Anyone use an online nutritionist?

I did, but it was through my work, so the person had some credibility. It seemed to work out well.

Sports nutrition is the flip side of the training coin and many athletes consider seeking professional training advice, so professional nutrition advice also seems a logical step.

The benefits of an online Sports Nutritionist is purely in the cost and convenience – one to one sessions can cost a fortune.

Have you tried askig your questions in the forums?  Many experiences triathletes are pretty smart about nutrition.  I'm no nutritionist but my standard diet is probably better than 99% of the general public...I've been education myself for the last 3-4 years on proper diet for intense training (started as bodybuilding and now triathlon).  I'm not suggesting seeking the advice of a professional is a bad idea...I think people should spend more time and money on "coaching " of all sorts...it's a good investment in yout body and you get educated at the same time.

Here is what I'm looking for. I'm 6-0 and weigh 194lbs. I want to get down to 180-185. My resting metabolic rate is 1810 carlories. I try to workout regularly and have recently increased my intensity a little bit. I'm trying to get a good idea of what my calorie intake should be around? 2,000-3,000 calories or over 3,000.

Mike

Well, for a decent approximation I'd suggest using something like Fitday.com to log your diet and exercise.  You start by creating a profile with your age, height, weight, and lifestyle type.  That information is used to estimate your energy requirements for the day.  Then you can log your workout info...just type of exercise and amount of time...which adds the estimated calories burned.  So now you know about how many calories you need to maintain your current weight.  If you want to lose weight then try to consume about 500 cals per day less than your total burned.  This should give you about 1 lb per week weight loss on average.  Your daily intake will fluctuate depending on what type of workout you do and for how long.  On biking days I can burn over 4000 cal total.  On rest days it's only 2500 or so.  Using the "foods" section to log your foods will give you a running tally of calories and macro-nutrients for the day so you can pace yourself accordingly. Portion size is a very important thing here...you need to enter accurate portion sizes for the correct nutritional info to be logged.  I've started actually measuring out many things in my diet to be sure I'm using a serving as defined in the nitritional info. 

I'm not sure, but I know you can also enter a target weight which might give you additional guidance on how to get there.

Edited by TH3_FRB 2005-04-13 11:11 AM

A lot of factors influence the number of calories you need per day, consider the following formula as a ROUGH starting point

K = ((((W*100)*L)*7)+T)/7

Where:

K = Daily kcal req’d
W = Your weight in lbs
L = Lifestyle adjustment (1.3 for sedentary job, 1.5 for average & 1.8 for heavy manual job)
T = Weekly training calories burnt

Use the answer as your starting point

As TH3_FRB says its good to keep a food/drink diet

I'll give fitday a try and see how it goes. I can't really use my job for weight loss purposes because I am a cop and some days you have a foot chases and very stressful calls and other days you have nothing. It all depends on the day and who is stupid enough to do something.

Mike

Here is the Harris-Benedict Formula:


weight in pounds x 11

IF you are under 30 years old:
multiply by 1.3 if you are fairly inactive, have fairly high body fat, or are new to lifting

multiply by 1.4 if you are moderately active, have a job where you are not sitting at a desk but are up and walking/carrying/doing physical tasks.

multiply by 1.5 if you are very active, participate in sports on top of your workouts, have been weight training for at least a year (regularly), or have pretty low body fat.

If you're 30 to 40, subtract 0.05 from these values, so you multiply by 1.25, 1.35 or 1.45 for sedentary, moderately active, and very active respectively.

If you're over 40, subtract 0.1 from these values, so you are using 1.2, 1.3 or 1.4 for your multiplication values.

For maintenance, keep the numbers you get. If your goal is weight loss, subtract between 500 to 1000 calories per day. If your goal is weight gain, add up to 500 calories per day.

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You'll also find VERY knowledgeable people here: http://forums.jpfitness.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi