Having trouble eating enough

Kittyfarmer00

I'm already a fairly small woman, and my job requires a lot of heavy lifting and it must be done quickly.

After a year of working like this for 8 hours a day, I look like a skeleton. I have muscles in my arms and legs, but the rest of me looks sickly.

Naturally, I know I need to eat more, but I'm guessing I'm already consuming over 3000 calories a day. I drink a lot of soda and I eat fast food several times a week. Still I just lose more weight.

Does anyone have a similar problem? Are there any calorie dense supplements that will work for me? I already buy muscle milk and drink it everyday, sometimes twice, but it's not having the desired effect and I'm STILL losing weight to the point where I will be under 100 lbs soon.

TavistockToad

If you're guessing then you're probably not eating as much as you think.

Weigh and log everything and then look at eating more calorie dense food to put you in a small surplus.

psuLemon

^I would agree by start tracking your calories instead of guessing.

Second - read this: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10326769/are-you-a-hard-gainer-please-read/p1

VividDawn

I agree, to log everything. I was eating constantly, yet either barely maintaining, or starting to slowly lose. I decided to keep track, and I was never over 1200 a day... with my health issues, I need minimum of 1600.
At first it's a little bit of a hassle to measure, weigh, and record everything, but after a while you'll start to remember things. The bread I buy is 100 calories per slice. I now know how much peanut butter is a tablespoon by sight, not having to measure it. My favorite set of cups, I know what depth to fill for a full 8 or 10 ounces of drink.
If you have th MFP app, the barcode scanner is awesome to use! Saves a lot of typing and searching for your exact food item.

I'm doing so much better about knowing how my daily goal is going, and if I can slack off a bit with having a smaller snack when I'm not in a mood to stuff myself silly, or knowing that I DO need to stuff myself silly or I'll be too low for the day. My appetite revs up in the evening, so dinner and bedtime snack are usually my biggest eats.

RoxieDawn

My youngest daughter is same way. She actually uses MFP to log her food intake to make sure she is eating enough everyday. She is already a tiny thing, and due to the demands of her job she has to make sure she eats enough in order to get up the next day and do it all over again and not lose any weight.

She eats a lot of calorie dense foods. She carries all sorts of things in her bag, like cheese crackers, peanut butter crackers, protein bars (and I mean really high calorie ones), makes granola or dry cereal snack bags, popcorn, nuts, trail mixes and the list goes on and keeps food and beverages in the fridge at her job as well.

Albeit the stress of her jobs (she has more than one) does make her get off point some times, but MFP is a tool that she uses as religiously as she can.

Kittyfarmer00

Thanks everyone. I have logged in the past for about a year to help with weight loss. I'm pretty sure my guesstimations aren't that far off. I try to keep track when I can, but I always end up missing a few things, since I can't have my phone at work for safety reasons and I always end up eating random items from the vending machines.

ikraz55

Its possible you have a metabolic disorder, absorption disorder or a parasite. If you're really eating a lot more than your maintenance levels, always hungry, and still not gaining weight I would definitely tell a doctor, who might refer you to a specialist like a gastroenterologist.

psuLemon

Kittyfarmer00 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. I have logged in the past for about a year to help with weight loss. I'm pretty sure my guesstimations aren't that far off. I try to keep track when I can, but I always end up missing a few things, since I can't have my phone at work for safety reasons and I always end up eating random items from the vending machines.

I would do yourself a favor and test it out by tracking again. If you want, make an educated guess, log it and then go back and use a food scale and compare.