Can't help with numbers, but I know if I do not eat enough during and after long rides, I eat WAY too much, and not good stuff, for a couple of days after. Counterproductive. I also struggle with this.

Google "harris benedict equation" and you can estimate your basal metabolic rate. You can find other calculators for workout calories burned - look for ones that let you input weight and pace (ie, at 120 pounds I burn about 90 calories a mile running, I don't know any other numbers off the top of my head). Add BMR + activity calories.

I also know that at 120 lbs I need 60g CHO after a workout for recovery (my dietician calculated that one).

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I read somewhere that to lose weight and get the right calorie target you should eat the number of calories it takes to maintain your goal weight.

So, if at my goal weight my BRM according to the HB calculator is 1550, that should be my target as opposed to the 1650 for my current weight.

Is that how others understand it? 100 calories makes a difference in loss vs maintain.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

I think that's one way to do it. But be careful of the total caloric deficit, too. IE I would not subtract 500 from that... I'd subtract 400 (after figuring workout calories in).

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Jen, that's how I understand it.

To the OP, it's critical to log your workouts in order to figure out how much you should eat. It's amazing that after a 2-3 hour HARD ride and brick run how much food you actually need to eat just to maintain your weight. Opposed to rest or off days, when that number is drastically reduced. I find that if left to just eat naturally I eat too little on big hard workout days (and suffer the next day with lethargy/weakness) and eat too much on off/rest days.

As far as exactly what you are burning doing what exercise, wouldn't that be nice to exactly know! I find the online calculators are lower than what my garmin tells me, so I usually average it. It's a trial by error, and if anyone knows the secret, do tell.

What I do is take my calories I ate plus the calories I burned and make sure that totals out to 1500.

If I burn 500 calories running that day, I eat 2000 calories since that is the target calories for my goal weight.

Make sense?

Today is a 3 mile run so:

Eat 1800
Burn 300
Net 1500

Now I'm hungry so I'm going to get my 3 miles in then eat some dinner!

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

yes

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

ah but see my problem is I dont think I can accurately figure how much I am burning? I am sure the garmin isnt correct, and I dont trust the online calculators. I think I might be underestimating how much I am burning, then dont eat enough, then get super starving and overeat. How are you getting those numbers? are there any accurate tables or sites you trust?

I have it easy because all I do now is run and I rough estimate 100 calories/mile. I could never figure out swimming or cycling so I just guessed about 500 calories/hour for swimming and about 300/hour cycling unless I was working really hard on hills.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

On the website "SparkPeople" you can work out your BMR. There's lots of interesting stuff on there.
:)

The best and simplest pregnancy nutrition advice is to maintain a well-balanced diet. Your unborn child depends on you to provide all its vitamins and minerals to ensure that it is born healthy.

______________

Online pharmacy

if you have a heart rate monitor, this site seems to work quite well:

http://www.braydenwm.com/calburn.htm

(yes, i know it's a necropost, but it'll be here for future reference)

cheers!

-mistress k

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ill advised racing inc.

'Necropost'... wow, there is something I haven't heard before!

I'm surprised this thread 'died' as it doesn't seem like the answer was ever found..

I've just posted here:

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...psed;page=last;#last

and mentioned a little about the risks of inadequate nutrition. The reason I post this is that one poster mentioned 'eating for the weight you want to be'. This can lead to problems if you want to be significantly lighter than you are, therefore leading to far to great an energy deficit.

If you (one) are (is) able to eat to a specific kcal number it does sound like you are being quite specific with your nutrition. In this case if you are slightly out it does not matter. It is far to hard to give an accurate figure for energy expenditure for running and swimming due to the differences in efficiency between individuals... however, those lucky enough to have a powertap on their bike can get much more accurate readings due to relatively small differences in cycling economy.

Excellent and telling advice given here:


This is something I see all the time. Overeating on rest days and under eating on and prior to training. When really it should be the exact opposite!

All interesting stuff! :-)

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Martin MacDonald
Performance Nutritionist

http://www.Mac-Nutrition.com

To the OP: I recommend that you check out a book called Nutrition for Endurance Athletes. I read it, and it helped me a lot. There are so many variables to consider that just plugging weight, exercise level, time and heart rate into an online calculator (in the hope that said online calculator would have some "magic" caloric formula that I could follow for optimal performance) has never worked for me. I also didn't have the time nor money to hire a dietician, although that's probably the best route. Instead, I read that book, tweaked my own nutrition based on that information, and have had much better luck with training and with racing. (Turns out my issue wasn't calories so much as sodium -- I thought I was getting plenty, but I played around with it based upon suggestions in the book, and I can feel the difference.) I should also mention that there's a lot of trial and error, and personal preference. I now know how to adjust my caloric and other needs for a hot day, or for a harder workout, but that's just based on experience.

To everyone else: Guys, seriously! Sounterngal did not say she was pregnant, and did not say she was trying to lose weight. Honestly, I read the line about nutrition for unborn children (which Southerngal has not said she is carrying) and I literally did a Homer Simpson slap to my forehead. Now, I understand that there are many of us interested in those topics - and that reading what someone else has written makes you think: Ooh! I have a similar question! It's human nature to want to jump into an ongoing conversation to get the information that you want. But can I make a very polite, honestly-not-meant-to-offend-you request and say that starting your own thread would be much more polite -- rather than hopping onto a post and changing its direction so that the original poster's question goes unanswered/replied to. As we seem to be the kinder, gentler version of the forum, I just thought I would throw that out there as a suggestion...

I just wrote something on this recently:
http://whirlwindtriathlete.blogspot.com/...ents-for-female.html

hope that helps you...

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Twitter: @jayasports
Web: http://www.jayasports.com

Thanks for the link to the post. I know I'm a few months late on this, but I've been reading Racing Weight and to paraphrase,

"Female runners-especially young female runners- are more likely...to make the mistake of trying to achieve optimal leanness and lightness through caloric restriction." "Caloric restriction tells your body to conserve energy, which it will do by reducing its metabolic rate to retain fat stores, dismantling more muscle tissue ..and making you feel sluggish in workouts so you go slower, quit sooner and thereby burn fewer calories."

So basically the message is, exercise more, eat better, yadda, yadda, we get it. Give me more TIME in a day! ;)

I used Jen G.'s BMR equation- and got something like 1350kcal. I have recently bought a body fat scale, and while I'm well aware of the inaccuracies of these scales I was shocked to see my BMR calculated there as ~2700 kcal! Anyone know- why the HUGE discrepancy?

BMR is at rest, is your scale calculating in your activity level? ~2700 with vigrous exercise for a couple of hours sounds about right

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__________________________________________________
Twitter: @jayasports
Web: http://www.jayasports.com