The P90X nutrition plan calculates too many calories for women. One key indicator that it’s off is that there is no differentiation between men and women at the same height and weight. I have a write up that I believe will answer your questions at http://www.pressplayfitness.com/?p=2105.

Nancy

I’m a mother of two, 27 years old, 5’4″, and 136lbs. My little one is 8 weeks old and I’m ready to get in shape. My job is sedentary so I am a bit concerned about the calorie intake from the nutrition plan. Can you help me get a better idea of what would be best for me?

Thanks!
Paralee

How many extra calories will vary based on how often the baby nurses and how much he/she takes in at each feeding. Assume it will require an additional 300 – 600 calories a day. Mother’s milk is much higher in fat and carb than cows milk so for every 100 calories, take in 10% in extra protein; 40% in fat and 50% in carb.

Since you don’t know how many calories to take in, start with 400 and see how you feel. If you are feeling really low energy, add another 100 calories and wait for a few days and see how you feel again. Repeat until you feel normal energy and are not putting on any weight.

Nancy

Perhaps a better article for you is the one I have at http://www.pressplayfitness.com/?p=2105. It specifically addresses how to eat on P90X (or other intense workout program). I cannot comment on the calorie total you have because I don’t see you sharing your daughter’s weight.

Also, if your daughter wants to really shed fat, she should do the Classic routine, not Lean. Classic will reshape her body and burn more fat than the Lean program All the best transformations, men or women, doing P90X have been on the Classic routine.

Nancy

You are my height so this is pretty easy. Now if you’ve been following the P90X nutrition plan, you’ll end up with way too many calories! The results I get for you when I use the P90x guide is 2,496 calories a day. That’s not going to produce weight loss for any woman. It’s even a bit generous for a man.

Start with a daily caloric intake of 1,600 calories (roughly 10x your weight). Then eat those calories in a 40/40/20 ratio of carb/protein/fat. So from a calorie perspective, this is 640 calories from carb, 640 calories from protein and 320 calories from fat. When you convert it to grams of each, you can have 160 grams of carb, 160 grams of protein and only 36 grams of fat (fat has more than double the calories per gram so you get a lot less).

This will likely be far less fat and a lot more protein than what you have been doing. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to make these targets without using a high protein drink (or two) a day. My full list of the proteins I use and like are found in our forums at http://www.pressplayfitness.com/members/forum/#topic/Protein-Powders.htm. Also, to hit the low carb target, realize you cannot have more than one serving of grains or potatoes per day and if you want to eat any bread product, shop from among the low calorie, low carb, high fiber selections I list at http://www.pressplayfitness.com/members/forum/#topic/Bread.htm.

I love the P90X exercise routine but I am no fan of the nutrition plan for women. Again, for guys it’s fine but we women are built differently and calculations based on weight don’t work well for us.

Nancy

I’m glad you find this website helpful!

First, do be sure you are both taking measurements weekly and photos every 30 days. If you’ve not been doing this, you may be amazed to see how much is really changing even if the scale isn’t moving much. I ended up ripping a ton of fat off of my body over the 90 day period but I only lost 13 lbs.

Secondly, as much as I LOVE P90X workouts and what they have done for me, the eating plan they have with that just doesn’t work for most women unless you are very physically active in your job. You end up calculating far to many calories. Moreover the phase 2 and phase 3 eating plan adjustments are just not going to help women burn fat and drop weight. The P90X eating plan will work for most men but that doesn’t help us.

Especially when you are pushing 50 (congratulations BTW on doing this program and not letting age be a factor), you need to eat wisely because it’s highly probable that you are pre-menopausal or menopausal which makes weight loss even harder. This was a real issue for me until I got the eating right as I started P90X.

In a nutshell, you are going to find that you are probably eating too many calories. I used your statistics to walk through the P90X suggested plan and I came up with nearly 2600 calories a day for you. That’s too much! What does tend to work for most women is to take your weight x 10 but always eat at least 1500 calories and no more than 2400 calories a day even if the weight x 10 calculation comes up lower or higher than those limits. So my quick calculation for you is 163 x 10 = 1630 calories a day.

The ‘long hand’ version of the calculation is to take .8 x your weight and use that to set your daily protein requirement in grams. So for you that would be 163 x .8 = 130 (I rounded). There are 4 calories per gram of protein so that adds up to 520 calories a day from protein. Protein calories should be no less than 30% of your daily caloric intake. So take the protein calories and divide that by .3 and you’ll get a daily total calorie allowance of 1,733. We can round that up to 1750 for convenience.

Of the 1750, only 700 calories should be carbohydrate (carbs). And the carbs you do eat should be fiber rich. So it’s mostly veggies and any grain based food source where they have increased the fiber. I eat the Sara Lee brand of bread called 45 calories & delightful multi grain bread. Each slice of bread only has 45 calories and there is about 2.5 grams of fiber in every slice. I’ve got some more real ‘finds’ in high fiber low calorie bread type products if you’d like them.

The remaining calories (1750 – 520 – 700 = 530) can come from fat. This really isn’t much as each gram of fat has 9 calories. That means you can only have about 59 grams of fat a day. You have to cook and eat low fat to stay in this limit.

BTW, it’s hard to eat enough protein if you are not supplementing with protein powder. I really like the Body Fortress brand Super Advanced Whey Protein powder that I buy at Walmart. It’s cheap, it mixes well and it tastes pretty good. I also like the Zone Perfect brand nutrition bars for snacks or a quick meal replacement and I like the Snickers brand nutrition bars as well.

Try making some of these changes and see how you do.

Nancy