Rethinking daily calories.?

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lartishs
lartishs Posts: 29 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Im 5ft 3 and 141 lb. I am a 53 year old massage therapist who is very active with spin and boot camp 4 times a week. I work 3 days a week and my work doesn't really get the heart rate up that much. I have been on 1300 cals a day for 8 weeks with a 4 kg lose in that time. I do eat some of my exercise cals back. I am seriously wondering if I am eating enough. As of today I have upped it to 1500 cals.
Any suggestions please.

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  • lemonychild
    lemonychild Posts: 654 Member
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    yes do up your calories... that seems way too little for 4 times a week. you should calculate your TDEE
  • lartishs
    lartishs Posts: 29 Member
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    Just checked my bml and it is 1313 cals. I don't have a fitbit to check how many cals I am burning. There is so many variations on here for exercise cals and nothing for work cals. Anyway thanks for posting :):)
  • Yi5hedr3
    Yi5hedr3 Posts: 2,696 Member
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    1300 is good, but cut your exercise in half. Too much cortisol from too much exercise. Also check your macros. Keep carbs below 100.
  • lartishs
    lartishs Posts: 29 Member
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    Thats maybe why I am having trouble sleeping too much cortisol
  • Yi5hedr3
    Yi5hedr3 Posts: 2,696 Member
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    Yes, that will definitely do it. Weight loss is 80 percent diet, and just 20 percent exercise. We tend to overdo the exercise part, and underdog the diet.
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
    edited September 2015
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    Yi5hedr3 wrote: »
    1300 is good, but cut your exercise in half. Too much cortisol from too much exercise. Also check your macros. Keep carbs below 100.

    No. All you need to do is maintian a calorie deficit.

    Also, if your calories are that low, you'll want to eat back at least half of your exercise calories, just to keep your strength up.

  • Yi5hedr3
    Yi5hedr3 Posts: 2,696 Member
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    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    Yi5hedr3 wrote: »
    1300 is good, but cut your exercise in half. Too much cortisol from too much exercise. Also check your macros. Keep carbs below 100.

    No. All you need to do is maintian a calorie deficit.

    Also, if your calories are that low, you'll want to eat back at least half of your exercise calories, just to keep your strength up.
    Well, not exactly....true you could lose weight on cokes and candy bars on a deficit, but you would just be losing muscle, which is not good. Trolls everywhere......
  • lartishs
    lartishs Posts: 29 Member
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    I know when I have big days massaging I definitely am alot more hungrier.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,988 Member
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    lartishs wrote: »
    Just checked my bml and it is 1313 cals. I don't have a fitbit to check how many cals I am burning. There is so many variations on here for exercise cals and nothing for work cals. Anyway thanks for posting :):)

    Don't use an online calculator when you have 8 weeks of data. Add all the calories consumed during that period plus 3500 calories for each pound lost (or 7700 calories for each kilogram lost) during that period, and divide by 56 (the number of days in 8 weeks). That's your TDEE. Eat 10% less (or 500 calories less if you want to go for a pound (half kilo) a week. Don't eat back exercise calories because they're already included in your TDEE.

    One bonus of this method is that it doesn't matter how accurate your logging is, so long as it's consistent. (That is, if you made logging errors while accumulating the eight weeks of data, so long as you continue to make the same type of errors in logging, your calculations will work for you. Think of your calories as "OP calories.") (However, this is not going to work so well for someone who isn't fairly consistent in their activity level, including slowly increasing weights/speeds/durations/inclines, etc. over time to maintain similar burns.)

    Based on the numbers you gave in OP (although you should check with your actual numbers, if you have not been consistent with 1300 calories over the past 8 weeks), your TDEE is 1850. Eat less than 1850 if you want to lose weight (as I said, you don't eat back exercise calories when using TDEE). At 1500, which you said is the goal you reset to today, you should lose close to a third of a kilo a week (on average -- weight loss is subject to fluctuations caused by water retention, the weight of food currently in your digestive system, etc.).

    You will need to occasionally repeat the calculations to account for reduced energy needs as your weight falls, and any changes in activity, logging, etc.

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