Confused how i managed to put on the weight

tknight1984

I am 28, 5'10 and about 180lbs. When i was young i used to be quite slender (although have always had broad shoulders). Have packed on the timber over the last 5 years. Over the last couple of years i have been trying to lose weight with varying degrees of success. Previously i had been calorie counters which had all told me to eat around 1200-1300 calories daily to lose weight, i now realise that this would have effectively extinguised my metabolism.

So i went to the "in place of a road map" post and calculated my TDEE, and apparently i can lose weight eating up to 2300 calories, in which case i cannot work out how i manages to get to the weight i am. I must have been eating 2500+ a day, which is a hell of a lot of food. This is making me doubt if i should be eating this much

monjacq1964

try eating "normally" and tracking everything. You'd be surprised how quickly the calories add up, especially if you're a "grazer".

Alta2000

You started your own business, just that brings a lot of stress/cortisol. Were you sleeping well? Did you eat out a lot? You will be amazed by the calories in some entrees.

kristen6022

I'm in the same boat. Until I hit 30 I never had to worry about what I put in my mouth and how much I moved. I was just lucky that way. 30 hit and BAM - and extra 30+ pounds went on in 2 years. I'm 5'11 and all my life I heard that "You are tall, you can carry extra weight". Until I reached almost 200 pounds and realized I had been caring TOO much extra weight.

I think age does sneak up on you - you need to do more the older you get. If you learn that now, your 40's and 50's will be much easier and happier!

savithny

I'm also 5'10" though I was never something you'd think of as "slender," I was fit and muscular and lighter than I am now.

Tracking daily and honestly helped me see that I put on weight from my healthier lower number through a combination of becoming more sedentary and eating more -- even though the "more" was mostly healthy foods.

In high school, I rode my bike and walked a lot. In college, I never had a car, so I rode my bike or walked everywhere I had to go. When I was young-married-childfree, I mountain biked for fun and hiked. When my babies were little I worked part time and then chased them around, took them to playgrounds, backpacked them up and down gorge trails..

Now? I'm older, my kids don't need carrying, I work full time and don't have time for a lot of the activity I used to do. But I kept eating the same way out of habit, and that stuff adds up. And as I'm getting older and hormones change AND I've lost the muscles I had from all the activity, I'm burning even less.

And as our lives got busier, we've been eating out more often. And what I'm REALLY learning is that restaurant versions of things I make at home often have TWICE the calories. They just layer in the fats and sugars to make it addictive, and the portion sizes are deceptively larger (they don't look it, on those ginormous restaurant plates!).

So: Tracking really made me much less confused on where this weight came from. And it's helping me remove it slowly and realistically. I'm trying to work towards regularly eating what it would take to maintain my goal weight, so that this is a sustainable change in behavior.

mikeberthold

A kitchen scale and a commitment to weighing everything showed me exactly how much I was eating before getting serious about my health.

A bowl of pasta, a second "half-size" serving, a piece of bread, a large glass of milk, salad with dressing... I could easily have eaten 1500 calories in one meal before I woke up. Add on that a big bowl of chips (but it's just one bowl) that was probably 600 calories or so...

Remember, just 250 extra calories a day on average means 26 pounds of weight gain a year. Multiply that by a few years.....

missjeevious

it's funny because some days i feel like i can't figure out how to eat 2100 cals it seems like so much, but other days if i'm eating out or going out to have drinks with friends I realize I would have easily eaten way over...so i think it's just from a pattern of eating way way too littlle mixed with days of eating way way too much.

LoraF83

It's very, very, very easy to underestimate how much we were eating before. I thought I didn't eat that bad or that much....turns out, I was probably packing in 2700-3000 cals a day. By the time I added up all the soda I was drinking, fast food meals every day, and restaurant dinners several nights a week - and plenty of high calorie snacks too - I really did have my head in the sand about my intake.

A 500 calorie surplus every day can result in a 1lb per week weight gain. I put my weight on over the course of several years, so I was probably gaining about 1/2lb a week max. That's only 250 extra cals a day. It really doesn't take much to put it on, unfortunately.

savithny

but other days if i'm eating out or going out to have drinks with friends I realize I would have easily eaten way over...so i think it's just from a pattern of eating way way too littlle mixed with days of eating way way too much.

Yep -- I don't drink pop or keep it in the house, but we did start having "just a glass" of wine or beer a couple days a week when we got a raise... and eating out at better restaurants ... and eating out more often......

Liquid calories and restaurant calories are totally my downfall.

BerryH

2,500 calories is much less than you think. I tried tracking a few of my before MFP days and I was hitting 3,000 calories without any huge meals or obviously calorific snacks. POrtion size is a big factor too.