Not quite reaching my macros lately but still noticing a small improvement

diogomello12

Hey guys,
I changed countries 9 months ago. It was my first time going away, being far away from my family and living independently. It was also the first time that I had to cook for myself on a daily basis and pretty much surviving alone. Also the country that I'm in currently uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which made it a BIG struggle when shopping for the first months.

Early on I decided that I not only wanted to survive alone, but of course be healthy(ier). I became a vegan, I quit smoking and I often cook by my own (even though I still struggle a little bit with managing my weekly food plan).

Since I started my relationship with my gf here and we decided to find an apartment (3 months ago), I decided to keep going onwards with this plan since I even felt my breathing was easier just by eating better during these 9 months.

So since I moved 3 months ago I decided to go to the gym before work every weekday and I rest on Saturday and Sunday. I always train my abs one day and my arms the other day. Sundays are my "cheat" day where I can abuse a little bit on my sugar levels and eat something that I wouldn't on the other days.

I am a small guy, 165cm. I'm 25 years old and when I arrived in Bulgaria I was 58.3kg. Now I'm 60kg but I want reach my goal of 61.4kg.

I go to work and I come home on foot from Monday to Friday, which makes it around 200-250 calories, plus the gym workouts which I gradually and slowly decided to increase the difficulty of but are making me burn 400-500 calories now.

The thing is that lately, with all these calories that I need to eat to compensate and plus the fact that I'm also trying to gain some more weight, lately I've been really struggling to hit my macros. Let's say for the past 2 weeks the goals have been an average of 3000-3100 calories. Let's say for the past weeks I didn't gain any weight (but didn't lose either), because I mainly hit, let's say, 75%-80% of what I should have eaten every day.

But the truth is that I'm actually noticing some improvements on my body. My muscles are definitely a bit harder and some spots on my belly are starting to get defined. Of course not A LOT, but I can definitely feel my body different.

My question is: am I eating healthy? Am I undereating by not reaching my macros at this point? Should I manage my food plan better in order to stuff some more food during the day and reach the desired calories?

Could you please give me some recommendations guys?

If you read up until here, well thank you very much for your time!

kshama2001

You're undereating because hitting "75%-80% of what I should have eaten every day" is undereating.

What percent protein goal did you set and how close do you come to hitting that? Because you're vegan, you may have to work a little harder at that. Are you eating lots of legumes? Can you get foods like seitan and tempeh?

If after you hit your protein goal you are still low on calories, nuts are a good way to add calories fast.

I also wanted to check to see if you are taking a b12 supplement?