how many calories should i eat for cutting

[H1t_V3r4c]

i've tried searching but all the answers i get is that it's different for everyone.

i'm 6'4.5", 235lb, 31% BF.

cheers.

[Haveboards]

Tried searching?

Don't give up your day job.

This is a copy/paste:


Losing fat requires time, patience, and forethought. If that’s too much for you to deal with, then you might as well stop reading now.

1. Calories

You’ve kept reading, which means that you’re my kind of person. So let’s talk numbers.

First thing first - how much fat do you want to lose? If the number is bigger than 2lbs/week, then go back to the part about time, patience and forethought, and begin again. Trying to lose any more than 2lbs/week (without the use of pretty strong supplements/steroids) will result in either a) muscle loss (which is bad), b) a lowering of your body’s metabolic rate (which is bad), or c) both (which is really bad). If you’re starting from a big number (i.e. your bodyfat percentage is above 15% and you need to lose a lot of fat) then 2 lbs a week is a good number to start from. Aiming for more will do the above (the bad stuff above). As your bodyfat % lowers and your weight gets lower, you’ll want to aim for smaller increments per week; it gets harder to lose fat the less you have.

You see, your body doesn’t want to give up the fat it’s got. Call your body crazy, but it has knowledge ingrained from a few millennia ago, when food was scarce and being fat and strong was a good way to ensure surviving both a saber-tooth tiger attack and a long cold winter without much food. With that in mind, the lower your bodyfat %, the more your body starts to rebel against your fat-loss goals.

Now that you’ve got that number in mind, let’s talk about calories.

For starters, the obvious qualifier. No method is exact. They’re not going to describe the exact number of calories that your body needs to take in. What the following is a good starting point. We’ll get to how to fine tune it shortly.

The bottom line of fat loss is that calories in and calories out are the single over-riding factor. If you aren’t burning more calories per day than you’re taking in, then (barring exceptional genetics) you won’t lose much fat. After you get the nutritional part of the equation squared away, there are lots of neat things the body does that work in conjunction with the calories in vs. calories out principle, but the first thing to consider is still your daily caloric intake. There are a couple of ways to calculate your required daily intake; some are complicated, some are not.

We’ll start with the semi-complicated way (it’s not really complicated, but that’s an often heard excuse when given this method). The Harris Benedict method follows - the HB info is taken from the Clean Eating III thread by karocka.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the amount of calories your body (given normal metabolic conditions) burns in a day, given that you do nothing more than exist. No eating, no walking, no getting out of bed. These are your ‘existence’ calories. To calculate your BMR, use these formulas:

Men BMR = 66 + (6.3 x Body Weight in lbs) + (12.9 x Height in inches) - (6.8 x age)
Women BMR = 655 + (9.6 x weight in kilos) + (1.8 x height in cm) - (4.7 x age)

Now that you’ve got your BMR, you’ve got a good starting point for how your body (at your current weight) burns calories. Now it’s time to use that information and figure out how many calories you burn during a normal day. You know, when you crawl out of bed and actually do something. Take the BMR, and multiply it by the Activity Multiplier below that best describes your average day:

Activity Multiplier
Sedentary = 1.2 (little exercise, desk job)
Light Activity = 1.375 (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/wk)
Moderate Activity = 1.55 (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week)
Very Active = 1.725 (heavy exercise/sports 6-7 days/week)
Extreme Activity = 1.9 (heavy exercise/sports, physically demanding job)

Now, if you’re trying to decide where you fall - say you’re thinking you may be between light and moderate activity - then pick a number in between. Remember, this isn’t exact, so don’t stress too hard.

So now you have a rough estimation of how many calories you use during the day, courtesy of the Harris Benedict method.

To figure out how many calories you want to take in every day, you need that first number from earlier, the one about lbs/week. If you want to lose 2lbs a week, you need to cut 2lbs worth of calories per week. A pound of fat is equivalent to about 3500 calories, so 2lbs is about a 7000-calorie deficit per week. Luckily, that divides nicely by the number of days in a week, so subtract 1000 cals from your Harris-Benedict number, and that’s what you need to take in. If you want to lose 1lb a week, subtract 500 cals a day. It’s that easy.

The super easy method is one that popeye (a mentor to many on the Men’s Health boards) has popularized. I have no idea where he got it from, so I’ll credit him for it and let him source it properly if he feels like it. The fact is, though, that it seems to work pretty well.

The general rule of thumb about caloric intake is this:

10-12xBW to WANE
13-15xBW to MAINTAIN
16-18xBW to GAIN

Spelled out in big letters for you - take your bodyweight and multiply it by the number that fits your goal (wane means lose weight, maintain means maintain, and gain means . . . you get the picture). That number that you get is an approximation of how many calories you should have as your starting point.

[Haveboards]

Figure out your maintenance calories.

Track your progress.

Adjust accordingly.

Good luck!

[FatGut42]

Woe information overload but good advice

[TheStriasian]

look up IIFYM. knowing your macronutrients will help.

look for a daily calorie requirement calculator online and a macronutrient calculator. You'll need that info and go minus 250-500 claories less than your maintenance calories.

[s4boost]

Try the my fitness pal app on your smartphone. If you don't have one. Buy one. It'll help. But if you're 31% bf then a lot less depending on your activity level.

[Gen1066]

Base your kcals on LBM not total weight

[Jetsetter1]

Woe information overload but good advice

Strong 3 year bump...

[Michael2794]

Hey up guys, thought I'd jump in & scream for help!!! I'm 21 5'7 and weighting in at 64kg I have no clue about my body fat maybe some of you could tell me from my profile picture! I'm cutting at the moment and looking to get super ripped I do cardio 5 times a week for 45 mins. I know how much protein I need to get in but I would gladly appreciate it if someone could tell me how many calories fats sats I should consume everyday as I keep hitting a rock my weight is not changing and I can tell I'm still holding some bodyfat on my core and other areas. Thanks in advance!

[dipatel13]

Make a separate thread instead of bumping a 5 year old one...

[dokall]

Don't quit your day job either there Hasboards.

HERE IS A SIMPLE ANSWER FOR YOU H1T: 2,100 CALORIES

That is based ONLY on my experience. I was 20 lbs overweight with just pure fat and a good size gut. I definitely cut a lot of fat, increased my bench buy 125lbs and other lifts comparatively in the past year. Just make sure you eat protein! At least 200g a day, I was going for 250.

Please don't come on here saying this is bs, it worked for me and I'm still improving so I KNOW it works.

And Hasboards, when people come on here for info don't waste their time with a bunch of useless crap, get to the point and then do your little bla bla bla. You can give them a basic answer, AND THEN a disclaimer and more info.