Anyone eat more to lose more?

Christine_72

For me:

Eat more, move more which equals a greater deficit.

If i were to eat more, but do less or no exercise/movement then I'd stay the same weight or gain.

On the days i don't eat enough, I'm sloth like and incredibly hungry the next day. So i need to find that in between balance.

estherdragonbat

What I find is that if I eat more, I have more energy to put toward exercise. And although I do need to eat in order to fuel that exercise, eating back 50-60% of my exercise calories keeps me feeling satiated.

There have been some very few days when I couldn't exercise. I had bladder surgery. It was a minor procedure, but following that, I had a catheter bag for five days and didn't want to go walking—my preferred cardio—and couldn't lift for several weeks. I decided it was a good time for a maintenance break. And I was constantly hungry, even with those extra calories. I can come up with reasons:

• Post-surgery, even maintenance calories might not have been enough while I healed. However, while the doctor warned me against taking in too much caffeine, drinking alcohol, or eating spicy, at no point was I told "eat more." Drink more fluids, yes. Other stuff, no. (Should note that it was a relatively non-invasive procedure, over in two hours and I was sent home the same day.)
• I'm a boredom eater. Two hour walks? 30-60 minutes of strength training? Gives me stuff to do during the day, which distracts me from food. Normally. It's possible my hunger cues were getting mixed up with my boredom cues. If I was always clear on the difference, I'd probably not have gotten to Class III Obesity before doing something about it.
• I'm also a stress-eater. And just because the surgery was over didn't mean my head had recovered from the pre-surgery stress.

But bottom line, I do better when I can be more active, even if it means I need more calories to be more active.