The Cunningham Equation -An accurate way to predict calories

[steelcutoats]

FWIW, I posted my initial reaction to this formula when I was very early on in the program, lifting very easy weights for form.

It's now two months on, and I eat a horredous shit ton of food, easily 4000cal+ per day.

[Crush]

I see that intense weight lifting is 6, but what number should I use to represent running?

[iCookie]

Anybody knows where I can download a Excel version of the spreadsheet?

The one on the site is full of bugs...it doesn't even work.

[PhoenixAD]

hm, phoenixAD, I seem to get an error saying "you entered someting improperly"...

I entered all numbers and tried both comma and period to separate decimals...

Here's example data that I used to validate

Weight (lbs) : 190
Body Fat % : 0.38
Thermic Effect of Food : 0.05
Activity : 1.5
MET : 6
Duration : 1


My guess would be the body fat was not properly formatted. This was something quick I threw together without as much validation. I will make some updates later to it to make it more user friendly.

[grglandr]

I found the Cunningham seemed too high also.

I have been using the calorie range dailyburn.com gave me, and it seems to be about right. (about 2300 to 2600 for loosing weight)

[Subsistence]

This has been working well for me as a total beginner for gaining lean weight with minimal fat. I'll be keeping it up for another month or so and then try to melt off a few lbs of fat.

[codygman]

It says I need 7169 Calories a day according to rossi's spreadsheet. I'm doing the 5x5 method, as well as 2-4 hours a day doing parkour/freerunning, still this seems a bit high? Does it seem right to you guys?

[iCookie]

It says I need 7169 Calories a day according to rossi's spreadsheet. I'm doing the 5x5 method, as well as 2-4 hours a day doing parkour/freerunning, still this seems a bit high? Does it seem right to you guys?

Oh nice, another one doing parkour

7169 seems very high if you ask me, but if you do parkour for about 3-4 hours it might be about right.

I usually consume maximum 6000kcal when doing parkour for 3 hours and 5x5 for 2 hours...

[dylanamus]

SL + 2-4 hours of parkour a day! Jesus... if you already have a decent amount of muscle on your frames, then I wouldn't be surprised if 6 or 7000kcal wasn't enough to maintain! Baring in mind some athletes who spend several hours a day in training consume twice that amount just to maintain their lean mass.

[holvoetn]

SL + 2-4 hours of parkour a day! Jesus... if you already have a decent amount of muscle on your frames, then I wouldn't be surprised if 6 or 7000kcal wasn't enough to maintain! Baring in mind some athletes who spend several hours a day in training consume twice that amount just to maintain their lean mass.

I think the most I have ever seen being mentioned was Michael Phelps during the Olympics, he consumed 11000-12000

[Bman1]

Read an article about that Michael Phelps calorie intake. Apparently, it was only a couple of times that he actually ate that many calories in a day and his daily average was more like 5000 or 6000 calories. Still a lot of food though.

[rossi]

The online spreadsheet is really troublesome: many users at the same time, large amounts of worksheets (all get loaded into memory), and sometimes bad luck or occasional vandalism. I've rewritten the thing in javascript into a clean html page, so everything happens client-side. Shouldn't be any more problems (except for the NoScript-posse of course). I'm still tweaking the layout a bit, but will have a version up shortly.

About the equation itself, until now we have used it with no knowledge of the underlying science or studies. I couldn't find the original Cunningham paper from 1991 or other analysis. There are some comparisons with other formula's for old women and fat children, and there it overestimates the BMR. I have read that it's supposed to be an estimator only for athletes. Does anyone here know more?

[cervenyc]

Here's something that may be helpful in planning your body composition goals:

Calculating Target Bodyweight (TBW):
1) Get your BF% measured, & realize that this is an educated guess at best. Get your your 1st thing in the morning weight.
2) Calculate your fat mass (BF% divided by 100, multiply by total weight).
3) Subtract fat mass from total weight, this is your lean body mass (LBM).
4) Decide how much lbs of muscle you wanna gain or lose (hah), then add this to your LBM. If you wanna maintain, then don't mess with this number.
5) Multiply your target LBM by 100.
6) Divide the answer of step 5 by the following calculation: 100 minus whatever BF% you're shooting for. This gives you your target bodyweight (TBW) at your goal body comp.

I've blatantly stolen it form here:http://www.muscleandscience.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2552

So does this mean you (we/I) should calculate the CE for my ideal composition? At my current stats (172lb 17%bf) it says I should be eating 3000 calories for maintenance (non-training), but if I set a goal to stay the same weight but less fat (10% goal body fat), my maintenance calories are 2400 (ntd). It doesn't make sense to me that dropping my current maintenance calories by 500 (1 lb fat loss per week) would result in a gain in lean body mass. So what values should I use?

This is important because if my current calorie goals (2500 w/ additional deficit created from workouts based on CE w/ current stats) is too large a deficit, given that CE estimates seem high, will I stall from too great of a deficit? How will I know?

[manley0702]

i'm about 900kCal less than the equation says. My main goal is to lose weight. However, I would like to gain muscle too. I am doing SL and also BJJ 3 days a week. Will I still gain lean muscle?

[HokieHard]

The equation states I need 6438 calories on training days, that is somewhat of an unbelievable caloric intake for me if this is the recommended maintenance level. I am 95.2 kg @ 10% BF and do madcow's 5x5 3x per week and ingest about 160g of protein per day(about .8g/lb).