Having a hard time increasing calories

doodlecakes_07

I'll be the 1st to admit that I've had an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. Every day I'm working on it, and some days are bigger struggles to push through than others. Today was just one of those "fat" days. Over the past couple of months, I've been trying to up my calories from 1000 to a healthier 1400- 1800 (with exercise). Now I can mentally handle eating more (I used to be pretty restrictive), but some days, it's just hard.

I've gained 5 pounds from eating more (over the past couple of weeks), and I'm not sure if I'm getting fatter or it's just going to take my body a while to regulate all the new calories coming in. Like over time, will my body adjust to more calories, or will I just keep gaining weight? This scares me to death. I don't want to ruin all the progress I've made, but I also don't want to only be eating 1200 calories with a ton of exercise for the rest of my life.

Should I keep going with eating 1300+ calories, and risk gaining, or should I just keep my calories lower? Fat days make me question everything I'm doing, especially since I've actually gained weight.

I'm 5'8, am usually around 145 lbs, but now am creeping up on 150.

cwolfman13

If you've been eating low cal for a long time you need to increase them slowly...just jumping from 1000 to 1800 is a big jump and your metabolism isn't going to be able to keep up...essentially you're going to have to re-train your metabolism. Also, when you eat more some weight gain is expected as you restore chronically depleted glycogen stores...essentially water.

At your height and if you workout you should maintain at far more than 1000 calories....my wife is 5'2" and maintains right around 2300 with her activity level...which consists of hitting the weight room 3x weekly and doing a couple 3 mile runs per week and chasing the kiddos around.

tmauck4472

yeah don't increase all at one time, I'm increasing mine slowly like 100 calories every two or three weeks.

doodlecakes_07

Okay, thank you guys so much! I'm shooting to reach 1800, I've barely broken 1400, so I'll just make sure to steadily and slowly increase.