Should I increase my caloric intake if I am lifting weights?

In the Cardio section there's an option for Strength Training. Enter total session time. It isn't a lot of calories though. For example I'm over 200 pounds and I enter 250 calories for a 60-min session. So if your goal is weight loss, no don't go eating many hundreds more calories. What you should do is time your meals to ensure some of the carbs are before the workout, e.g. a banana if it's just a snack.

At 51, my suggestion is absolutely focus on the lifting. Probably not in the 1-3 rep range though, for safety.

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While the MFP calorie calculator is ok, your best bet is to determine your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and your Total Daiky Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This tells you half of your equation, the Calories Out. If your Calories In is less, then you will lose weight. Simple and straightforward.

However, that doesn’t mean it will be fat, necessarily. If you are cutting weight, even if you’re lifting weights, you may be losing muscle and fat. This is going to depend on macros, not just calories, and on meal timing.

As a general rule, you cannot gain muscle on a calorie deficit. But you can prevent muscle loss and focus most of your weight loss at fat. If you set your protein intake to somewhere in the range of .8g per pound of body weight and then divide it up evenly between your 4 or so meals per day, this will enable your body to recover and adapt your muscles to the resistance training and prevent muscle loss.

You also need carbs to provide energy, including glycogen in your muscles for the weight lifting. And you need a minimal amount of fat (about .3g per pound) to maintain hormone levels properly (estrogen and testosterone production is critical).

In the body composition pyramid, about 50% is calories in/calories out, 30% is nutrient macros (protein/fat/carbs), and 20% is food composition, meal timing, and supplements. Get calories and macros right and you’ll be successful :-)

I highly recommend reading Dr. Mike Israerel’s “Renaissance Diet” to really get a solid grasp on all these factors.

My two cents worth. Hope it is helpful

hcaloric918 wrote: »

thank you everyone. I will keep doing what I am doing!! I am 128 pounds and would like to fit back into my clothes. my ideal weight is about 120. I lift for about 40 min 3 to 4 days a week. I try to lift heavy to build muscle and lose fat. for those that said that there is no such thing a starvation mode.....I have had issues with it in the past. I would start a workout routine and I put on 5 pounds of belly fat. as soon as I stopped working out I lost the 5 pounds of belly fat. also to the person that said that I should consume 3000 calories a day - I would weigh 300 pounds!!!!!! without logging my walks, my goal for weightloss is 1400. thank you all for your posts!!!

It wasn’t belly fat. When you lift weights your body will hold water as it repairs the muscle, hence the weight increase many people see when they add a new exercise regime. If you have a uterus then it’s common to hold water there.

I always have a rounded lower tummy but if I have to reduce or stop lifting for a while I can see the results quickly as I pee out all the water and drop a couple of pounds. Which goes right back on when I start lifting heavy again.

I understand the correlation you see between lifting and what the internet says is starvation mode, but if that was the case no one would starve to death. There would be no starvation eating disorders.

Let me try to explain what starvation mode actually means (I have a cold so my head is a bit foggy- others will come along and correct me if I’m wrong or incoherent 😀).
Say I eat well and feel good: I eat 2000 calories and I have plenty of energy so I run around and burn 2400 calories - that’s a deficit of 400 calories. Say I eat 1200 calories. I personally won’t have enough energy to run around or exercise so I will slow down and burn less calories - maybe only 1500. That means my deficit is less even though I ate a lot less.

It’s a simplistic artificial example which doesn’t take into account one’s resting BMR but starvation mode just means if you eat too little your body will expend less energy to preserve its ongoing function. Eat less than your BMR and you will lose weight - and hair, and muscle, and ultimately life.

Starvation mode, as peddled on IG, TilTok, influencers’ vids, is not real. It won’t make you hold belly fat.

mtaratoot wrote: »

Using TDEE is fine if your daily activities are close to the same every day. If you have days that you do some exercises, some days you do others, and some days you do none, your TDEE will vary among those days. If you have days where you are more active outside of exercise than other days, your TDEE will also change.

Yes, I agree. And I actually like using MFP set to light activity and a 1 lb per week weight loss. This comes out pretty close (plus or minus 10%) to my actual TDEE calculated the hard way and then adding a 500 kcal/day deficit.

The method that MFP uses to get a calorie in goal is Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). This is the energy expenditure of your daily life exclusive of intentional exercise. While it doesn't eliminate the difference in daily activity among different days, it does allow you to fine tune your calories in based on the exercise you do. You simply log your exercise here in My Fitness Pal and eat back your exercise.

Yep, I understand that.

Be aware all of these (BMR, TDEE, NEAT, and caloric value of our food) is estimated. Each person may have different TDEE than someone else with the same gender, age, weight, and height. By using a tool like My Fitness Pal to track calories in AND calories out, a person can fine-tune their calorie goal over time. That goal will need to change as a person's weight changes because a smaller person requires less energy to move their body around.

Every person, of course, is different. The easiest/most effective way to figure out the calories out (ie TDEE) is to observe and adjust over time.

The name of the person behind the Renaissance Diet and Renaissance Periodization is Dr. Mike Israetel. He holds a Ph.D. in Sport Physiology and does provide some good science-based advice. His focus is body building, but a lot of what he speaks of applies to all of us. His YouTube videos are also entertaining.

Yes, Dr. Mike is one of the key people there. Not the only one, but one of them. Renaissance Diet is applicable to pretty much everyone, not just bodybuilders, and well worth taking a look at for people that want to get deeper than what MFP offers.

tomcustombuilder wrote: »

LOL, Dr. Mike.
One person that knows his *kitten* unlike 90% of the internet fitness\diet people

Most internet fitness types are snake oil salesmen. Now, Dr. Mike wants to sell stuff, too. But at least he isn't selling untrue crap.