Determining Appropriate Cal/Protein/Carb/Nutrient Range?

Diet and Nutrition
1

Hello and happy Friday everyone,

I generally approach my nutritional needs with a loose policy of “don’t keep junk food around the house, try to cook healthy and make good choices. And quinoa. Lots of quinoa.”

However, I’d like to start monitoring my intake more closely, and am entirely uncertain what basic numbers/ranges I should be shooting for WRT calories, grams of protein, carbs, etc.

My info:

  • 27 year old female
  • 5’8, 145 lbs
  • Moderately active (military, working out 4-5 times per week, mixture of lifting, cardio, and HIIT)
  • Pretty active metabolism

My goals:
-Get stronger (lift heavier things up and put them down, increase pull-up reps) and more toned/leaner - and run fast enough to max the score on my PT test. If that means losing a few pounds, ok sure, but I’m really more interested in what the mirror tells me than what the scale says.

If any of you highly educated folks have any advice on the basic nutritional ranges I should stay within, I’d appreciate it. I realize it’s probably fairly variable per person, but figured it’s worth a shot to ask.

2

160/160/80 p/c/f would be a good place to start.

The starting point isn’t as important as making the necessary changes week to week.

3

Thanks, looks like I’ll have to find some creative ways to increase my protein intake then.

What do you mean by changes week to week? What are some factors I should be monitoring to guide those changes?

Again, thanks for the advice.

4

[quote]RCKeeper wrote:
Thanks, looks like I’ll have to find some creative ways to increase my protein intake then.

What do you mean by changes week to week? What are some factors I should be monitoring to guide those changes?

Again, thanks for the advice.[/quote]

morning bodyweight (before eating, same time each week)
waistline
energy levels (difficult to quantify but should definitely take note)
gym performance levels

Typically, during a successful cut you’ll try and keep your training split pretty consistent and when you hit stalls in your progress you move forward by

  1. cutting carbs and/or fat
  2. increasing cardio

then you reassess week to week.