What have people found when increasing calories

Thanks for posting this comment. I know that everyone recommends upping your cals once you start plateauing, but I struggle to reconcile this in my mind. I have maintained my weight for 8 months now. Just short of the last kg I would like to lose to reach my ultimate goal weight. But generally I am very happy. Many people have advised I should be eating more because I exercise 5 - 6 times a week and have started to increase to eating back half my exercise calories, but my weight hasn't changed. I'm very nervous about upping because it seems to good to be true. LOL. Very interested to hear how long it took to start losing weight after the increase.

You'll need to consistantly eat 1000-2000 calories over your TDEE to put on weight. If you upped yours to just below TDEE for the little amount you have left to lose then you'll get there slowly but surely and you'll be very close to maintenance which should then be easy to transition into

So we hear time and time again how increasing your calories can lead to better weight loss (rather than doing only 1200 cal a day). I was wondering if people who have increased their intake from 1200 could tell me what they found weight wise over the course of increasing.

Did you find you gained weight over the first few weeks/stayed the same/ continued to decrease in weight?

‘Dieting’ and to a large degree ‘healthy eating’ is simply finding an amount of food that
allows you to reduce your bodyweight or to keep it at a level that creates the body shape
that you deem ‘desirable’.

It really is as simple as this.

It doesn’t matter if that number is 1,700 or 2,700, as long as it’s right for you. After all,
excess body fat is simply a result of eating more food than you need to.


According to the body-centric way of thinking and the WHO definition, if you are not
maintaining your desirable weight at your current activity level, then you are
overeating.

In the simplest of terms your body fat is just a storage container for extra calories you
were not able to use (burn). So when you lower your calorie intake below the amount of
calories your body requires to fuel your metabolism it simply takes those calories from
your body fat to make up the difference.

This is why you are never ACTUALLY ‘starving your body’.

As an example:

Let’s say your total daily Calorie needs is 2,500 Calories per day. Let’s also assume the
amount of calories you ate was only 2,000 calories. Your body simply makes up the
difference with the calories from your body fat (and a few from some minor sources like
your glycogen stores).

2,000 Calories from food + 500 Calories from Body fat = 2,500 Calories being used
to fuel your metabolism.

So you just ‘make up the deficit’ with the calories being stored in your body fat. (Hence
the saying ‘creating calorie deficit’)

So if eating less food than you need means you will use your body fat as a fuel source, it
becomes easy to see why and how you lose body fat by eating less.

-From Brad Pilon in the Body Centric Eating Manual from John Barbans Venus Index and Adonis Index manuals