New to this board and need help.

[tr2570fl]

Currently I am working out about 5-6 days a week I have a good workout plan. I do 2 hours of cardio a day keeping them way before the time I workout in the day. I am burning around 2000 calories just from that. I also do 1000 pushups a day and sometimes crunches. Im not new to lifting and all of this exercising. OI played football all through high school so I know how my body reacts to certain things. Alot of people tell me im overtraining but I never get sore any more and I just feel as though I know how my body is working. The thing is with all of this working out and cardio I am trying to cut at the same time. I eat very healthy during the day and have researched this forum on good cutting diets. The thing is I dont want to lose muscle from all of this work so i was wondering how many calories I eat during the day. I find myself stuffing myself with clean food at lunch and dinner, the only thing I eat that is bad is french dressing on the salad, (they dont have anything fat free, and raisan bran). I currently weigh 173 and am 6ft tall. Body fat is around 6-8. I just need to know how many calories I am burning just from everything I am doing including the normal amount I burn in a day just from living. I guess what I really need to know is doing all of this cardio in a day, should I put that into how many calories I need to be eating to maintain a caloric deficit. Help would be much appreciated, Im killing myself over this. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[atherjen]

any reason for all the cardio though? certainly that much is not needed at all to get bodyfat levels low or maintain them there.
aside from all the pushups and crunches,do you lift weights too?

IMO at your height, weight and bf% already there wouldnt be anything left to loose. If you dont want to loose muscle but insist on all the cardio, you need to eat enough, and that varys from person to person. No one is going to be able to sit here and say "ok you need to eat 3000calories/day" . Rather YOU need to work on your diet, make sure your getting enough carbs to sustain workouts, plenty of protein to repair, save and build muscle, and EFAs for bodily functions. Keep a daily food log for a week. Record EVERYTHING you eat, log it into www.fitday.com. That will let you monitor exactly how many calories, etc you are consuming. Then work out a daily average. Step on the scale before and after the week... did you loose weight? gain weight? maintain? Adjust as needed.