I first started prepping my meals and therefore managing my makro nutrients a little over a month ago. As anticipated I managed to cut some weight without loosing strength. I am 20 years old and with my current diet maintain a weight of ~96 kg at ~20% bf (measured by my scale). I currently train 4 times a week, following a program very much like your powerlifting template, as well as 2 light cardio sessions on off days. In my job I tend to walk great distances as well. Depeding on what fruit I choose for my day I eat 2300 - 2400 kcal, which I think to be a very low amout for my weight.
Could a medical condition that I need to take care of be the cause for my low caloric need? / Is it because of my genetics?
Thanks for the response Jrodan, the video cleared a lot up for me!
What still confuses me is: looking into the future with the goal of becoming a good powerlifter, should I try my best to increase my tdee, say by focusing on hypertrophy to increase my lean body mass, so I can eat more food, or should I just keep on training to increase the barbell lifts and eat acordingly to stay at a healthy body fat percentage?
I don’t think those two goals are mutually exclusive. To get stronger, you’ll need to improve your skills and specific strength in the competitive lifts and improve your LBM.
If true, your maintenance calories are likely much higher than 2300-2400 unless you’ve previously lost a lot of weight. That said, I’m unsure what the question is at this point.
I can give you another data point if that is helpful, my activity level sounds identical to yours (I walk quite a bit (18K steps a day), am running the powerbuilding template), waist is about the same (33.5") @ 82 Kg BW and 43 years of age. I meticulously weigh everything I eat for about 18 months now. Maintenance is 3700. I’m sure there is some variance from person to person but it wouldn’t make sense for that difference to be a full 50% increase in TDEE.
