Upping calories - timeframe

margfish

Hi everyone! For those of you who have found success getting out of a plateau by upping yor calories, how much did you increase by, and how long did you give it to determine success?

I started an exercise program about 4 weeks ago, more intense than I had been doing, and I haven't seen results. Everything else has remained the same - I weigh my food, log it all and stay within my calories. I'm thinking maybe I need a snack after I work out (I tend to do it in the evening before bed), which would by default up my calories by about 100-150. Is that too much to start with as an experiment? I'm currently averaging about 1700/day/week. Thank you!

LAWoman72

Are you sure you need to increase, not decrease your calories? Maybe 1700 is maintenance for you.

DeguelloTex

If eating 100-150 more calories caused you to lose weight, wouldn't eating 200-300 more cause you to lose even more?

tibby531

when I upped my calories a year ago, I started with 200. then it would take me three weeks to adjust, and I would up them by another 200. I repeated this until maintenance was found, and then adjusted accordingly. have you plugged your info into a TDEE calculator like scooby's, just to get an idea of what you might need to eat on a daily basis?

TimothyFish

It is a false assumption to think that people have success at losing weight by increasing calorie consumption. As @LAWoman72 said, 1700 may be maintenance for you. At the very least, it is probably very close to your maintenance and that combined with a change in your exercise could result in seeing less weight loss.

margfish

Thanks everyone. I was at maintenance, and the way I see it, adding in additional exercise should have created a deficit, letting the scale go down a bit. Given that nothing else has changed (and it's been weeks, I'm not freaking out after only a few days) and the scale hasn't gone down, I'm trying to think of other options to figure this out.

Also, I don't think it's a false assumption that upping calories helps people lose, as many on here have done it and seen results. I'm not trying to add 500 extra!

Thanks for the info, tibby531. Yep, I've used all the calculators out there!

DeguelloTex

margfish wrote: »

Also, I don't think it's a false assumption that upping calories helps people lose, as many on here have done it and seen results.

No, they haven't, at least not as a result of upping calories.