Help learning diet?

[lift04]

How do ya figure up your maint. number of calories so you will know what to go over or under for your goals? Is it 10 cal., for every 1 pound you weigh?

ex. weight 180lbs. x 10 cal.(per lbs.) = 1800 main. calories

 

[Suareezay]

lean bodyweight x 15 is a good guideline for maintenance calories.

so a 180 lb person at 10% bodyfat would be (180 x .90) x 15 = 2430.

 

[lift04]

Thanks Suareezay. They helped out alot.

 

[duey]

lean bodyweight x 15 is a good guideline for maintenance calories.

so a 180 lb person at 10% bodyfat would be (180 x .90) x 15 = 2430.

do you need that many calories to loose weight and maintain muscle, could u explain a little more, i want to lose weight but now sure how many calories i should take in.

sorry for the high jack of your thread

 

[Suareezay]

do you need that many calories to loose weight and maintain muscle, could u explain a little more, i want to lose weight but now sure how many calories i should take in.

sorry for the high jack of your thread

Thats a ballpark for the amount of calories you would need to maintain your weight. You could theoretically improve body composition by eating this way due to better calorie partitioning due to training, increased insulin sensitivity, etc. but generally youre going to weigh about the same as when you started.

In order to lose weight (fat) you need to create a caloric deficit. You can do this by eating less, exercising more, or both. The larger deficit you create, the faster youll lose weight (to a certain extent anyway) but theres a larger chance of losing muscle. when maintaining muscle is a key concern, you definitely want to be conservative with your caloric deficit.

A common recommendation for losing weight is to create a 500 calorie per day deficit. You could accomplish this either by cutting 500 calories from your diet, or doing enough exercise to burn 500 calories, or any combination of the two (cut 300 calories from your diet, and burn 200 calories through exercise, for example). I definitely prefer to create the deficit through exercise - it allows you to eat more, and calorie partitioning, insulin sensitivity, etc are improved. Plus its just good for you.

So to answer your question more directly; if the 180 lb trainee from the example above ate at maintenance (2430 calories) he would just stay 180 pounds. If he did an hour of low intensity cardio 3 days a week, burning lets say 350 calories each time, he would be in a deficit of 1050 calories by the end of the week. If he cut calories by 350 everyday, on top of the cardio, he would burn 2450 more calories per week for a total deficit of 3500 (a pound of fat = 3500 calories). This is all vastly simplified, but theoretically, that trianee would be burning a pound of fat per week. I say theoretically because it doesnt always work out this way, for various reasons.