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Need help with calorie requirements

pjb923 Posts: 13 Joined: 2005/06/03

2006/01/20, 01:48 PM First a little background. My wife has been struggling with her weight for a long time. She has had a thyroid condition for most of her life and tried countless diet plans. Over the last year she has been going to a personal trainer 3 times a week. She does a very intense circuit/free weight routine. According to her Polar HRM she burns anywhere between 500-700 calories in a session. She has also been trying to add in an extra day or 2 of cardio in between training sessions. I finally have gotten her to eat a good breakfast, and break up her meals to 5 a day. She has been keeping a very detailed food log and sticking to 1800 calories a day which should be about 800 below maintenance for her. Recently she has been getting really hungry on 1800 calories, especially on workout days. According to this calculator http://www.johnberardi.com/calc.htm she should need 2675 on rest days and 4475 on workout days to maintain. How do you know if you are not eating enough? And is it realistic when trying to lose fat to increase calorie intake so drastically on workout days? Even subtracting 1000 from the calculated number would be 3475 calories which sounds like too much to me. I was thinking more along the lines of adding 600 calories, to make up for what she is burning, which would bring her up to 2400 on workout days. She has not been happy with the speed of her results and I think her calorie intake is a big part of that. Does anyone have any advice on what to try next?? Thanks for the help. -Paul