College Athletes?? or Exes?

Is anyone out there a college athlete or an ex college athlete? I play a DI sport and I am using this as a way to monitor what I eat to make sure that I am getting the right nutrients. I was just wondering if anyone else out there was doing the same thing.

I am not a college athlete, but I am a runner - and I also use the site to monitor my intake & nutrient balance for my training.  I think a lot of us in maintenance (i.e., not seeking to lose weight) use the site as a nutritional analysis tool. 

do you find that the site underestimates the amount of calories you burn? i'm not so sure how accurate the site is, because according to my coach, im supposed to consume 2700 calories a day, but according to this site, i should be consuming a lot less, since it only calculates that i burn about 2600

Actually, for me it depends.  When it comes to logging in my running by itself, I find that it captures my calorie burn well.  However, when it comes to setting an activity "type" (lightly active/moderately active/etc) and not logging in my workout separately, I find it underestimates. 

Have you tried setting yourself to sedentary and adding in your workouts afterward?  That's how I got to the most accurate number for me.  It might take you a few weeks (up to a month) to find your "magic number"...  You might want to try going by the phord calculator and override the number that CC gives you.

Edited for typo. 

Hey Jak!! I am a college athlete, D1 for swimming.  How are you?

I am not entirely sure, even today, how many calories I REALLY should be eating.  However, I consume about 2200 or so each day and lose a bit on it, which is my goal, because I need to slim down just a bit. 

Calorie count estimates about 2400 for me when I put in "very active" and estimates about 2700 when I put in my workouts.  I think the 2400 number is closer to being accurate.  I also think that this makes sense, since we are probably more efficient at what we do than the average Jo.

Feel free to message me!

Ran cross-country in college!  My diet in college sucked, hence my performance sucked! Good luck in your pursuit of athletic excellence- wish I could have realized back then that crappy intake means crappy output!

Original Post by run4eva:

Ran cross-country in college!  My diet in college sucked, hence my performance sucked! Good luck in your pursuit of athletic excellence- wish I could have realized back then that crappy intake means crappy output!

THIS ^^^^  Cannot stress enough how important your intake is to good performance.  By that I mean not just intake quality, but also quantity.  Make sure you have enough energy in for all the energy you are expending!! 

Thanks for the help. I tried the web site posted above and it seemed helpful, but sometimes I guess its a little hard for me to get the right estimate because my BMI says that I am techinically overweight (I am 5'0" and weigh about 127), but in reality, I'm actually healthy. We just have to lift a lot, so I have a lot of muscle I guess. But a lot of things I have tried tell me that I should weigh 112 or 115, but I'm not sure thats possible at this point.

I used to swim in high school before I decided to play field hockey in college so I know what that kind of training is like! But I'm also glad to see that I'm not the only one who's looking to just maintain the weight. And you're right, college food does make it REALLY hard to eat healthy, there is only so many options when you live in the dorms.

Jak-

So, the most important thing to me was body fat %.  I gained about 15 pounds in college, so I was working to lose those, which I finally did.  My highest was 170, and now I weigh 150ish, but in the process, my body has really liked what I've done, since I am now swimming much better and more consistently than I did at 170.  Plus, when I eat around 2000 calories (which is still a deficit for sure) I feel a lot more energetic, possibly because of the types of food I consume.

See if you can talk to your trainer about it, if you are concerned.  We had a nutritionist come in and talk to our team, and she comes back every year.  We have the ability to schedule individual appointments with her, and she'll check our body fat % if we want too.  Anyway, I know that as a D1 athlete, you have a lot of resources!!!

And I found that it was SO much easier to eat healthily when I moved off campus and started cooking for myself.

Hey Jak!

Just finished off my last season with DII rowing.

I used to have to monitor my calorie intake, always in the AT room being told to make sure I was consuming the right kinds of calories. I was never really given a number as to how many calories I should be consuming, probably over 2500 but now that I'm not rowing and just exercising on my own, I've had to cut back a lot because the change and amount of exercise I do now, my metabolism has changed too.