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    I think it will be okay to stay at your existing calorie goal and make sure you eat back what you burned. I can tell you though that you will be able to eat more while using this plan and you should. Your body will need the fuel or you will burn out fast.

    I was striving to eat maintenance calories (1470) and my average burn for the strength DVD's is 250 calories so if I was to eat all of that it would put me at 1720. I'm still losing weight. (I just switched my maintenance to 1600).
  • amg_89
    amg_89 Posts: 184
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    The thing about P90X is that it wasn't technically made for weight loss, so no, you probably don't need to eat all 1800 cals. if you have a heart rate monitor that would be ideal because you could find exactly how many cals you burn in a workout and just plug them in here. if not, i would try and find an exercise on here that most closely matches the type of activity you did on the MFP database and plug them in here. I could be wrong, but that's what I would do.
  • AFitasticYou
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    I would follow what MFP says and eat all or most of your exercise calories back.
  • jamie1888
    jamie1888 Posts: 1,704 Member
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    They do assume an average calorie burn of 600 calories per workout. So, if your heart rate monitor says you are burning that during yours, then 1200 + 600 exercise calories would be fair. But, I've done of the workouts and have only reached 600+ during Plyo after a few times of doing it.
  • therobinator
    therobinator Posts: 832 Member
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    Follow their nutrition guide. It should have options for weight maintenance, weight loss, and even weight gain. You will burn out very quickly if you don't fuel yourself enough.
  • crazypenrod1508
    crazypenrod1508 Posts: 32 Member
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    Just listen to your body. If it is telling you that you NEED food then eat, but if you are feeling good then you can go under your 1800.
  • thollis6734
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    I'm on my 5th week of P90X lean and my calorie set point for mfp is 1350. The days I workout out it moves up over 1800. So I keep my net below 1350. So far its been working geat.
  • BrianJLamb
    BrianJLamb Posts: 239 Member
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    Follow their nutrition guide. It should have options for weight maintenance, weight loss, and even weight gain. You will burn out very quickly if you don't fuel yourself enough.

    Robinator is right about burning out. I did P90X for a week and a half before I got injured. I cut too many calories and by the start of week 2, I could get nothing done.
  • thumper44
    thumper44 Posts: 1,464 Member
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    P90x workouts can be around 600 calories burned.
    They say you should eat 1800 calories.

    I always took that as, eat 1200 calories plus 600 exercise calories.

    You didn't complete the whole thing, I would think it will depend on how your body is feeling. If you feel ok go under 1800. If you are hungry, eat 1800.
  • Buckeyt
    Buckeyt Posts: 473 Member
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    It takes a while to get into the groove of both the workouts and the nutrition.

    Another poster hit the nail on the head about it not being a weight loss program. IsI followed the nutrition guide when I first started I would have had to eat 3,000 claories. I ended up eating around 2,200 and had great succes on my first two rounds. In round 5 now and eating about 2,500 to burn that last ten pounds.

    I'd suggest just stick with your current calories plan and eat your exercise calories. Hopefully you have a HR monitor so you can see how much you burn doing the cardio routines. The resistance days the HR monitor is kind of useless as they are designed to calculate caloric burn using HR and your caloric burn while lifting is different so your results won't be accurate.

    Also, I strongly suggest you do the classic program. that was the way the program was designed and that really is where you'll see the most changes in your body.

    Tim
  • Kbelle2607
    Kbelle2607 Posts: 61 Member
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    Thanks for all the input! Yall are great :)