Not sure how much to eat

JackieFernandez87 wrote: »

Hello! I am 5’2, 161 lb (goal is around 120).. I obviously need to lose fat however I am doing LIIFT 4 and want to gain muscle. What is a realistic goal for daily calories to eat? Should I be worried if the scale doesn’t go down since I am working on building muscle? Just don’t want to ruin my progress and not sure how to create the right calorie deficit.

1. Put your stats into mfp, tell it you want to lose .5-1pound a week.

2. Log your food accurately and entirely. When you do a workout, log that too and eat (at least some) of your exercise calories.

3. After 4-6 weeks, see if you’ve lost as expected. Make adjustments.

4. Profit.

JackieFernandez87 wrote: »

Thanks.. I do use the site but I wasn’t sure if I should be eating my exercise calories back.. and also if losing fat while trying to build muscle affect the scale week to week. I’m new to lifting. I used to just go for weight loss but now I care more about strenfth and overall health so I am ok with a slower loss.

* Assuming you set your MFP profile up correctly (basing activity level setting on your life outside of intentional exercise), you should eat back a reasonable estimate of exercise calories. That will give you approximately the deficit you asked for in the loss rate (pounds per week) you set.

* As a new lifter, if you get solid protein (and good overall nutrition), do a good progressive strength training program consistently, and don't try to lose weight very fast, it's possible that you could build a little bit of muscle even in a (small) calorie deficit. However, under the best conditions, muscle gain is very, very slow for women. A quarter pound a week of new muscle would be a really good result, and to the above conditions, one would also need to add relative youth, favorable genetics, and a calorie surplus (i.e., not weight loss, weight gain). On the flip side, half a pound a week is the slowest weight loss rate you can ask for on MFP (and it will be hard to see amongst typical daily scale-weight fluctuations in anything less than a couple of months). Conclusion: Any meaningful rate of fat loss is unlikely to be masked by any realistic rate of muscle-mass gain . . . sadly.

* The good news is, strength gain is much faster than muscle-mass gain, and since you said your goal is strength, you should see some good payoff from the slow-loss/small-deficit plus good nutrition plus progressive strength training approach. (Strength gain without muscle mass increase comes from neuromuscular adaptation (NMA), basically better recruiting and more efficiently utilizing muscle fibers you already have.)

* When you're starting strength training, or really adding any new exercise, your body's likely to hold onto a little extra water weight (related to needs for muscle repair). That water weight actual can make it look, at first, like you're not losing fat when you actually are, or - especially with a slow fat loss rate like we've suggested - it can even make it look like you're gaining weight for a few weeks. Don't panic; it will sort itself out: Fat loss will eventually overtake any water weight increase.

* If your only exercise is the strength training, you still can/should eat back a reasonable estimate. I'd suggest not using the estimate from most fitness trackers, if it's a heart-rate-based thing. Heart rate is a very inaccurate way to estimate strength training calories. This is one case where using the entry in the MFP exercise database ("strength training" under cardiovascular exercise) will be likely to give you a better estimate. Since you'll probably want to be doing a regular reps/sets kind of thing with short rests between, that database entry makes similar assumptions, so you just use the total workout time.

Best wishes!