Should I increase my calories?

jordgirl

Hey everyone, just looking for some advice...I had an eating disorder in high school (anorexia) and after recovering, I've slowly but surely gained quite a bit of weight! (I went from 100 lbs to 180 after 7 years and a pregnancy.) I have NEVER had great success when it came to losing weight, even when I would work out 10+ hours a week and felt like everything was on point with my diet. I think some of it has to do with how I ruined my metabolism with an eating disorder, but now I am thinking that upping my calories might help to boost it and help me see actual progress.

Has anyone ever dealt with something similar? How do you know if you should up your calories and how do you determine how much you should be eating?

StrawberrySt

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/546227-for-the-500-000-time-eating-more-works

read this thread, there are heaps of people advocating eating more to lose weight. I would increase 100/200 calories at a time and make sure you are getting it from good foods, PB, avocado, almonds, olive oil etc.

I've never dealt with anorexia but I had very unhealthy eating habits (low calories)

And try to eat your exercise calories back too.

Good luck :flowerforyou:

Pebble321

If you have to ask this question.. the answer is usually yes!
With your history of eating disorder, setting yourself up with conservative deficit is probably a good idea. This will set you up to lose weight slowly and steadily and is going to give your metabolism the best chance to get used to a moderate amount of food without being deprived.

There are a lot of different ways to get your numbers but I'm a fan of keeping it simple - why not let MFP do the maths for you?

Enter your height, weight, age etc, set your activity level (don't include exercise, and if you're a mum, I'm betting that you aren't sedentary!) and choose "lose 1/2 pound a week".
MFP will calulate a number of calories for you to eat each day. This number has a calorie deficit built in so you will lose weight, you don't have to eat less than this number.
When you exercise, add that in and eat those (most anyway) calories back.

Try this for a couple of months and see how it works out for you. Once you are used to a steady intake you can change things up or down if you need to.

sarajo16

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/539980-people-who-have-had-success-by-upping-their-calories

There is also a group set up that covers off this topic in detail. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/3817-eat-more-to-weigh-less

Hope this helps.

jordgirl

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/539980-people-who-have-had-success-by-upping-their-calories

There is also a group set up that covers off this topic in detail. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/groups/home/3817-eat-more-to-weigh-less

Hope this helps.

Thank you! I have found a lot of helpful information here already!