Go for it. I upped the calories like i asked above. This was almost a year ago - did not gain any unwanted weight - performing and feeling much better.
I wasnt really underfueling before, but the classic approach does put you near that.
Its all n=1 in my case but:
Classic approach → do the training, feel kind of drained and dont adapt
EA approach → do the training and have enough availability to adapt to the training and get better
Thanks for the n+1 on this. I’m happy to make the plunge on this cause I’m training very hard at the moment and I would prefer to think less about restricting calories and more about fueling to a point where I feel like I’m recovering from the workouts.
Btw, what was your experience starting out?
From the calculations provided, its clear my intake is going to go up significantly; almost 1000 calories a day. Did you experience initial weight gain and then leveling? Would love to know more about how you found your experience.
I’m still kicking it
Yes, some initial weight gain which leveled out, but that probably was extra water and glyocogen. I had to up by ± 400 calories though.
I would play around with it a bit and not worry about weight fluctuations too much 
@The_Conductor hope thats in line with what you propose in this approach
Same boat here! I’m curious to see how it goes, I’m gonna commit to following it for at least 4 weeks and see what happens!
That seems about right. The big question though is how do you feel?
Feel good!!
I’m becoming more and more convinced we should just learn the stress adaptation model before one sets foot in the gym
Great!
I was curious about the OEA target in the study TR shared. They identified a factor of 50 as being the optimum and was the value the control group used in the study.
Currently I’m interested in eating more to fuel my workouts and to build muscle with a hypertrophy workout plan. My focus is primarily adding some lean muscle to my upper body (which has not been focused on ever) and hitting some basic strength targets (achieving pull ups, higher bench etc). Running a 5x a week lifting program currently in addition to following a low volume TR plan to simply get my endurance up.
In my case, with a focus on building muscle, would setting an energy balance target factor of 50 (with added amount to recover from workouts) be a suggested route? Or should I move up to 40-45 and see how I’m responding?
Currently I’ve looked over my last 3 weeks and I’ve been eating at around a factor of 30 when accounting for energy expenditure. I’m happy to make a larger jump in eating but I’m wondering if its better to be moderate rather than going in head first as I like to do. Planning to set macros according to TR’s suggestion since the protein % matches 2.2g per kilo perfectly for me. Thoughts?
@killroy123 curious as to what your approach might look like here? I.E., where / when are you planning on increasing your food intake?
I’m unable to weigh food or my bodyweight at the moment and for the next few months, but i’m consciously consuming more food and tracking my feelings, sleep, performance and the mirror - from today.
Hiya
Plan is pretty much now. Just setting my calories at an energy availability factor of 45 as described above and then going in to see what happens. I’ve set the ratio of carbs:protein:fat to the recommended level from the TR video; 65:18:17 ratio
Currently I’m on a bodybuilding program to put on lean muscle and ok with some fat gain. I do TR as a way to keep cardio up and improve FTP performance broadly.
Admittedly it’s a bit scary because the increase is 1000 calories daily. This doesn’t include calories that are added due to concerted exercise as stated above. I expect a daily increase of 500+ for exercise alone as I do around 8 workouts a week with some 2 a days. 5x weightlifting and 3x-4x cycling.
I’m comfortable with going all in to the recommended calorie intake. I know this will increase my weight but, at the same time, my goal is to put on muscle. Weight gain won’t really bother me because I know I need the energy to put on muscle. Ideally that happens while reducing body fat. So I might be heavier but if I’m heavier because I have more muscle rather than fat…that’d be grand.
From the TR linked study in their video, an optimal energy availability for the control group was 50 and in that study the participants stayed the same weight but lost fat and gained muscle. Such results are enticing for me. I’d like to put on 5-10 lbs of muscle on my frame first and learn what eating for performance feels like in that way.
My plan is to set my intake at 45 and see how it goes for about 6 weeks. That should give me time to see what happens and to see trends. I am going to commit to this for roughly 30 weeks or more. I want to see what happens and am curious enough to try it out.
