How many Calories per day do you consume?

[soundsgood]

Daily average calorie intake (plus how many on a cheat day if you have them)

Height, weight and bodyfat

 

At the moment just maintaining I eat about 3500 cals/day and up to 8000 on a cheat day.  Only have 1 single serve shake per day, the rest is all food.

I'm 175cm, 121kg at around 15% bodyfat

 

 

[jimmybro1]

Daily intake 3,400 calories. 

Height 182cm, Weight 98-100kg, bodyfat 10-12% (guess) 

All calories from food, no shakes etc and no real cheat days unless after a long workout would get indian or pizzas no idea of calories though as don't count them on these days. 

[FellowshipOfTheRon]

height 162.6cm, weight 66kg, bodyfat 14-16%(guess)

 

maint around 2400 cals, i generally eat 2700 cal a day at minimum, average around 3000 (some days miss a bit and make up for it on other days). i don't really plan or look forward to cheat days as such because don't compete and cbf with that kind of lifestyle. operate more or less on IIFYM, eat whatever i want and count it towards my macros but its generally clean home made stuff because takeaways bad for cholesterol, got heredeitary heart problem to watch out for. on that perma bulking status until 70kg+ now.

 

sometimes if i felt my nutrition was real crap during the week or i feel like im on a weight / strength plateu then i'll try use 'cheat meals' to help reach high calories with less meals because easier that way dont spend hours eating. cheat anywhere 4000-5000cal across the day.

 

supps like protein shake i just use to top up my protein intake if i didn't meet the 100g goal by end of day.

[Spacebound]

Was bulking on 3500 for the past 6months

now on 3000, maintence

next week will be 2800.

will probably have a refeed day once a week or every two weeks of 3500-4000, once the calories drop a bit lower anyway.

Usually 1 or 2 shakes a day depending on deit 

85kg, 182cm, 18-20% approx

[Wolffenbuttel]

173cm 94-97kgs around 18% bf atm-guess

haven't really been training well last 6 months so starting back with a cut 2800kcals cheat meal twice a week

[kingersman]

186cm 115kg around 15-16% bf

eat 4000-4500cal a day with 1 double scoop shake rest food(always hungry too)

[soundsgood]

186cm 115kg around 15-16% bf

eat 4000-4500cal a day with 1 double scoop shake rest food(always hungry too)

You've put on 13-14kg muscle in 6 months?

Must have been eating a lot more than 4k calories surely

[kingersman]

I was eating bout 5k cal for a while but settling back down

[Leeroid]

4000 cals to maintain 88kg 12-14% at 172cm which is where I'm at currently.

I work a fulltime physical job so my TDEE is quite high relative to stats.

[Phedder]

I should really track a day or two, though I'm not really following anything specific. Roughly 600-800g of meat a day, loads of vege with dinner, half a loaf of vogels, minimum half a block of choc :-D I'd be surprised if I was under 3500. 

Slowly losing weight, 185cm, 96kg, 10-12% bf, but I'm on my feet most of the day and up around 20km a week mileage plus 4x weights sessions. 

[Pseudonym]

I'm cutting, but even so - you're all eating WAY more than me!

In theory I average 2400cal, although the last couple of weeks have had more cheat days than I'd like, so it's certainly hasn'been higher than that.

I'm 6'0, 89kg, and I'm guessing about 10% BF. Oh, and a very sedentary day job.

[Dinahlady]

Relevant to this, if anyone isn't already pro and is reading/lurking is a really good TDEE calculator I know. 

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

 

 

[MBasevi]

Holy sheet. Making me feel bad. Eat average 5000kcal a day. up to 10000kcal on cheat days. Not including shakes, as i have them so inconsistantly.

6' 2" 108kg 15% BF.

Quite an active day job, and I really like eating. Lol.

 

[Pseudonym]

Relevant to this, if anyone isn't already pro and is reading/lurking is a really good TDEE calculator I know. 

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

Ooh, fancy-schmancy dials are cool!

And it seems to agree with what I had decided my maintenance cals were (I'd worked it out by trial and error)

[GyzzBrah]

Just tried the caluclator and my TDEE came out to 3400. If that's the case, that would mean ive been eating crash diet ammounts of calories for pretty much ever really, and im still able to gain weight at a moderate rate. Would that mean that I have a slow metabolism or someshit? So should I just start tracking calories and keep increasing them till I reach tdee? Unfortunatley im not one of those people that has a good appetite, so I could pretty much eat 1000cals a day and be full if I felt like it. Anybody have suggestions or anything?

