Anyone else work an extremely physical job?

I work at a popcorn processing plant and I lift heavy (50 lb) bags of popcorn 8 hours a day 5 or 6 days a week.  We stack the bags on pallets and send them out to companies that sell them to movie theaters or stores that sell popcorn.  Does any one else work a very physical job and count calories.  I also am a competitive runner as well as an avid bicyclist.  I was wondering if anyone else counted calories and had a very physical lifestyle.  My calorie intake for needs to be in the 4000 - 5000 calorie range to maintain my weight.  Does anyone else eat a lot to maintain?  I weigh 165 lbs.

I have always had very physical jobs.  I was a machinist for a long time and now I work at a wedding shop.  I haul big wedding dresses around 3-5 at a time.  Sometimes for 9 hours straight and I lift weights.  To maintain I would probably need around 2500 cals maybe a little more.  Quite a bit for a 5'4" female 143 lbs.  I love active jobs.  Desk jobs make me crazy.  I couldn't imagine if I was a bicylist too.  I feel like I eat all the time as it is

I don't have a physical job in the sense that I lift very heavy things, but I'm a waitress at a very busy restaurant.  We have a line out the door that goes down the sidewalk between 8:00am and 2:00pm (we close at 3:00).  Some days I have to be at work by 5:00am, which means I wake up at four.  From eight o'clock on, I move nonstop.  Once, I wore a step counter to work, and I walked almost nine miles just in the time I was at the restaurant.  I always wondered if this meant I should take in more calories or not--I just try to eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm not.

I used to work backstage at a Theater a long time ago.  We would have many, many 20 hour days where we would completely unload 2-3 semis of light and sound equipment, set it up, tear it down, and reload the trucks all in one day.  Plus, we would be haging lights, curtains (which are incredibly heavy) and sets.  I wasn't counting calories then, but I could maintain 120lbs @5'4" while  eating tons of junk food.  (Probably over 3000 calories a day)

I run the maintenance dept. for a chemical plant.  Sometimes it's very physical (installing piping and equipment), sometimes not so much (sitting at my desk doing paperwork).  I'm on my feet about 1/2 the day, walking 3-5 miles per day.  I do no other exercise.  I can maintain my weight on 3000 calories; I'm losing steadily on 2000-2200.

i wouldn't call my job extremely physical (restaurant) but i KNOW i burn a ton of calories during my shifts. i work at a barbecue restaurant here in austin that is pretty popular, so it's really busy during meal times... which means i'm moving around constantly. sometimes i'm working so hard i'm wiping sweat from my brow. but nevertheless, i have my activity level set to "light activity" and i just add my workouts to my burn meter manually on days that i work. on days that i don't work, i just use the counter's estimated burn to figure out my deficit. works pretty well.

You sound just like me man.  I'm 24 and I had been eating around 2200 calories a day.

Well I recently started a job very similar to yours where I would lift 50lb boxes off of pallets and sort them according to isle at a grocery store, so the night shift can come and stock them when my shift is over. It's tough work with few breaks.

Three weeks into the job I noticed I was losing weight and began to feel noticably more tired.  Eating more reversed that trend.

I found this site searching for a thread like this one to research just how much I SHOULD be eating to maintain my weight, because 2200 was definitely not cutting it.  I'm going to try to go up to 4000 like you.

Cheers!