I am female, 5’7″ and weigh 152 lb. I have 20.9% body fat and am very muscular. I go walking around my neighborhood about three to four times per week and walk at a moderate pace for about 3.5 miles pushing a stroller with a 27 lb toddler in it. Seven days per week I do high intensity interval training (intermediate 1:00 min split,) a thirty minute vinyasa yoga session (harder than it sounds, I’m covered in sweat by the end of it,) and twenty to thirty minutes of fairly intense weight training (two days on, one day active rest with 30 min of extra cardio.) I am trying to lose fat and build some heavy muscle so basically for the past four months I have gained about five pounds but all my clothes are super loose and I can tell I’m much smaller. I’ve been checking my body fat percentage and it’s gone down considerably from over 26% back in November. I eat moderately low carb, lots of veggies at every meal, one protein shake, a protein bar, and I added up what I normally eat each day (bodybuilders tend to eat the exact same thing every day) and I eat just under or around 1800 calories, about 15% from carbohydrates and the rest half and half protein (~120g) and fat (no trans fats and little saturated fat.)
My question is for bodybuilders and athletes who have experience with this sort of thing. I spend a little over 14 hours per week training, 10 if you don’t count my morning walks with my son. I’m wondering if my calorie count is enough, or should I be eating more than 1800 calories to ensure I don’t lose muscle mass while losing fat?
I would really appreciate serious answers and if you don’t like female bodybuilding, please refrain from posting rude comments.
Considering I have lost quite a bit of fat, I’m sure 1800 calories is not too much especially with 10+ hours of training per week. Even Olympic athletes don’t train more than 14 hours per week on average without risk of overtraining. Furthermore, HIIT training burns far more calories and raises my BMR more than low intensity training which I had been doing for three months and didn’t start losing quite as much fat as when I started HIIT training. Just because I’m a female, don’t assume that I can barely eat more than the average BMR of an inactive couch potato.
I am 28 years old