How active would you say i am? calories do i need?

Ulwaz

im 21, female, 5 foot 10 inches
53kg (underweight)

Using myfitnesspal its telling me to maintain my weight i need 2200 calories per day, Ive put my activity as active which is this description (Spend a good part of the day doing some physical activity (e.g. waitress, mailman), im a nutritional support worker in a hospital, work 40 hours a week on my feet a lot, walking on and off the wards, pushing trolleys, so its a really active job

I also spend 30-60 minutes on my exercise bike per day, so when im burning the calories should i be eating them again since im trying to gain weight?
This is my food diary for today, is it enough? healthy? what else could i add/change?
Please look at my food diary

How much should i weigh? what UK size would i be?
So should i be eating more than 2200 calories if i want to gain some weight?

Any help/advice would be great?

geekyjock76

I hope you don't take offense but are you recovering from an ED? If so, are you recovering on your own?

If your goal is to increase body weight, you first need to establish how many calories you need to eat to maintain your weight relative to present physical activity. This goes without saying but do so if counting calories is not an issue.Buy yourself a digital food scale and use it consistently while logging everything you eat for a month. Once you know this estimate, you can increase calories by 250 or so. Considering you are quite underweight, you may need more than 3500 calories to gain 1 lb. This all depends on whether or not you need additional calories to reverse any physiological issues stemming from chronic malnutrition. It is common for recovering anorexics to be administered diets with minimal calories of 2500 to as much as 4000 depending on age and several health factors.

Lastly, you may want to engage in progressive strength training and consume a high-protein diet so that you don't just gain fat mass. Ideally you want to recover as much lean mass as possible so you end up with a more favorable body composition once your weight finally stabilizes.

Ulwaz

thanks for your reply

MelissaPhippsFeagins

You definitely have an active job and you definitely should be eating back the exercise bike calories burned. Once you find out what level you maintain your current weight, then add calories to gain. I would aim for at least 150 pounds at your height, but that's my opinion without seeing you. It's at generalization based on living with a lot of tall women in my family. Good luck!

geekyjock76

Btw, your food choices and macro profile seems reasonable.

You may want to reduce the amount of cardio you do since you want to gain weight, though. You can keep doing some if you enjoy it, but a lot can lead to creating a deficit meaning you'd need to up calories more to maintain or gain weight.

Regarding your weight and clothing size questions, there isn't a narrow answer for either. The taller you are, the greater the range in weight you can be. BMI may be a reliable indicator of health for underweight populations but it isn't necessarily so at higher weights. This is because a person can have normal to low body fat but high lean mass and be quite healthy.. I'm considered obese yet have an athletic level of body fat and high muscle mass. Your clothing size also depends on your natural proportions. In summary, don't compare yourself to a specific person since one's weight and clothing size can vary greatly compared to another person at similar height.