Sorry, @Pinkylifting, I don’t recall your exact height and weight but I do remember reacting once to your relatively low calorie intake when compared to mine as I’m lighter than you are (and less muscly) and so now - reading this - I had the thought, how much do you move about outside of weightlifting?
Why not do Crossfit for three months? I can’t see you “losing” anything. Maybe all the explosive movements will spark further success in your maxes even.
*drops clean on his head and dies
Actually one of the reasons I’m considering it tbh, 2 years of PL focus has left me feeling strong but a bit slower.
I’m just over 5’10, typically 86-88kg (190-194) outside of competition depending how lean I am. Around 90kg (198) at the moment, deliberately a little more relaxed with eating the last month.
I’ve always had a low calorie intake to maintain weight tbh. Not necessarily surprising since I have an office job so im sitting pretty much 7am to 7pm, during the week gym is my only activity but a lot more active at the weekends, a lot of walking, hiking etc. One would still expect a higher calorie intake given my hight, weight, activity etc but im still probably withing the ‘normal’ range, just very much at the low end. Can’t win them all.
What is your current calorie intake (roughly) on a daily basis buddy?
Normal work week, training 4x per week for c. 90mins per session, for maintenance ill have to be in the 2,250-2400 range. 2400+ ill definitely gain weight, i need to go 2k to lose.
Checked out of curiosity and yeah, seems 2200-2400 is around maintenance for a dude your height/weight with ~14% BF and “sedentary” checked.
Funnily enough, my extra 5" in height and my extra ~40lbs of fat cancel one another out and our results are the basically same in the TDEE calculator I used.
The truth is painful sometimes.
Well it’s just after Christmas and I figured you’re not avatar-state year round!
Unfortunately true. something around 14% is probably about right.
what TDEE calculator did you use? One i use doesn’t take bf into account? Cheers
I’ve not used one in a long time. I just know that unless I deliberately understate my exercise levels (tell it I never do) it gives me a number for maintenance that’s way too high. Would be interesting to know which one @mattjp used though.
yea same, i think most are biased a little towards people with a higher metabolism, as i am the same, always choose the sedentary option even though i do 3 hard sessions and 2 moderate sessions and walk 5miles per day
@Pinkylifting @tj55 just the first result when I Google “TDEE calculator” because I’m lazy like that.
Most that I’ve seen give an option to take BF% into account, but it doesn’t have a massive impact overall. If I put myself as a depressingly-accurate 25% it’s still 90% of the figure I get when I put in 15%.
Yeah, I figure even if you train for two hours a day, six days a week, if you’re just sat at a desk or on the sofa for the remaining ~100hrs of the week you’re still sedentary the vast majority of the time.
that 10% could be the difference between seeing some hammies and not seeing them though!
For some reason, I want to put my stats in now. Even though i know full well what maintenance looks like for me. Hungry.
Edit: turns out it thinks my maintenance is more or less exactly where I believe my maintenance is. How tedious
I’ve plugged mine into a couple and have gotten everything from 1400-2100.
100% agree. The problem is that if I choose “sedentary” I get recommended closer to 1200, which is 100% unsustainable for me 
This will be contextual based on who does the googling. So, link, please!
The problem is that if you put sedentary, when you walk 20 miles a day on top of regular training and conditioning, you’re a big fat liar. Ha. You could probably get away with 1200 at your size if you actually were sedentary.
For what it’s worth I harf down ~3k calories on a training day, and 2.5k on a climbing day/off-day. A lot of that is protein though, which is why I guess I can get away with it. Also, 76kg (167lbs) and 186cm (6"1’).
You are not even remotely sedentary. You need to pick the highest level because that’s accurate