Can't eat enough food

swoffie

Now that I'm back at college I find myself briskly walking 4+ miles a day. Predictably, my maintenance calorie goal is usually above 2,000 (as recalibrated by fitbit). I truly don't know how to eat this much food! It's 10 pm right now and I'm about 900 calories short. I feel a teensy bit hungry, but not enough to eat 900 calories! I don't know if I even have that much in the fridge.

What are some healthy but high-cal foods I can start eating? What are the consequences of being so far below my calorie goal day after day? I'm doing weightlifting for 2 hours a week right now and I would like to be building a bit of muscle, so I'm kind of concerned.

If it's relevant, I'm a 20 year old 5'4 woman who weighs somewhere between 125 and 130, it's been several months since I've checked.

zenalasca

Buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's. As long as you burn 400 calories, your exercise calories should make up for going over. Easy

heybales

Get the almonds bought!

I like the wasabi spiced ones.

But those are expensive options, but a few go a long way for calories.
Perhaps a serving of that and some peanut butter and milk.

If you've been very nutritious up to this point, probable no vitamin or mineral deficiency, just calorie if you were to keep it up day after day, and sounds like you could if not hungry enough.

And yeah, that deficient, forget about building muscle, which really needs a surplus.
Effect if constant is you'll notice it's harder to make progress, tired more often, might see Fitbit steps go down as your body tries to be lazier to adapt to too few calories, ect.

And unless you correct the Fitbit for it's vast underestimate of your lifting - you are already eating at a deficit.

I hope you are logging the lifting either on Fitbit as Weight lifting or MFP as Strength training. It may not seem like much compared to cardio - but it counts and adds up.

LaurenAOK

Peanut butter, nuts, avocado, etc are all healthy and high in calories. However, there's also nothing wrong with having some "unhealthy" foods in your day as long as your calories are in check! Whether it's the pint of ice cream or just some chips, you can snack on whatever you feel like to help reach your goal. In a perfect world, we would eat totally "healthy" food to reach our calorie goals, but that's just not doable for a lot of us!

cookeylady

try some healthy nuts or nut butters, or some lean proteins, chicken or jerky.

williams969

I'm a college student, too, and I easily walk 5-6 miles every day (plus the weight of my backpack--ooopf!). Fitbit average is 2,200-2300 for me during the school year. I totally understand!

Nothing wrong with some ice cream or a peanut butter sandwich. Otherwise, drinking your calories is an option, too. Juices, milk, smoothies, protein shake, fancy latte cappuchino frappe, whatever. Or, I've been on a big bowl o' cereal and yogurt (full fat) and a small chocolate bar kick lately--there's ALWAYS room for those, lol. I figure, 1500 calories of my day is lean protein, veggies, and vitamin and fiber packed stuff, I have room for the "sweet treats" every evening.

sarafischbach9

You're not going to build muscle if you're as under as you say you are. In fact, you will continue to lose weight, which will be both muscle and fat. When you eat too little for a long period of time, especially with quite a bit of cardio, your body will eat at muscle for energy. Yes, you will lose fat as well but you lose muscle too.

There are people who eat at a deficit and weight lift, but they do that to keep the muscle they have.

If you want to build muscle or "tone" or whatever we call it, then you need to eat at maintenance or slightly over. If light to moderate walking puts you at 2000, then you may want to consider eating between 2000 to maybe 2250 for muscle gain. And this will make you gain a pound or two a month, but it would be muscle.

What's going to continue this way? You will lose weight. Like I said, both muscle and fat and water. You will get smaller, but not necessarily more fit.

Just depends on what you want. If you wanted to lose weight, then that is your decision, but still being 900 calories under is still a little much if you're looking to drop some weight. In the short term it works really well, but in the long term it leaves you hungry, more prone to binge and regain weight back, and the loss of muscle and lowering of metabolism.

You may want to plan your meals out in advance if you want to get more calories in. Peanut butter, avocado, ice cream ( of course! ), nuts and seeds, whole grain bread/muffins/bagels. etc etc are all decent sources of calories. You can treat yourself too every once in a while with ice cream or a cookie.

If it's at the end of the day and you have 900 calories left, maybe a bagel with peanut butter would be a good choice. It isn't a whole lot of food, but a lot of energy packed into a little item.

BUTIgirl212516

I find it reaaaallly easy to eat almost a thousand calories in peanut butter. Especially the good natural kind!

hobbjulie

At the moment i am trying to loose some weight mostly eating veg, lean meats & fish but am finding it hard to keep up with calories without going over my Fat/protein intake limits set by MFP. The advise i am seeing on this topic is that is ok to exceed my macro limits, as long as i make up calories is that correct?

jackielou867

@ Hobbjulie.
Prioritize, hit protein, then fat and let the carbs take care of themselves. In my experience protein stops me feeling hungry, fat is not the devil, and sugar makes your body release insulin which tells your body to store fat.
What I am trying to say is if you are eating 1200 calories a day you will lose weight but if it is 1200 calories of chocolate cake and ice cream you will not get the toned slim figure you are looking for.

jackielou867

I was having a bit of trouble with volume since I went mostly natural healthy foods. Today I had 50g of mixed nuts fruit and seeds with extra walnuts. About a handful, 300 calories :-)
Try a big breakfast breakfast and if you can't eat a big breakfast make a big smoothie, banana honey full milk a few oats maybe, probably going to be 500 calories in one glass.

chrisdavey

heybales

Well, that's just going to bend in the tub of ice cream unless it's soft already, or a well designed heavy duty spoon for ice cream eating.

chrisdavey

Well, that's just going to bend in the tub of ice cream unless it's soft already, or a well designed heavy duty spoon for ice cream eating.

Better? :happy: