How many calories do I really need?

utomjordingen wrote: »

I hope this is the right part of the forum I'm posting this.

I lost 30 kilos a few years back, and developed and ED which caused me years of a starvation diet. But now I've started eating a lot and gained from 39 kg to 48kg in no time (I'm 158cm tall, so it is not a very low weight).

Every page I check, as well as myfitnesspal, says I need about 1400-1600calories to maintain my weight, which I'm not really doing anyway (it seems that I keep gaining.) I just find myself hungry all the time when I eat this amount (my hunger came back a while ago.)
Yet I see my friends, even the ones that are not that much taller than me, eating bigger breakfasts, lunch, dinners and desserts and junk than me, which can not be just 1600 calories, and they are skinny.

I just don't understand it and I am very frustrated with my situation. I hope I can get some help here. Thank you!

How many calories are you eating a day? Are you exerisising?

1600 carries a day seems pretty good based on your height.

Losing and gaining and cycling can wreck havoc on your muscle/fat balance. Muscle gain is slow and harder for women and when you rapidly gain weight a lot of it is fat and rapidly losing causes more muscle to be broken down. Higher muscle mass in your body yields more active tissue that burns more calories at rest. If your body is low in muscle and high in fat from diet cycling highs and lows you won't have the same muscle mass as someone the same size who didn't lose and gain often. Someone with say, 20 more lbs of muscle than you, will burn (just an arbitrary number for example) 200 more calories a day doing nothing. Whereas you might weigh the same scale wise, your 20 lbs might be fat and theirs is muscle. So their body will be tighter and "toned" because of the muscle instead of looser and soft. Their body would need more calories to maintain the additional muscle mass that they have.

I think the worst part of EDs is that people recover and they have to face the reality that gaining weight for them will likely be fast and be largely fat gain at first. It's just how the body reacts to long term restriction. Your body turns on hunger signals demanding nutrients and once you want to be healthy again and start eating more food you will probably overeat because of your body's cues to make up for the damage from not eating enough. Overeating celery will do the same thing as overeating cupcakes so it can't be helped when the body demands food/energy/sustinence. That's why recovered people are horrified when they gain back 20 lbs and they look bloated and puffy because it's not easy to regain muscle but it is easy to store fat when you start eating again. Especially when their body was likely small before but wasn't healthy and lean (I.e. Low body fat% with a healthy amount of muscle) it was likely low body fat% and low muscle% and so they end up looking worse at the same weight they used to be at because of lost muscle. This is terrible when the body dismorphia kicks in and is why so many struggle with recovery.

I would eat the recommended calories and try to do heavy lifting to preserve your muscle and hopefully gain some more. Even if you have to eat at maintenance calories try it with the lifting, you will probably be very happy with the results. The more muscle you have the more you can eat!

I'm eating about 3,000 calories per day to maintain my weight of 205 lbs.