psychological barrier upping calories +attitude towards food

MizzEngelChen

Not sure if this is the correct sub-forum for this?

Following those threads about how to calculare the BMR and TDEE etc I realized that my goal calories were too low for me. Therefore, I took an extra effort to log every extra exercise (be it taking a long walk through the city or the 30DS) as I had set my activity level to sedentary and eating back all exercise calories. Being used to eating 1200 cals/day and not eating back exercise calories I found it to be difficult to hit the goal. Not just in the sense of "uff! so much fooood! How am I supposed to eat all that" as I see a lot of people post on the forum (I could eat all day if I wanted...) but I found that a lot of it is psychological as in "ugh! I shouldn't be eating so much fooood!" and "No! too man calories! I shouldn't be having this" even if I could "afford" it and feeling guilty afterwards. Now yesterday I finally let go a bit and reached my calorie goal including all exercise. Looking at how much I ate, I still got a bad feeling even though (ok, to be honest, I was celebrating a bit with a friend and we had a couple of drinks so yeah, wasn't the healthies of days). Depending on how I count my post-midnight calories I even went a bit over, whcih shouldn't be a big deal since I was plenty under for most of the week.
This isn't really a new thing for me. I've had a troublesome, unhealthy relationship to food for quite some years, which caused me to slide up and down the scale 5 to 10 kilos in a year. I want to change that and develop a healthier attitude =o.

Has anyone else struggled in that way? That you found it difficult, psychologically, to eat more? How do you get a healthy attitude towads food?

majica8

Going through that now. I've been trying to hit a NET of 1200 for a few months now probably but haven't been losing that much weight. Figured I need to up it to net at least BMR of 1700ish. I'm just taking it slowly, and my daily goal at the moment is 1550.
My guilt levels tend to be tied to if I've exercised that day or not more than how much food I've eaten, though I don't like eating a lot of food especially if I'm not even hungry. Just hoping that upping then slowly will make it easier.

darrensurrey

It is an odd feeling but the way I see it is that I just had to understand the idea behind it all and trust it, then give it a go for a few months. Since joining MFP over a year ago, I've gone from eating around 1000 to eating up to 3000 (currently averaging about 2500) including lots of protein. I focus on getting the exercise and sport in and let things happen. It's a long slow process.