Calorie Confusion

Hey there all. Let me just tell you that I love this forum and rarely read any other ones now. You are all so full of info and motivation :) Thanks!!

I know you guys get the calories question alot. I'm just looking for some guidance, as my doc doesn't seem to really "get" what I do and my NUT is a nut. Right now I'm eating around 1000 calories a day (I'm female,  5'9, 7 months out, weighing in at 213 pounds and want to get to 170 or so). Now I was doing 1000 calories when I was playing roller derby 3 nights a week for 2 hours each. Now, in addition to that, I've got a trainer (we're doing alot of strength training, core, and plyometrics) that I'm working out with twice a week and doing a little cardio on the days that I'm not either at practice or with the trainer (biking, swimming, brisk walking, just moving around).

Obviously I need to increase my caloric intake at this point but I'm not sure what's appropriate for me. 1200? 1500? I'm getting mixed answers from non-surgery people. Honestly, I'm scared to increase my calories, but know I have to. But what to increase it to with my particular level of activity, I don't know? I still want to continue losing and am scared of this closing "honeymoon" period. It's like looming over me that I still have 40/45 pounds to go and only a few months left to do it in where it's this "easy."

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

This is all approximations but you can pretty much tell how much you will be losing by logging EVERYTHING you eat and using these formulas. 

Your BMR (basal metabolic rate) as a 5'9", 213 pound, 25 year old female will be approximately 1789 calories.  What that means is that if you did nothing but sit around all day you will burn 1789 calories.   Find a good exercise caloric expendature calculator online (ex: http://www.weightlossresource.com/tools/exercise/calculator1 _2.cfm) to tell you approximately how many calories you are burning with exercise and add that to the 1789 calories.  The total that you will get from  your BMR and the exercise will be your TOTAL daily caloric expendature.

For example:  If you ran for 1 hour you'd burn approximately 975 calories.   Add that to the 1789 and you get 2764 calories as your total daily caloric expendature.

Now the hard part... Journal ever morsal of food and drink that you put in your mouth.  If it's 1000 calories then it's 1000 calories but a journal will make everything much simpler to keep track of.  

Subtract your caloric intake total (1000 calories) from your total daily caloric expendature (2764 calories) and you get your daily caloric deficiency total which in your case would be 1764 calories.    1 pound is equal to 3500 calories so at that rate you would lose approximately a pound every 3 days or so.  

This doesn't take into account an adjustment that you can make to the BMR for increased metabolism either.   Exercising more increases your metabolism which in turn increases your BMR and allows you to multiply up to sometimes almost double the BMR rate depending on how active you are. 

Lot of info and I hope I didn't confuse you.  Best of luck!

Chad

WOW... I always though of myself as a fairly informed individual. I just went to the link you attached, and looked up my Metabolic rate, and was surprised that it was 2157.

In addition, I was looking at the calories burned for swimming, biking and running. I guess I never realized I was burning so many calories while swimming and running.

Great information.

Curt

Thanks so much! This was super informative!!!! I printed it and posted in on my bulletin board at work :)