No, still hoping someone chimes in on it. @Jonathan are you able to shed some light on how to use this model to account for strength training in our plan?
I just use my EA target, and then add back all training / exercise calories. For weights, I use about 3 calories per minute in the gym. If you’re going really hard or keeping rest periods really short, you can increase it to 4.0 - 4.5, but either way it’s not gonna really move the needle.
Loving the tool. I tend to think endurance athletes have been really overdoing protein requirements nowadays, but I’m going to follow the calorie and macro suggestions for at least the next month and see where it takes me.
This is a quote from Jonathon’s response 22 days ago as it pertains to strength training.
“For other activities like strength training, this is a current shortcoming of the calculator. Not sure how or if we will address this for now (maybe just wait for it to be integrated into the product for that?), but great to get the feedback.”
So, no accounting for strength training as yet, I believe.
Thanks for this. I must have missed it.
Extending my congratulations. What was on the menu?
Thanks. A bit like finishing my first 5k.
Woke up early to cook and start eating:
Got on the bike but forgot my bidon. So at the office:
Lunch
Cycled home, scarfed a 1l bidon with sugar, ran out of honey but took some on the trail run and had a beer after
Then plodded my way through a late dinner which was heavy going
And MyFitnessPal still concludes that I was ‘under’:
Did not sleep well at all. Woke up with some kind of headache at 1-2am and kept waking through the rest of the night. Maybe needed more water.
Very late to the game here ,sorry. I think it would be good for the end-user to be able to compare the results/outputs per the 3 profiles they could choose from as opposed to back out through the browser to start all over again. Cheers.
You can already. Just click one of the other 2 profiles at the top of the page and it will switch you between Rapid, Gradual and Maintain in one click without any other input cycles.
Are you more looking for a table with all 3 profiles listed out on a single page?
John addresses this specifically in the last couple of podcasts. Again most of this seems to apply to people who are already in shape. Not those of us who want to lose 35 pounds.
@Jonathan @eddie has something changed with the EA nutrition calculator? I am not able to get the same results I did when the tracker was first put out. It sort of looks like body fat % isn’t being included in the equation. And the kcal/kg ffm calculations seem off, as ‘maintain’ is showing me 40 kcal/kg ffm, ‘gradual’ is showing 35, and ‘rapid’ is showing 30, when they used to be o45, 40, and 35, respectively.
Yes!
I collected feedback from 6 different advisors/nutritionists/dietitians/performance directors that are applying the EA model at various levels in the field and made adjustments based on their feedback.
Here are the recent adjustments:
Gender Added as Attribute
Gender filtering has been added to provide more specific guidance.
EA for males has shifted down 5 c/kg FFM
While a “higher tolerance” for low EA among males is referenced in published research as a possibility, it isn’t fully supported yet by research. After consulting with experts in the field, most felt quite comfortable with this 5c/kg FFM downward shift and suggested it. Fair to say if that doesn’t work for you, then you should go up 5c/kg FFM.
NEAT Added as Attribute
There is now a step that asks you to select your non-exercise activity levels. If you know you step count, you can add that instead.
Edge Case Fat and Protein adjustment
With the previous iteration of the calculator, there were some edge cases that caused fat or protein prescriptions to be either too low or too high. This is handled more intelligently in those scenarios now.
9 Likes
Thanks for the update.
Some quick thoughts:
- Is age taken into consideration in any way? (Specifically related to protein absorption rates as people age, but also just generally speaking.)
- Did anything else change (this morning)? The calorie counts I am seeing today make much more sense than what I was seeing last night when I wrote my post.
- You might want to update the page where the kcal/kg FFM are listed (for rapid, gradual, maintain) to show the different values for males and females.
For me, it seems very interesting (at my BF% and NEAT estimate) that the 5 kcal/kg FFM reduction in the macro calculation nearly exactly offsets the additional NEAT calories, so my end result is nearly the same as what it was originally (both of which are still significantly below what I was seeing last night).
Looks more achievable to me, will give it a crack at these levels next week.
The EA calculator has been a game changer for me! Thank you TR for introducing it! I’m a 43 yo female, >4watts/kg. I upped my training hours to 10+ per week following BWR CA last year and maintained it there. I liked being lean and every so often tracked calories to check I was “balanced”. I started getting symptoms I blamed on perimenopause- including much longer menstrual cycles. The past two months I started using the EA model, and properly carb loading for events and even just focusing on good carbs the two meals before training. My cycles are back down from over 30’days to ~25, and I feel really good. To my surprise no weight gain- maybe plus a couple pounds water weight if I go really high carb but it goes back down. Instead of watching my intake like a hawk now I’m focused on how much I can get in a day (it’s work!) and I’m getting strong results. Sharing to tell others not to be scared of the numbers.
Which EA level are you using as your guideline (35, 40, 45)? I’m trying to explain the EA model to my wife, but she seems to think it’s some sort of voodoo, even though it’s working for me.
Thanks for the update. Eating 4000 calories a day was pretty challenging, though I gave it a go. The new number seems more reasonable to me.
The middle one generally (40 kcal/kg) but could even go higher - I also use AI if I don’t feel like going thru the whole process of the TR calculator, screenshot, etc. I’ve found ChatGPT or Grok have superior results to Claude.
I was also extremely hesitant, so I understand.
Good Morning.
I was just looking at using the nutrition calculator that Jonathan was talking about. I was wondering when filling out the workouts it asks if the are hard, easy or endurance. Does anyone know what the criteria is to determine what a hard workout is. IE do you use TSS or Intensity factor (IF) or just how you perceive it. Any help or feed back would be greatly appreciated.