2000+ calories while sedentary?

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AnaFlviaDuarte
AnaFlviaDuarte Posts: 7 Member
in Goal: Maintaining Weight
Hey, everyone! First time posting here, so I apologize in advance if I do/say something inappropriate.
Anyways, has anyone experienced this? Needing 2000+ calories to maintain their weight while sedentary?
So, for the past week I've been kinda depressed and didn't really felt like eating or exercising, and I ended up eating ~1000 calories and the only exercise I did was walking ONE day in the week. I went shopping and I walked ~10km walking downtown, through the stores and back to home. Runkeeper told me I burned 400 calories. In the course of this said week I lost 1,2-1,4kgs. I calculated everything and my tdee is around 2000-2300 calories? What? Is this normal? MFP says that for my stats I need around 1570 to maintain, so I thought that eating 1000 would result in 0,5kg max loss but I lost much more???? The calculator that gives me the highest sedentary number says I'd need 1800. o-O
I know you're supposed to eat back exercise calories back, but it was just one day, that's why I think it's odd. I haven't got tons of muscle, and all I do is walk to uni, and it's only 5min away.
I do have some issues with food and am underweight, but I'm trying to maintain for a while until I feel stable enough to start gaining and this made feel a little better about eating more to maintain, but at the same time I feel it's only a coincidence and I'll gain a ton if I eat this amount?
Anyone went through something similar? What's the max you consume without gaining + being very sedentary? Should I trust my calculations? Or at least the 1800 calculator? sos I'm lost lmao

Replies

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    One week is insufficient data.

    But for a college kid, maintaining at 2000 calories doesn't seem crazy to me at all.
  • roland72
    roland72 Posts: 58 Member
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    Purely looking at calories or sticking to the "recommended 2000 calories" is not going to be helpful for you, because this figure is often wrong or taken out of context. Keep in mind that this figure is a rounded guesstimate by the US FDA and isn't set in stone.

    The guideline of how many calories a man or a woman should consume per day you see on packages or in health guidelines is often very wrong because it doesn't take into consideration the other part of the guideline which is "in combination with 150 to 300 minutes of exercise per week". Something which is virtually always left out. If you don't exercise at all then the recommended calorie intake will result in weight gain because you eat more than you should.

    How many calories you actually need is different for everybody and depends on your body, your age, your diet and your daily activity. According to the US FDA, average women (whatever an average woman is) consume between 1,600 and 2,200 calories per day, which is a huge range. For instance, if you are a woman who only needs 1600 calories per day and you aim for the "recommended" calorie intake of 2,000 you are essentially eating 25% too much food on a daily basis. And then people are surprised that their weight isn't shifting despite following advice.

    This is something that I couldn't get my head round either int he beginning, because I was following all the advice, thinking that I was doing it right, but in reality I wasn't. When it comes to the MFP app and the advice that you should eat back all the calories you gained through exercise, it is something that I don't do. I look at what I should be eating and leave it at that, any calories I "lost" because of exercise are something I consider a bonus.

    As to how many calories you personally need, that is something that for a lot of people is too difficult to actually determine. But the bottom line is if you are taking in too many calories, you will be gaining weight.

    So what can you actually do? The best advice I can give is to get a scale and use it. log your food intake and if your weight starts creeping up, you have to cut down on food or exercise more.
  • SkipSanders09
    SkipSanders09 Posts: 4 Member
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    Hi Ana, I'm Skip. Calorie consumption is directly proportional to your goals and current health condition.
    Are you trying to gain weight, muscle mass, tone up or just stay status quo? Im in a different boat and consume 3K calories a day but burn about 1300-1800 per day. You should be exercising 3-5 times per week at a high level for at least 30 minutes. Your appetite and energy will go through the roof. Good luck and let me know if you go this.'
    Cheers!
  • kirstenb13
    kirstenb13 Posts: 181 Member
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    My mfp maintenance without exercise is 2080 calories, and judging from where the trend is going this is too low for me - so yeah your numbers aren't crazy (I have a fitbit though and eat those calories back as well, I'm not sedentary). But one week changes could be due to anything, in my opinion you should just stick to a number (like 1800-2000 somewhere) and eat that for a while and see where your weight is going, then adjust. Real life numbers trump all calculations anyway.
  • ForecasterJason
    ForecasterJason Posts: 2,577 Member
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    If you are 18, then that may be because young adults often have faster metabolisms. When I was that age I was quite sedentary and maintained at around 2000 calories. My maintenance calories would have been higher if it weren't for the fact that I was also quite small.
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
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    Sounds very reasonable.

    Also - you shouldn't attempt that math unless you are confirmed you had valid weigh-in's on each end of a range, and for woman a month is a minimum time, because your metabolism literally changes through the month.

    Because if you ate more sodium before 1st weigh-in and less before 2nd - water weight lost.
    Opposite could have happened too.
    Math doesn't work with water, only fat loss. Shoot, lose muscle doesn't work either.

    Need valid weigh-in's and a good month of time for that math to work - and no weeks that include starting a diet or coming out of a diet - because of water weight changes.

    Morning after rest day eating normal sodium levels, not sore from last workout - best way to minimize expected known water weight fluctuations.
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    A week? That young? I'm not surprised. My kids eat literally twice what I do and are as skinny as rails. I did that myself until I was 40. Enjoy!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 13,724 Member
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    As an underweight person trying to gain weight you are just as likely to discover that when you start feeding yourself properly your metabolism will speed up and you will have a hard time initially even keeping to your current weight, much less gaining.

    Advise from a practitioner in the field may be useful. In particular blood tests might help address potentially dangerous issues.

    Secondhand from MFP friend who is in recovery and trying to gain weight: she barely managed to add 7lbs of trending weight over 3.5 months even though her, on paper, 500 Cal over MFP maintenance surplus ought to have produced almost double that weight gain.

    TL;dr: eating at maintenance won't make you gain weight. Gaining weight will require deliberate and significant over eating.

    Use a trending weight app or web site particularly as a young female (assuming that daily weigh ins are not contraindicated in terms of recovery)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,382 Member
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    I'm heading into maintenance, and it's looking like my NEAT (i.e., pre-exercise calories) is around 2000 (plus or minus 100, maybe) for a lifestyle that's sedentary outside of the intentional exercise (and I eat back all those calories, too). That's at 5'5" tall, and around 120 pounds.

    And I'm 60 years old. So, at your age, yeah.

    (I had to set my MFP activity level at "active" to get MFP to calculate reasonable calorie targets for me while losing. I'm retired. My non-exercise hobbies are completely sedentary. I don't do any unusual amount of housework, yardwork, etc., that I don't record as exercise and eat back. Yes, I am very, very, very lucky, and I know it.)

    The calculators are just estimates. Real people tend to have TDEEs clustered around the population average, but not exactly on it.

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