Calorie requirement

I am sure I have said before that I find calories very confusing and that I will only ever use them as a rough guideline. Different people have different calorific needs and I for one haven’t got the time to weigh every bit of food I eat. However, I was thinking about the fact that I am trying to gain weight and am exercising a lot so thought it might be fun to compare how many calories I eat with how many I might need.

Spent some time trying to work out what my calorie requirement is. If you google things like “calorie requirements” you’ll find a whole host of diet sites that allow you to put in things like age, gender, weight, height and activity level and it gives you a rough estimate of your calorific needs. Take the results with a huge pinch of salt. And try a few different ones.

I got results that ranged from 1700 to 2500 calories per day. I then altered my search to “female calorie requirement to gain weight” and got referred to a number of body building websites. Now, this I don’t mind, I want to put on muscle after all. These website suggest I try to calculate my average calorie expenditure, now taking into account how active I am and roughly how many calories are burnt during the kind of exercise I do. Playing around with one of them, I got the result that in order to gain weight I need to eat roughly 2800 calories per day, basically saying I burn on average 2500 per day and need to eat more to bulk up. This, to me looks a lot more reasonable.

This still has to be taken with a huge pinch of salt though but I guess it’s giving me a rough idea. And looking at what I eat on a daily basis I think I consume roughly 2500 to 2800 calories a day. Still not really gaining weight at the speed I would like. However, I spoke to one of the personal trainers at my gym and he advised me to go for calorie dense food. Basically, this is food that packs a lot of protein and calories in one hit. A couple of hard boiled eggs, protein shake (in my case hemp protein) in fruit juice, nuts, pulses, etc.  Food that is compact.

I will at some point look into an idea I have that calories from different types of food behave differently in the body. My idea is that just counting calories isn’t enough and that eating an amount of calories in the form of brown rice is not the same as eating an equal amount of calories in the form of white rice. That fruit is better than sugar, even when the amount of calories is equal. It’s an idea, haven’t looked into it yet.

Links:

http://www.musclehack.com/how-many-calories-per-day-do-i-need-to-build-muscle/

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/issa64.htm

Personal goals

I have been remiss in my blooging, for which I apologise. I even have several posts, particularly the ones about my pastry experiments, written and almost ready to go. I blame work, it gets in between.

So, this is unrelated to any recipes, but not unrelated to nutrition. I have set myself some goals, that are weight and exercise related.

My 8-weeks goals are:
Gain 3 kg (there's 2.2 pounds to a kg, you do the maths)
Exercise a minimum of 4 days per week
Do at least 1 day yoga per week
Do some exercise every weekend

These goals are fairly low set. The one I might struggle with is the weight gain. And I have a week off from work during which I'll do no yoga, and during which my exercise regime may slip a bit. But it shall be very interesting to see where I am at on October 16th.

Over the last 8 weeks I have achieved the following.
Gained 5 kg (actually, I gained 6 but lost 1)
Almost doubled the weights I use in the gym.
Worked out a minimum 3 days per week.

A good indication of how much stronger I am getting is my ability to do proper push-ups. 8 weeks ago I couldn't do even 1 without having my knees in the ground. Yesterday I managed 5! It may not sound like much but for me it's really an achievement after the loss of muscle I suffered when I got ill. Let's see how many I can do in October!

I have to be very careful with what I eat in order to make sure I consume enough to have a steady weight gain whilst working out that much. And with that in mind, it's time to have some rice cakes with peanut butter.