Looking for recomp but confused about IIFYM numbers and eating back excercise

Dreysander wrote: »

Right! Background: So since January I've lost around 100 lbs. My starting weight was 235, I now weigh 127. My goal weight is 115-125. I'm 5'4 and 31 years old. Not sure what my body fat percentage is but I do know that I want to get leaner, right now I'm pretty soft.

I'm "lightly active" I suppose, I'm a stay at home mother and I home school my oldest two kids. I also do resistance training 4x a week (upper and lower split with resistance bands), HIIT 3x a week and try to make sure that I get at least 30 minutes of steady state cardio every day.

The only day I don't do anything is Wednesday, which I consider a rest day.

I had a friend recommend IIFYM to me but he suggested that I calculate it at sedentary in spite of my activity. My sedentary numbers are as follows for maintenance:

1450 cal, 100 protein, 50 fat and the rest from carb.

Right now I'm eating between 13 and 1400 cal a day, hitting my protein and fat macros and getting the rest from carb. I've spent the past couple of weeks reverse dieting up into this number because I was below 1000 cal a day before and totally lacking in energy.

Now here's were I get a bit confused. Because of my activity, I'm consistently coming in under 1000 "net" calories.

- Should I be aiming for more cal than what my sedentary number from IIFYM is?
- Should I be eating back the cal that I lose from exercise?

You should include your exercise in your TDEE maintenance calories. change your setting to light active. essentially you should be eating about TDEE -20% with a lot to lose ot TDEE - 10 to 15% if not much to lose (like you). So if at moderately active your TDEE is 1800 then you should be eating between 1530 and 1620 calories per day, so yes, eat more, but not much more, and eat that same amount on days you do more, less, or no exercise as it averages your exercise for the week.

There is a very good chance you are over estimating calories burned as well, so you may not be as low as you think you are. How do you estimate calories burned?

Dreysander wrote: »

Should I be changing my macros up when I have a rest day? Like more from protein / fat and less from carb?

The "calories burned" number I'm getting from MFP. It automatically adjusts from my Fitbit and I log my excercise - so I log my cardio (walking, running or biking) and I log my strength training in MFP and then it gets an adjustment from Fitbit if I do extra that I didn't log. Today it's saying I've burned 400 cal, yesterday it said I burned like 500-something.

No need to change your macros on "off" days. The beauty about TDEE (IIFYM follows TDEE) is that it averages everything out for the week so no changes are needed and you eat the same no matter what.

Ask @vismal He knows a lot about this and has an excellent Youtube channel called "feeding fitness"

Dreysander wrote: »

Right! Background: So since January I've lost around 100 lbs. My starting weight was 235, I now weigh 127. My goal weight is 115-125. I'm 5'4 and 31 years old. Not sure what my body fat percentage is but I do know that I want to get leaner, right now I'm pretty soft.

I'm "lightly active" I suppose, I'm a stay at home mother and I home school my oldest two kids. I also do resistance training 4x a week (upper and lower split with resistance bands), HIIT 3x a week and try to make sure that I get at least 30 minutes of steady state cardio every day. My Fitbit says that I usually get around 60 "active" minutes a day.

The only day I don't do anything is Wednesday, which I consider a rest day.

I had a friend recommend IIFYM to me but he suggested that I calculate it at sedentary in spite of my activity. My sedentary numbers are as follows for maintenance:

1450 cal, 100 protein, 50 fat and the rest from carb.

Right now I'm eating between 13 and 1400 cal a day, hitting my protein and fat macros and getting the rest from carb. I've spent the past couple of weeks reverse dieting up into this number because I was below 1000 cal a day before and totally lacking in energy.

Now here's were I get a bit confused. Because of my activity, I'm consistently coming in under 1000 "net" calories.

- Should I be aiming for more cal than what my sedentary number from IIFYM is?
- Should I be eating back the cal that I lose from exercise?

Are you still trying to lose weight? You mentioned recomp in your post title. If you are consistent with your workouts TDEE is easier than trying to figure out calorie burns. You just eat roughly the same calories everyday.

You mention resistance bands but if you want to drop body fat and maintain your weight (recomp) you will need to follow a progressive lifting program.

https://m.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/2tjl64/an_explanation_on_how_myfitnesspal_mostly_doesnt/

Read this on eating back excercise calories.

Dreysander wrote: »

Well I use MFP and Fitbit to track my food and excercise. MFP is more accurate than Fitbit's food tracker so I use it, it makes macro counting easier. I don't consider them all seperate methods, I consider MFP and Fitbit tools to help me track my IIFYM goals.

I'm just confused as to what those goals should be.

I wasn't saying don't use MFP to log food.

IIFYM is a TDEE goal - an average amount for your exercise already included.
Logging your Fitbit activity and MFP eat back exercise calorie methods are not. Variable calories added on the day.
Both methods work and it's personal preference with pros and cons to both ways.

Working out your calorie goal requires experimenting with your intake over a period of weeks and seeing if you lose/gain/maintain - then adjust. As you have a small amount of weight still to lose and want to recomp you really want a tiny deficit giving a very slow rate of loss. But really think you need to up your game as regards weight training.

So forget all the numbers from different sources and just think what has happened doing this....

Right now I'm eating between 13 and 1400 cal a day

Your own body is the only calculator that really matters!

So choose your method, pick your goal, monitor your results over time, adjust based on results.

I use a fitbit to log calories burned as well. I think the numbers (at least for me) are very accurate. I've been "maintaining" for the past 5 months. Through the summer I did gain a few lbs, whereas in the past 3 months I've lost. In the past 13 weeks I've lost 6 lbs, so at 5'4" I went from 127 to 121. You will likely continue to see loss as well if you continue to eat below your fitbit's calories. I also try to eat all the calories my fitbit says I burned.

In your fitbit profile, there's a nice little graph showing your average calories burned vs average calories eaten for the whole month. My eaten calories have been about 60 - 100 cals less per day on average than my burned. 80 cals times 7 days in a week = 560 calorie deficit. x13 weeks = 7280 calories, or 2 lb of loss. I've actually lost 6 lbs. I don't weigh my food, so I consider this to be because I over estimate calories in food if I'm unsure (munchies at parties, dinners out, alcohol, etc). Obviously I also have some work to do to figure out how much to eat to truly maintain, but it just goes to show that the fitbit's burned calories for me, are definitely not over-estimated.

My advice is this: Be patient. Be VERY patient. Week to week my weight doesn't change much. My measurements also don't really change much. The only gauge you'll have now is how your body feels. I have pretty soft, stretchy skin (mostly in my midsection), with muscle underneath. Slowly but surely my skin is tightening up. Progress photos are the best way to tell over the long term if you're making progress.

Dreysander wrote: »

I guess what it comes down to for me is that I don't feel like I'm eating enough at 1300 ish calories, I'm get hungry pretty often. However, I'm terrified that raising my caloric intake will make me regain all the weight I lost.

I hate the amount of fat that I have on my body, I have a large abdominal overhang (3 kids, 3 c-sections then lost all the weight) that has fat in it that I'm trying to make go away but am having a hard time with.

Eat at TDEE -10% and if you don't lose weight after 4-5 weeks, lower cals by 100 or so.

Dreysander wrote: »

What should my TDEE be?

That is the million dollar question. Start with IIFYM calculator as moderately active, and adjust every 4-5 weeks as necessary. All TDEE and cals burned calculators are just estimates. If at sedentary you get 1450 that would be about 1450/1.2*1.5 = 1800. I would start there so TDEE - 10% would give you 1620/day, adjust from there as needed.