Cutting Diet - How many calories?

moneymanmichael

New member
I am just so confused with how many calories I should be eating to lose weight
My goal is 2 pounds a week, I'm 6'2 220 24 years old
I have a good weight program in the gym and I do insanity at home for cardio
I've had good results with this by just eating clean but I want to perfect it and know exactly how many calories to eat in a day.
I've used BMR calculators, found that my BMR is 2200, so I just subtracted 500 from that (1700) and that's how many calories I'm eating because I assume I'm burning probably over 500 with my workout routines
Which = 2lb a week
But at the same time many tell me this is way to few calories and I just want to cry lol

Here's the diet I came up with
Meal #1 Whey Protein + Banana
Meal #2 5oz Grd Turkey + Whole Wheat Buns
Meal #3 5oz Chicken Breast + 8 oz Sweet Potatoe (OR 6" Dbl Meat Subway Club)
Meal #4 5oz WHey Protein
Meal #5 5oz Chicken Breast
Meal #6 Whey Protein
+ 2 v8 Juices as snacks throughout the day.
it's as close to a 50/30/20 split as I could get it.
I've really done my research on all of this but there is so much information and 90% of it contradicts eachother .. I just need a professional to tell me if I have done this correctly
 
Your Suggested Fitness and Nutrition Goals

Congratulations! Your personalized diet and fitness profile is now complete. Based on your answers, here are your suggested nutrition and fitness goals.

NUTRITIONAL GOALS TARGET
Net Calories Consumed* / Day 1,780 Calories / Day
Carbs / Day 245 g
Fat / Day 59 g
Protein / Day 67 g
*Net calories consumed = total calories consumed - exercise calories burned. So the more you exercise, the more you can eat!
FITNESS GOALS TARGET
Calories Burned / Week 5,810 Calories / Week
Workouts / Weekends 6 workouts
Minutes / Workout 120 minutes
If you follow this plan...
Your projected weight loss is: 2 lbs/week
You should lose 10 lbs by August 29
GET STARTED NOW!



This is what MFP gave me, telling them that I workout 6 days a week 90 mins at a time and that I am "Lightly Active".
 
Dude there's a difference between BMR and TDEE. BMR is what your body requires to maintain natural biological processes and sustain life while TDEE is total daily energy expenditure or how many calories you typically use in a day to maintain your current stats. You have a BMR or 2200 ok so you multiply that by an activity factor to get TDEE. Sounds like you're pretty active so we'll start with 1.6 and adjust from there.

Activity factor x BMR = TDEE so 1.6 x 2200 = ~3500 calories. To cut reduce calories by 10-20% so you can begin your cut around 2900-3100calories per day. Protein is 1g/lb BW and dietary fat intake is .4g/lb BW MINIMUMS and the rest of your calories can be any other macros. I'd do around 250g protein, 100g fat, and the rest in carbs.

Do not, do NOT use the goals MFP gives you unless you edit them. They are garbage. Do NOT use ratios like 40/40/20 those are garbage too.

Your meal plan is garbage no offense. You need to consume the vast majority of your diet from whole or minimally processed foods while meeting micronutrient sufficiency so you need less whey (preferably for satiety and micros), more chicken, meats and fish for protein, more veggies (for micros and fiber), a lot more fat.
 
Dude there's a difference between BMR and TDEE. BMR is what your body requires to maintain natural biological processes and sustain life while TDEE is total daily energy expenditure or how many calories you typically use in a day to maintain your current stats. You have a BMR or 2200 ok so you multiply that by an activity factor to get TDEE. Sounds like you're pretty active so we'll start with 1.6 and adjust from there.

Activity factor x BMR = TDEE so 1.6 x 2200 = ~3500 calories. To cut reduce calories by 10-20% so you can begin your cut around 2900-3100calories per day. Protein is 1g/lb BW and dietary fat intake is .4g/lb BW MINIMUMS and the rest of your calories can be any other macros. I'd do around 250g protein, 100g fat, and the rest in carbs.

Do not, do NOT use the goals MFP gives you unless you edit them. They are garbage. Do NOT use ratios like 40/40/20 those are garbage too.

Your meal plan is garbage no offense. You need to consume the vast majority of your diet from whole or minimally processed foods while meeting micronutrient sufficiency so you need less whey (preferably for satiety and micros), more chicken, meats and fish for protein, more veggies (for micros and fiber), a lot more fat.
 
Dude thank you so much, your the first person to really shed some light and make some fucking sense LOL. Okay I am going to re adjust my diet, shoot for maybe 2 whey protein shakes a day, and the rest whole foods. I read somewhere on here that a 50/30/20 Split was good for cutting so I'm going to go with that. I'm assuming it means 50% Protein, 30% Carbs, 20% Fat, right? I think I got this now.. Are there any websites or tools that you can enter in your foods and it will spit back out the nutrient %'s? Like a diet building tool or something.. Also is what i'm saying now sound about right?
 
Don't use percentages for ratios. Shoot for at least ~1.5g/lb body weight of protein, and ~.8g/lb for fats. The rest can come from carbs or add to the others. I personally prefer higher fats over carbs. Use MyFitnessPal to track your calories. There is a website, and an app for smart phones.
 
Ok thank you guys so much for giving me REAL information and not a bunch of crap. So there's no real EXACT science to all this is there? Just a starting point, and adjust from there, correct? Okay so to lose 1lb/week I need to be shooting for 3K calories, and to lose 2lb/week, I should be shooting for 2500. Is this correct?
 
Correct, it takes constant adjusting. Just remember to take it slow. Yes, that would be to lose 1 or 2 lbs of fat, respectively. Remember that you aren't going to be losing 100% fat though with each lb. A good estimate is 65% fat, the rest will be water, glycogen, etc. Start with ~3000 and taper down slowly. Each lb lost only accounts for ~25 cals on your TDEE.
 
Be glad you're able to cut on 3k cals! You'll be hating life when you get down to 2k. You should be looking at something like 250/100/275 p/f/c. That's easily doable throughout the day.
 
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