Abnormally low calories for a strong 20 year old male?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

As the title says, I am 20 years old and my lifts are 200kg deadlift, 160kg squat, 130kg bench and 90kg ohp. I am 182cm tall and I weigh 98kg, I train 3-4 times a week with weights and no cardio and I work as a Nurse usually spending 5 hours on my feet. Keeping all that in mind, I have measured my weight while eating 3000 calories a week and I GAINED weight??! I never went though measuring before but I used to eat more than I do now which led me to become 95kg overweight (need to suck belly for it to be behind chest and it’s soft and wobbly but decently lean everywhere else). I measure my calories correctly (If I cook with oil, I measure that too) so there is no error in my calories. Is something wrong with me? I see people all over the world eating more than that to CUT so here are my assumptions.

  1. “Most” people overestimate their calories or flex.
    2)The aforementioned lifts are pre-covid, right now I am detrained so I train with about 60-70% of these numbers for reps.
    3)Is it because of lack of cardio?
    4)Does my job not burn enough calories?
    5)What do people usually eat for being as strong and heavy as I am?

Right now I am able to re-gain strength while on these calories or even less since I’ve been higher before so I want to use this chance to cut 5-7kgs WHILE regaining strength. How should I go about it training while cutting and getting my old strength back? If I were to estimate bf% it would be higher than 20%. Could a maintenance level of calories allow me to proggress my old strength so I cut to 15-17% then go on a surplus in case of stalling?

I DO want to eat more but my priority right now is cutting since I get some strength back easily.

2

The predicted maintenance calories for someone of your height/weight is ~ 3200kCal/day. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that 3000kCal (or thereabouts) is too much for you in order to lose weight.

3

Yet I am gaining on it

4

Yea, I don’t think that’s crazy unusual, as there’s a huge variance amongst individuals of similar bodyweights based on genetics, LBM, physical activity, and accuracy of intake. It is highly unlikely something is “wrong” with you, but you’re eating too many calories.

5

Long story short too high individually for me but I should keep doing it? Could it be that the lifts burn less for me than other individuals through adaptation? I seem to progress fine on my lifts only eating 3k~ sobi got that going for me which is nice.

Would 20-40 minutes of cardio allow me to eat an extra bowl of cereal or a sandwich with both being 350-500 calories?

6

What’s your waist circumference?

7

My waist circumference is 95 cm, or 37,4 inches. Problem with my cuisine is that fat accidentally adds on, for example with every conscious effort of only having carbs and protein, I end up with 30-35% fat. For this reason I wanna know if adding +500 carbs on workout days and supposedly a bit of cardio is a good idea. Mostly oil that I have to take into account, my cuisine is Mediterranean so there will always be olive oil, I just convince them to use a bit less

8

Took me long to reply so I do it again in case this thread is forgotten

9

Hi here’s some video so probably it could help you to figure out your problem
https://shrinke.me/jembatan