I’ll be honest I’m enjoying this so far. Performance in the gym is good and I feel ready to hit my planned work. It’s a nice change.
If people are interested, happy to do a weekly write up or whatever on how this goes. Happy to discuss my lifting and low volume cycling performance.
I must also say that the first day I increased my food I got really emotional. It was really freaky and it suggested to me that I don’t have a good relationship with food that I thought I did. That finally pushed me to just go all in and see how this goes.
Please do! I’ve lost a bunch of weight this year but still have an unhealthy relationship with food, which is a real challenge when trying to progress on the bike and now the gym! I’d love to hear how things progress and wish you luck. 
Just wanted to chime in here…I’d say to bump up your calories over the course of 2-3 weeks if you can. I don’t know how much you are eating now, but 1,000 kcal is pretty substantial unless you are really underfed. At the same time, you can add the extra calories as juice or energy dense foods to your existing meals so that it doesn’t feel like such a big change for your body. Good luck, enjoy the additional fuel and hope you get the results you are looking for.
Thanks! Yeah I’ve lost and gained like a yo yo. But it’s also due to health factors that hit me hard this year. Since then I’m in a better place but now I think is the time to fuel and see how I do.
I’ll update here etc and let people know how the week goes. Don’t want to spam the forum with daily updates. Let me know what you want me to talk about as I do it.
Thanks for the insight - it’s great to hear that your gym performance is going well.
Related to your post below - I’d love to read a roundup /regular progress report!
Kk. I’ll aim for Sundays for a write up. Rest day and all and I typically calibrate the week’s exercise plan on the same day (ensuring progressive overload etc). Happy to address whatever questions you may have too so ping me as needed
Okay, thanks for your patience. I haven’t had a lot of time lately to sit down and write out my experience until today. This might be a bit long, but hopefully, it is informative.
My background is that I’m someone who has experienced a yo-yo rebound in dieting over the course of this year. In 2022, I managed to lose weight to approximately 80 kgs and was feeling good for the change. I achieved this loss in the typical way: I set my calories according to an energy balance equation and reduced my daily caloric intake by 750-1000 per day. My weight loss occurred over the course of a few months, with the first month being stuck at my weight despite the loss. You can see me posting in the weight loss thread discussing this happening if you check through it.
However, in 2023, I was diagnosed with a health condition. Long story short, I was told to immediately stop dieting and to focus on addressing the condition for the year. I put away any calculators, etc., and just focused on recovery. This, naturally, led me to rebound in weight back to my original weight at the start of my diet in 2022. This was likely due to the medication I was on plus a general increase in eating as expected when not watching intake. Not fun to see this happen if I’m honest.
Thankfully, I’m healthy now and have been able to resume weight training under doctor advice. Prior to starting this increase in caloric intake 3 weeks ago, I had been on a bodybuilding-type strength training plan for about 5 weeks. This was started to achieve a goal of adding muscle and getting strong in various movements to be considered “healthy”. As I will now be 40 years old in January, I am beginning to plan my exercise with a mind towards being able to age gracefully/kick butt well into my 80s.
With the clear from my doctor to worry about body composition, I initially thought to diet. However, since I am a “beginner” to weight training, with hypertrophy as a goal, I was advised that one should be at caloric maintenance or slightly higher to optimize building muscle. I decided that since my focus was adding more muscle and focusing on strength training, I should set my intake such that I can feed the work and, ideally, add muscle. I decided that I would be devoted to this goal for at least a year and maybe a year and a half. This is to reap what are the “beginner gains” that occur when someone does this.
The question turned to how should I set my intake after knowing this goal. Serendipity emerged when the TR video about fuelling workouts came about and led me down a research path on how to set “optimal” caloric intake for performance. This is where I found the TR thread about energy availability and, thus, a whole different way to set my caloric intake.
