New here; new to eating more, not less

siobhanenator

Hey all,
I came across this program, ironically enough, while searching to see if I was justified in eating far fewer calories than a normal person because I am petite. I'd been successful losing weight in the past with calorie restriction, but it has just gotten harder and harder, and I keep having to get more and more extreme with my calorie deficit. When I came across the idea of eating MORE, I was intrigued. I love food, and I remember being able to eat like a hoss when I was younger and I never really needed to worry about weight. I'm older now, and probably due to sporadic eating during my impoverished college days, I must have ruined my metabolism and started gaining weight, and have been yo-yoing and dieting for the last 10 years. Now after months of eating around 1000-1200 calories a day, with no results, I've started my metabolism reset. I'm a little bit apprehensive about the initial weight gain, but I'm excited about the overall results I hope to see. I'm a yoga instructor and a belly dancer, and now working on incorporating some weight training into my weekly routine. I'm also a lactose intolerant vegetarian super-clean eater, so any tips on getting all the protein in without the use of a lot of processed foods or dairy would be much appreciated!

heybales

I'll bet it's the continuous loss of muscle mass that has done you no favors now.

That and your body reducing your spontaneous daily activity, lowering your TDEE more than it needs to be.

So that point, eating more can help the second issue, it won't help the first.

You might get a good BF estimate, and use Katch BMR based on that for start of your TDEE math. Otherwise you could be eating too much to no good effect.

Keep an eye on your weight for valid weigh-in days. With being smaller, you have smaller room for error before having big effects.

Your metabolism can recover decently enough with some months of reset if you've recently been eating way low. College day's effects don't last that long.

siobhanenator

Your metabolism can recover decently enough with some months of reset if you've recently been eating way low. College day's effects don't last that long.

I'm thinking college is what initially threw me out of whack, and the dieting ever since has kept me there. I have a withings body fat scale, I'm at about 30% body fat these days.

Just calculated the Katch BMR, it's at 1295.87? Not sure what that really means in terms of calculating the rest. I used the Scooby calculator to calculate my initial reset amount, which put me at 2156 calories to maintain my weight. It als does have my BMR at 1391 though, so how should I change my calculations? From what I've been reading, Scooby was the way to calculate...but is there a better one for me?

siobhanenator

I may have just caught my mistake, I hadn't selected Katch from the menu on the Scooby site. Did that, and it matched with the BMR I got on another site. Recalculated out, looks like I should be more at 2010 now instead of 2156. Still about twice as much as I've been eating, but so far it's felt really great!

heybales

For another way to calculate using some other bodyfat calcs perhaps getting more accurate, and track progress with measurements besides just weight, and be specific with your workout time and type to get better TDEE estimate, I'd suggest the spreadsheet on my profile page.

If you provide the BF%, it uses Katch automatically. It also takes care of the fact that more recent studies have shown differences to sedentary TDEE between men and women based on Katch BMR. So tries to give best estimate of TDEE to start out with.

Stay on the Simple Setup tab with all the stats you've already used. Delete the example data in the yellow cells though once you see what it's asking for.
Then use the Progress tab to track your progress.

You can use the TDEG (you'll see) based on your amount to lose and workout type, or use the 15% off TDEE.