Hi all. This is a new concept for me. I thought I would introduce myself and see if the EM2WL gurus think I am on the right track. I have spent my entire adolescent and adult life on low cal/low fat diets. The "best shape" I have ever been in was probably about ten years ago at 280# doing weight watchers. I was eating around 1500 cal per day to stay there and was totally miserable, but I looked good. I gained much of that weight back and decided it was time to change my diet for good. My wife got me a fitbit with HRM for christmas and when I saw how many calories it said I was burning in a day I reached what can only be described as a moment of diet enlightenment. I wasn't eating enough! About two months ago I started ramping up calories. I haven't eaten breakfast for 30 years, so I started. It's been a struggle. I eliminated all low fat, low sugar, and light products from my diet, even light beer . I replaced most of my lighter carb laden snacks with nuts and full fat dairy. I swear I have read every post in this forum. Armed with some data I am trying to make what I consider to be good, long term, life changing decisions. My wife is tired of hearing me talk about this, and sick of me complaing about needing to eat more. so I decided to turn to the interweb. There is so much info swimming around in my head, I hope I can keep this post coherent, here goes.

I am a 39 year old male and I am a big guy at 6'5" and 375#. I work an active job in a busy auto repair shop (a change in the past year or so coming from a more sedentary office job). By active I am talking about 15k steps per day, 200 minutes in "fat burn" zone and 30 minutes per day in "cardio" zone according to fitbit over the past 28 day average. This is pretty consistent over the past 120 days. I carefully journal my food. I weigh probably 75% of what I eat and try to journal everything. Over, under, whiskey, beer, cake or fruits and vegetables. It all goes in. MFP makes it easy to do.

With my size and activity level it pushes my numbers to a seemingly crazy level. The Just my TDEE spreadsheet puts my BMR at 2731calories and TDEE at 5152 calories based on fitbit activity data. Fitbit is showing my average calorie burn at around 6500 calories . I totally understand that these are just numbers and I am trying to find where my Actual TDEE is.

January and February I was eating 3500 calories per day. I saw weight loss, down to 367 but hit a plateau. I decided that cutting calories didn't work well long term in the past so I re-evaluated my activity level and upped my calories to 4500 per day in march. I saw a bit of gain, up to 5# or so. But I really felt better. My joints feel better, my back feels better, my skin is better. I had more energy...Maybe this will work after all. So in April I bumped up to 5100 calories per day. I have gained another 5# or so and I'm starting to feel it in my clothes a little although I am noticing more muscle tone. I haven't been taking actual measurements but I have been thinking about starting.

So here I am today. It is tempting to fall back to eating less but I'm still not sure I've found my actual TDEE. It's kind of like a game of chicken. How much weight will you gain before you start the cut? After reading about the biggest loser folks I wonder if my years of low cal dieting have destroyed my metabolism. Although, over 2015 I lost almost 2 pants sizes without really trying just by changing to an active job.

to distill this down to some coherent questions, Have I found my TDEE yet? should I eat less or more? is more information necessary to make a recommendation?

I thank all who contribute to this forum in advance. I know it's a bit long winded but it feels good to type it out.