Hey,

I'm a 22 year old college student and I started working out at the beginning of Feburary at 345lb, im 6'4" and what I mostly do is circuit stuff with a trainer at a small gym near my house 4-5 days a week. So far I've lost 22lbs. and I didn't really track my progress.

I found this great site and forums and wanted to up my performance and knowledge. I'm going to start taking weekly pictures and record what I eat etc. (Myo-tape in the mail yay) I'm currently at 35.5% BF (probably down from close to 40% since I started I guess).

Anyway when it comes to eating I have no idea how many calories I should be eating. According to BMR and the weight x10 methods its over 3k a day and that seems like a lot to me. Right now I'm usually around 1800 a day. Also I'm not quite sure what caloric percentages to have. 40% protein for weight loss too much? I usually do half lifting weights in my hour long circuit training workouts, but I'm sure its not as much as others here do. I also want to add more cardio so I can make sure I'm doing something at least 6 days out of the week. Sound good? I'm in for the long haul :bb:

Welcome and glad to see you're doing it! No time like the present.

A couple easy ways to track your foods and percentages are:

Adi's spreadsheet (stickied in the Fat Loss/Cutting forum)
www.fitday.com
www.nutridiary.com

I use the spreadsheet myself and I love it. I just find it easy to use and it works well.

Good luck!

Welcome and glad to see you're doing it! No time like the present.

A couple easy ways to track your foods and percentages are:

Adi's spreadsheet (stickied in the Fat Loss/Cutting forum)
www.fitday.com
www.nutridiary.com

I use the spreadsheet myself and I love it. I just find it easy to use and it works well.

Good luck!

Yeah that Adi spreadsheet is pretty sweet, but I'm really not sure how many calories I should be taking in while trying to lose weight :(

1800 calories/day seems quite small. You're losing weight at about 3.6 pounds/week, which is not too far off the "1% weight loss/week" rule. I would guess you're putting on quite a bit of muscle right now, as a beginner. Soon, that will slow down and stop.

A couple of thoughts for you. Anything that takes the weight off will be good for you, in some sense, so keep working at it. On the other hand, your maintnance is probably in the 3000+ calorie range. That's how many calories your body needs to survive if you sleep 24/7. That means, if you eat 3000 calories/day and walk to the kitchen, and to your car, and through a store, you're burning fat. With deliberate exercise you're really burning a lot, and maybe muscle too. Typically, maintenance level of calories is absolute minimum for fat loss dieting, but in your case, it may be better to do whatever it takes to get your weight down. Here's the tradeoff. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll probably lose muscle mass (not good), but you'll lose the fat real fast, too. If you increase your calories, you'll keep the muscle you've got, but your fat loss will be slower.

Think of yourself as an airplane, the higher you are, the more fat you have. We're all trying to land safely at 10-12% body fat. If you go into a nose dive at 2,000 feet, you will not be able to pull up and have a nice slow, safe landing. So, you need to decend slowly (lose fat slowly). If you're at 20,000 feet, it's not as bad, but you need to be aware that you're in a free fall, and as you get closer to the ground (closer to your goal), you'll need to slow down and pay closer attention to your diet, making sure it is healthy, and you're getting plenty of nutrition.

That's the way I understand things. I hope others will offer their advice, too.

I hope this helps. I have great admiration for what you've accomplished so far. Great work. I know you've worked hard. You're doing terrific. So glad you're here at JSF. I hope you find this community to be as encouraging and informative as I have. Keep us posted on your progress. Welcome.