New here! Please help!

Lisa1971

Ok, so here's my story. My name is Lisa and I'm 42 years old. I weighed 196lbs 2 years ago and lost 70lbs to 126lbs on Medifast. I got lazy and put 30lbs back on. I liked medifast but hated feeling starved. I want to lose the 30lbs but I want to be able to eat and build some serious muscle while losing fat. I worked out my calories to be 1800 on non workout days and 2300 on workout days. I added in some carbs over the weekend and some calories (was doing medifast the last few weeks) and my weight went UP! I am now 162lbs and NOT happy with the weight gain at all. This makes me even more scared to add more calories and more carbs even though I'm sure it's water weight!

I workout 5-6 days a week and lift heavy at the gym. I'm doing this program to get into a more structured lifting program and to see the scale numbers and my bodyfat drop!

Should I just "jump right in" to increasing my calories, or do it gradually? Also, what macros should I use?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

Emtabo01

I hate giving advice on calories, because after six months I still play around with my numbers, but I would highly recommend to start taking pictures and using measurements instead of basing your feelings of success off of scale number readings. I am 5'7 140lbs and aim for 1900-2100 to be slightly under maintenance personally, really, just try an amount for a stage, see where you're at when you're done and reevaluate plus or minus calories then. Good luck, I wish it was black and white!