What should my ideal caloric intake be, currently too low?
Hi,
I read the forum consistently, but this is my first post. I am a little above 6 feet tall(6'.5") and currently weigh 172.2lb at around 15% body fat. I used to be 215 lb at 30% or slightly higher bf and much weaker physically. I want to get to 10% bf, and so I am currently dieting in order to do so. I have been eating a little less than 1900 calories a day for the last week with around 50 g of fat, 160 g of protein, and 200 g of carbohydrates. I workout 4 days a week, utilizing a 2 muscle a day split, and do 3 exercises with 3, 6-8 rep, sets per muscle. I also do a 2 hour long kickboxing workout about once a week. I am somewhat active as I have to walk all around my fairly large college campus during the day. My current lifts are 205lb max(estimate) for bench, around 330-350lb max for deadlift, and 225-235 lbs x10 for squat. I calculated my BMR at about 1900 and my TDEE at around 2500-2600 calories, and my question is whether my caloric intake of 1900 calories a day is too high or too low for losing weight and getting to around 10% by the start of summer. I am just concerned as I was reading threads about people using the Body Media caloric burn estimators and realizing they were underestimating their TDEE by a large amount and only started losing more body fat when they actually increased intake by a few hundred calories. I also stopped dieting for about 4 weeks and easily ate 3000 calories a day and I did not gain much if any weight(2lbs at most), which also made me question dieting at 1900 calories a day.
Thanks