So, deciding to take an energy availability approach, I needed to set my caloric intake targets. Since I wanted to focus on performing in the gym and recovering from sessions, I set my intake at the recommended 45 calories per kg of lean body mass. This is in line with the recommendations for performance above.
Setting my intake to this amount of calories initially felt crazy. To put it into perspective, I was used to eating at a caloric intake of around 2500 per day. The calorie amount set by the Energy Availability equation effectively increased my intake by anywhere between 1000 to 1500 per day.
1st Week Experience: The first week was extremely strange in many ways. The first day, I sought to accomplish the “goal” of eating to my required calories. With my workouts added, I needed to eat 4000 calories for the day. I began my day eating as I used to but noticed, very quickly, I needed to eat more to hit my target. The latter half of the day was a feast of various foods I had almost exclusively not eaten because they were high in calories. The day culminated with one of the largest bowls of pasta with meat sauce I’ve had in years.
As I ate more food, I noticed that I was becoming very emotional about the entire experience. I felt satisfied to the point of tears; I felt like I was finally eating enough where I felt full. Having such feelings over a bowl of pasta freaked me out and taught me that perhaps I may not have the best relationship with food. It also gave me the initial feedback that I’m going to fully commit to this plan and see what happens.
The rest of the days during the first week were me nearly forcing myself to eat more than I was used to. Day 2-3 felt hard as I didn’t feel physically hungry but that I needed to eat more to meet it. But accounting for what I needed to eat and my activity, I found myself needing to eat roughly 3000-3500+ extra calories. By the latter part of the week, I found myself having the appetite and that eating to where I needed to was much easier. In a way, I found my appetite came “roaring back”.
In terms of weight gain, I gained roughly 2 kg from the experience. This was expected and, as I would see in weeks 2-3 the place to where my weight stabilized to. Initially it was a shock, as one would expect, but I didn’t mind the jump. I started feeling more “solid” and more energetic.
Week 2 and 3 experiences were quite simple: I’ve followed the diet recommendations pretty smoothly and have been focused on accomplishing my workouts. As I typically work out 5 days a week, I have settled in eating quite a large amount of food. Working out more allows for me to eat more which is nice.
However, it was during both weeks that I started noticing very significant increases in performance. For both weeks, I’ve been able to add roughly 5-10 kg to many of the major strength lifts (squats, deadlifts etc) and I have only found myself limiting the increase purely because I couldn’t believe how good I was performing. The most significant example of this was my deadlift whereby I increased my weight by 20 kg in the session.
In terms of eating, I have found myself gravitating towards healthier foods over time. Initially, increasing my calories felt like a permission to eat things I had prohibited myself from eating. But, I quickly found out that when you can eat a lot of whatever, you get tired of guilty pleasure foods. Currently I find myself eating healthier foods as a default. I have my candy and whatnot but not at crazy levels. I’m finding that I’m eating to fuel performance and my cues of what to eat and when are improving.
So far, I’ve found that eating to 45 calories per kg of FFM is appropriate but not “gut stuffing”. There are days where I feel I can eat more and days where I don’t. I need to be mindful of the total calories but more as a rule of thumb. The large increase feels less like “you can stuff yourself” and more of “you can eat to be full and be ready to perform tomorrow.”
On the overall balance: I’m feeling stronger and more able to do my workouts and my daily activities with significantly more energy. My weight has settled and hovers by less than a pound or so in variance. The trend so far is that I’m adding muscle while losing fat according to my Tanita scale and that tracks with how I generally feel. I still track my calories but with the goal of hitting my targets and ensuring I eat enough. It’s been a welcome change and I am very happy.
I’ll probably update in like a month or so as well with how it’s going overall. This is going to be a longer project as I will be focusing on strength training for most of 2024.
Overall, if you’re interested, try it! I’ll be happy to answer questions you may have.
Thanks for the write-up! I like to think that I don’t have a fraught relationship with food, but really, it’s just less fraught than some others experience. I liked the perspective in your post and would love to follow your updates.