Eat healthy without losing weight!
nataliescarpa
Posts: 4 Member
Hi there- I'm just learning all about nutrition and being healthy. I've always been tall and thin, so these things were never immediately pressing for me. I'm now ready to take control of my health and wellbeing and so I'm committed to diet, reasonable exercise, and meditation.
I've been tracking my food to see how to keep my diet balanced. In the 2 weeks I've been logging food- I've lost 6-8 pounds. That means I'm 5'9, 27, and 117 pounds. This is too small for me.
I noticed that after I entered my lower weight, the calorie counter lowered the number of calories I need each day. I have it set to wanting to maintain my weight- so I would think that once I lost weight it would tell me to eat more calories to get my weight back up.
Clearly I have a fast matablosim and adding in even a minimal 15 minutes of walking and 15 minutes of yoga or strength each day and eating less calories because I'm cutting out unhealthy stuff is enough to drop my weight quickly.
So- I need help knowing what is an appropriate number of calories to stay at at least 120lbs or more and what foods are tasty, nutritious, and calorie dense. If I'm cutting out fast food and processed food I need to replace it with enough calories in healthy food to maintain a good weight.
I'm also assuming that before I started tracking calories and eating healthy I was consuming an average of 2500-3000 calories a day, but fitness pal suggested 1720 or something a day and recently reduced it to 1670 a day,
In summary- how do I truly know how many calories to eat and what do I need to include in my diet to eat nutritiously but get enough calories?
Thanks!
I've been tracking my food to see how to keep my diet balanced. In the 2 weeks I've been logging food- I've lost 6-8 pounds. That means I'm 5'9, 27, and 117 pounds. This is too small for me.
I noticed that after I entered my lower weight, the calorie counter lowered the number of calories I need each day. I have it set to wanting to maintain my weight- so I would think that once I lost weight it would tell me to eat more calories to get my weight back up.
Clearly I have a fast matablosim and adding in even a minimal 15 minutes of walking and 15 minutes of yoga or strength each day and eating less calories because I'm cutting out unhealthy stuff is enough to drop my weight quickly.
So- I need help knowing what is an appropriate number of calories to stay at at least 120lbs or more and what foods are tasty, nutritious, and calorie dense. If I'm cutting out fast food and processed food I need to replace it with enough calories in healthy food to maintain a good weight.
I'm also assuming that before I started tracking calories and eating healthy I was consuming an average of 2500-3000 calories a day, but fitness pal suggested 1720 or something a day and recently reduced it to 1670 a day,
In summary- how do I truly know how many calories to eat and what do I need to include in my diet to eat nutritiously but get enough calories?
Thanks!
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Replies
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I think it's great that you want to learn more about nutrition and health.
You are underweight, and it's a good decision to focus on getting your weight up.
A lower weight takes fewer calories to maintain. If you want to get your weight back up, you have to set MFP up to gain weight. The number MFP gives you will be good enough as a start.
Your metabolism is most likely normal, you're just eating way less than someone who's heavier than you.
I think it can be good for you to stop thinking about certain foods as "unhealthy". All that does is create or exacerbate an unhealthy relationship with food.
Foods high in fat and carbohydrate are typically calorie dense. Protein rich foods too. Now is not the time to worry about what foods to eat, just to eat more. Nutritious food is a wide variety of foods from all the food groups. What foods you find tasty, is something only you know.4 -
They reduce your maintenance calories as your weight drops because lighter bodies need fewer calories. If you want to gain, change your setting from "maintain" to "gain" to get a new calorie goal. MFP doesn't know that you want to gain or lose unless you tell it so. You may also have your activity setting too low. If you were maintaining on 2500-3000 calories a day, you're probably at least moderately active. If you aren't entering in exercise and eating those calories burned (though it doesn't sound like you do much), as well, then your MFP goal will be too low for you. Try changing you activity level to get a better goal.
As far as calories dense, nutritious foods, there's a good list floating around that you can search the forums for. It has things like nuts and nut butters, olive oils, full fat dairy, avocado, etc.
ETA: check out the "gain weight" threads - they may have some great tips for you!4 -
This is very helpful! Thank you!0
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nataliescarpa wrote: »Hi there- I'm just learning all about nutrition and being healthy. I've always been tall and thin, so these things were never immediately pressing for me. I'm now ready to take control of my health and wellbeing and so I'm committed to diet, reasonable exercise, and meditation.
I've been tracking my food to see how to keep my diet balanced. In the 2 weeks I've been logging food- I've lost 6-8 pounds. That means I'm 5'9, 27, and 117 pounds. This is too small for me.
I noticed that after I entered my lower weight, the calorie counter lowered the number of calories I need each day. I have it set to wanting to maintain my weight- so I would think that once I lost weight it would tell me to eat more calories to get my weight back up.
Clearly I have a fast matablosim and adding in even a minimal 15 minutes of walking and 15 minutes of yoga or strength each day and eating less calories because I'm cutting out unhealthy stuff is enough to drop my weight quickly.
So- I need help knowing what is an appropriate number of calories to stay at at least 120lbs or more and what foods are tasty, nutritious, and calorie dense. If I'm cutting out fast food and processed food I need to replace it with enough calories in healthy food to maintain a good weight.
I'm also assuming that before I started tracking calories and eating healthy I was consuming an average of 2500-3000 calories a day, but fitness pal suggested 1720 or something a day and recently reduced it to 1670 a day,
In summary- how do I truly know how many calories to eat and what do I need to include in my diet to eat nutritiously but get enough calories?
Thanks!
I know I'm starting to sound like a broke record here, but I highly recommend the DASH diet protocol as a reference for a healthy diet. This link gives the plan at different calorie ranges-all the way up to 3,100 a day. I copy/pasted it to a Word document and then printed it out, and it's what I use every morning when I'm making my daily food plan https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/dash/followdash
Even if you don't follow exactly, I think it's a great overview of what a healthy, balanced diet looks like
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