Can your metabolism increase after losing weight?

Ophidiaaa

I just turned 19 a few days ago so I guess you could say I'm still kind of young. I was a tiny child and became overweight around the 11-13 age mark. I lost it all and then some when I was 14. I was back and forth from then on but I never got anywhere near as big as I was when I first gained weight. The most I gained was 20 pounds probably. My first year of high school (16 years old I think) I ate terribly and never seemed to gain a pound. When I was 17, I went on birth control for my acne and gained 50 pounds in 3 months. I thought there was something a bit wrong there. I tried to lose it but it just wasn't budging. I decided after 5 months to take myself off of it and try to lose the weight. I lost it all in 4 months. I thought I'd never be able to eat normal again. However, it seems that after I got the weight off, I am not gaining weight. Sometimes (more often than not) I eat 600-700 over my calorie allowance (sometimes even more) and it's not healthy food either. I do get bloated and think I've gained weight but end up feeling even smaller days later after eating so badly. I've been doing this quite often actually. Soo my only explanation is that my metabolism has changed? Is that possible? I do exercise daily, by the way but have cut back recently.

nxd10

Growth in stature and change in body composition require a huge number of calories during adolescence. Each of my skinny kids eats more than my husband and I combined. At that age, I could eat anything too.

Ignore all that. You will eventually stabilize and have to watch what you eat. It sounds like you know that your eating habits are erratic and cause your weight to yoyo. This is bad for you. Especially as you get older and losing will get hard.

This is the perfect time in your life to develop healthy, moderate eating habits and learn what feels good to eat and what makes you feel lousy. Take advantage of it. The habit will last a lifetime.

Sjenny5891

It was the birth control. Some people gain a lot of weight when they take it. Hormones have a dirrect effect on weight gain... in my case it is eating due to hormones OR bloating/ water retention.

nxd10

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geekyjock76

A more reasonable explanation as to why you are not gaining weight despite a perceived surplus of 600 calories is that you are underestimating your total energy expenditure - ie. how much you can eat to maintain your present weight by a significant amount. There are lots of studies done noting the discrepancy between self-reported intake versus measurable intake from doubly labeled water tests in relatively weight-stable persons.

Here is a caption from a lengthy albeit revealing study that shows just how off people can be:

Most comparisons of energy intake and expenditures, confronting survey and the doubly-labeled water method, show a large degree of under-reporting of food intake. Very high levels of under-reporting are typically found in obese subjects, as well as in female athletes. In some individuals, under-reporting can be as high as 50% of energy expenditures (Schoeller, 1995).

In 28 subjects participating in the German study EPIC (Kroke et al., 1999) energy intake assessed by multiple survey methods (24 hrs recall, frequency questionnaires) was under-reported by 22% on the average. Only one out of the 28 subjects reported intake that was comparable with expenditures measured by the doubly-labeled water method.

The doubly-labeled water method has confirmed that obese individuals have higher energy needs and expenditures than normal weight controls. For instance, a German study has established that total energy expenditures reached 2.357 ± 504 kcalories a day in normal weight women (BMI 20.0 ± 1.3) and 3.708 ± 367 kcalories a day in obese peers (BMI 37.4 ± 8.1) (Platte et al., 1995).

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1415-52732001000200006&script=sci_arttext

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nxd10

Re the study: 24 hour recall or re frequency is not the same as a running diary, which is the advantage of using MFP as an app. I am not saying that you are wrong about saying people they under-report. They do. I am simply saying that studies using those methods would not typically be accepted as scientifically valid (I am a scientific journal editor) and also that they are different from MFP.

LOTS of people think they don't eat very much when they do. If it wasn't true, we wouldn't all be on this site.

Thank you for the reference, though. I am going to use it for one of my classes next week.

lauren3101

In answer to your question, yes, you can sometimes eat more after losing weight. This is only really achieved by gaining a reasonable amount of muscle, however. Muscle uses more calories than fat, so the more muscle you have, the more you can eat to maintain your weight. However I doubt in your case you have gained any significant amount of muscle.

The most likely answer here is that you have underestimated your TDEE. Many people do, and it would explain your desire to 'overeat' on most days if you are not fueling your body enough on others.