[FellowshipOfTheRon]

Just tried the caluclator and my TDEE came out to 3400. If that's the case, that would mean ive been eating crash diet ammounts of calories for pretty much ever really, and im still able to gain weight at a moderate rate. Would that mean that I have a slow metabolism or someshit? So should I just start tracking calories and keep increasing them till I reach tdee? Unfortunatley im not one of those people that has a good appetite, so I could pretty much eat 1000cals a day and be full if I felt like it. Anybody have suggestions or anything?

its no surprise. youre new to training and teenager, youll gain for a while no matter what. taking a calculated approach to it though, once calculated and found you undereating then you should be able to enhance your gains but a decent amount. similar with appetite here but it slowly gets better... really slowly lol. training harder and heavier seems to help me feel hungrier though as well as eating cleaner (crap food bloats me right up)

[Kalidane]

Just tried the caluclator and my TDEE came out to 3400. If that's the case, that would mean ive been eating crash diet ammounts of calories for pretty much ever really, and im still able to gain weight at a moderate rate. Would that mean that I have a slow metabolism or someshit? So should I just start tracking calories and keep increasing them till I reach tdee? Unfortunatley im not one of those people that has a good appetite, so I could pretty much eat 1000cals a day and be full if I felt like it. Anybody have suggestions or anything?

 

Are you calling your body a liar??

 

Calculators are estimators and irrelevant.  This isn't the bro-science sub forum.

 

Track your calories for 2 weeks.  If your weight didn't change then that is your maintenace.  Having a spreadsheet to estimate TDEE won't change the reality.  Remember GI tract content and hydration level will cause weight to move around without affecting composition.

 

tl;dr close enough is good enough unless going on stage in 6 weeks.

[GyzzBrah]

Are you calling your body a liar??

Good post dinah...

Yeah I will give that a try and work things out from there. And also fotr your right I could probably make do with some cleaner foods lol. Just that I feel way stronger / recovered when I eat pizzas burgers etc but I guess you could do the same with cleaner food lol.

 

[Dinahlady]

People who are most able to control their weight are the ones who can estimate their intake most accurately.

Most people who think the calculator is innacurate are inaccurately tracking their average cals, which can be for a variety of reasons. Or they are inaccurately reporting thier activity levels. Sometimes taking an average isn't best which is why they have resources to track your activity levels more accurately.

Kalidane is right that a TDEE calculator is an estimate - but it is likely to be a pretty close estimate. 

Individual differences are very small and at extremes only vary by around 10% (as shown by studies of both obese indivudlas and anorexic individuals), unless you have a medical condition (if you suspect then you should go to doctors). Whereas individuals have been shown to underestimate calorie intake by 3x or more (again, not because "lying", there can be a variety of different reasons for this such as underestimating portion size or forgetting to include certain foods, or lacking nutrition knowledge and so not realising when their calorie counter is being inaccurate)

if you have been gaining weight or maintaining then you would have been on average eating close to your intake (which will be close to what is shown on the calc). If you are accurate with your activity and everything you intake including measuring/weighing your food and making sure to include "cheats" or "here and there's" accurately then your intake will come out close to what is shown on the calc. 

The calculator is good because if I am at uni all day and am sedentary and dont train my TDEE is approx 2400 and if I have a day of clients and train it might be over 3000, which accounts for days where I get "super hungry" and need to go get pizza, which often leads me to eat more than my TDEE because I'm overly hungry and there is tasty, tasty food. If I eat more appropriately for my activity level then "dieting" is more maintainable. 

Eating 300-500 less than TDEE is recommended for notable weightloss.

[MAG]

4000kcal/day at 6'5" 111kg 14-15%

Goal is around 4200 on workout days, 3800 on off-days. I find most basic TDEE calculators fairly accurate for me personally, but perhaps I'm super-thorough on the calories I count, and suit the "How many times do you exercise per week?" question better than others.

 

Relevant to this, if anyone isn't already pro and is reading/lurking is a really good TDEE calculator I know. 

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced

That is a really good TDEE calculator! Bookmarked for future reference. I like how it separates the intense from the moderate and light exercise, rather than trying to do a "catch-all" exercise category. Thanks for sharing.

[Kalidane]

Words.

 

Ah I forgot the accuracy of recording.

 

That does seem to throw a lot of people off, and many just cbf doing it at all (they tend to be the larger folk... correlation or ?).

 

 

 

 

[Dinahlady]

 

Words.

Ah I forgot the accuracy of recording.

That does seem to throw a lot of people off, and many just cbf doing it at all (they tend to be the larger folk... correlation or ?).

They have found that the more overweight people are the more inaccurate they are at estimating. But I dont think they have determined the main causes. It's probably a mixture - some psychological e.g dissociative eating or binge eating, some could just be that they dont know how much they are eating e.g. portion size knowledge. If you underestimate your portions several times per day that's gonna add up to a lot of cals. 

This probably goes the same for "hardgainers" who want to gain weight as there isn't really such thing as a fast or slow metabolism. 

It can be annoying to measure but using cups or chucking your plate on a sclae when you serve out food is pretty easy. Most overweight people have tried to lose weight usually with fad diets that require a lot more "effort". such as WW or cutting out all sugar or all gluten or eating only cabbage soup etc.