How large should the deficit be?
 

Hello fellow-low-carbers!

You may have noticed my lament about stalling after my bike trip to Portugal in November, where I cycled a fair distance but didn't eat enough and even gaining weight in the holiday time (though that weight came off quickly).

I now present a few formulas and the calculations as done by means of the www.caloriesperhour.com website.

The crudest tool for low-carbing is to take a food intake of
10-12 x bw in lbs = 22-26,50 x bw in kg = 1606 - 1935 kcal

There are 2 known formulas for getting your basal metabolic rate:

One that takes weight, height & age and uses different formulas for men and women:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) - (6.8 X age in years)
Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) - (4.7 X age in years)
With this calculation I'd have a basal metabolic rate of 1457 kcal (73 kg, 158 cm, 39 y). People who work out a lot, may add 60% to that BMR, so I end up with 1970 kcal. It's recommended to shave off 10% from your BMR, so I end up with 1865 kcal.

The 2nd formula doesn't use different formulas for men and women or age, just lean body mass = Katch- McArdle formula
BMR (men and women) = 370 + (21.6 X lean mass in kg) = 1407 kcal
at LBM of 48 kg.

I took the latter formula and dug up all activities listed by www.caloriesperhour.com
They used the first formula, I used the second and re-calculated things.. (how fanatical can you be, which is why it took me ages to compile a spreadsheet).
The crudest part was guesstimating what on earth I'm doing on an average day..

When I diversified for Mon thru Sun, I came to values between 2440 kcal (Thurs=swimming day) to 3880 kcal (Sat=depletion day with: spinning, leg and hometrainer day & afterwards: junk day) with a low of 2100 kcal on Sunday.
This gave an average of 2997 kcal (I did the calculations again and was a bit more conservative in my time-estimates).

So for ease of calculation I'm assuming a mean of 3000 kcal.

Question is: weren't you supposed to have a total deficit of 1000 kcal?
500 kcal from diet & 500 kcal from ramped up exercise?
Apparently I ramped up my exercise between 340 and 1780 kcal a day.

So, instead of eating 1800-1900 kcal, I should be eating 2000 kcal, right??? I had even dropped back to 1700 kcal and had success with that...but if I'd follow Dr. Squat's approach I'd need to eat 2600kcal/day or so.. (10% less).


Confused in the Netherlands

Fietser

Apparently nobody knows the answer..
Well I decided to go to 750 kcal deficit and will vary it from day to day. On 3000 kcal days I will eat 2250 kcal, on the 3800 kcal day I will eat 3000 kcal. Only on the 2400 kcal day I will keep it to 500 kcal and go to 1900 kcal.
On Sunday I will eat only a little bit less, from 2100 kcal to 1900 kcal..

I was advised to go as high as 2500 kcal, but I think that is a bit too much. This average of 2250 kcal sounds better to me..

Fietser

I went through the same math exercises and ended up just doing some basic things that are working well.
My trainer and MD told me the same thing. Settle in around 2200kcal per day, and keep it roughly isocaloric. Do the 3-4 lifting workouts, and 3-4 30 min cardio.
Most importantly log everything carefully. Pay precise attention to portion sizes. Weigh and measure. Include everthing, even the extra nibbles here and there. I use www.fitday.com. Studies conducted here in the US, the land of fatties, show that overweight people miscalculate and eat more than they think they are eating. Documenting everthing I eat is the part that I did not do for a long time, and I was stalling. I must admit that I still hate doing it. But now I'm losing a couple of pounds per week. And I'm really strong. If I need to eat more than this amount, consume more protein.
Also, skip the free day.
In speaking with many pro bodybuilders that train at my gym, they all eat 'clean' when they are in a cutting cycle. Any deviation such as a junkout free day just slows down the process and pushes the goal further out.

So, were you under- or overeating?

The answer then would be:
- raise intake throughout the week
- don't carb up
I'm doing the latter for psychological reasons. Raising leptin levels doesn't seem necessary because of my high bf% (33%)

Fietser

I was eating more than I thought without knowing it. When I became very careful about logging everything I could see this. I abandoned CKD. It's an advanced dieting technique for competition bodybuilding and therefore doesn't apply to me. On training days I keep the carbs around 100-150, consuming most of the carbs after working out.
The key is calories. I know there are people on the forum that would like to believe that calories don't matter but laws of physics still must be followed.
And of course consistency persistence and discipline. All the people I've met that are in excellent condition have these three characteristics.