Struggling to eat enough.

No eating disorder can mess up your body enough to make you gain weight from not eating enough. The problem is seems to - you're not measuring food intake and output (body weight) accurately enough and/or for long enough, then you think it's "not working", then you overeat, then you gain weight for real.

You need to work on your relationship with food. In addition to becoming more patient, which you can be when you know that real weight changes takes time, a lot of time, you need to stop forcing yourself to eat, which you don't have to do when you realize that you're probably eating more than you think already, and that you can eat whatever you want.

Eating regularly, which in the beginning means setting and adhering to a strict meal schedule, with planned and prelogged meals, in accordance with the calorie target MFP gave you, will help you.

Remington170 wrote: »

Well I'm happy to hear these things honestly.. I'm unsure why everyone says thats the case (under eating causes weight gain)

If you by "everyone" mean those whose income relies on people believing outrageous things, I'd say "follow the money". If you by "everyone" mean everyone, you are clearly mistaken.

So I am currently losing weight.. a what I believe is considered still healthy..

Good! This means that you're eating in a deficit, but not too little.

My fear is that not hitting the recommended minimum is going to hurt me or fight against me and my efforts..

Not eating enough will hurt you. Short term, your compliance to eating less. Long term, if you push through hunger, fatigue, bad mood, general feeling of crappyness, malnourishment that can cause permanent damage.

Which I don't want but at the same time I'm struggling to accomplish it..

What you think you're eating and what you're actually eating, isn't necessarily the same. For your food/exercise diary to not reflect reality, you'll just have to make one small mistake often, or a few big mistakes now and then.

I've been trying to analyze my food and nutrition and make sure that even though I'm not hitting my calories I did eat so that atleast all the recommended nutrition categories are close to 3/4 if not filled..

You can't just analyze your food data, you have to make sure that all you put in, is valid. You have to weigh everything, and do that correctly, you have to pick genuine database entries - many are incorrect, or incomplete, or ambigious - check with the label, or the manufacturer's website, or the USDA database, and use the recipe builder if you cook.

If you're hitting all your macros (fat, protein, carbs), but not hitting your calories, and not even close, you can be sure at least one database entry is off.

Remington170 wrote: »

TavistockToad wrote: »

Remington170 wrote: »

My fear is that not hitting the recommended minimum is going to hurt me or fight against me and my efforts.. Which I don't want but at the same time I'm struggling to accomplish it..

you're right, it will hurt you as you cannot get adequate nutrition from very low calories, that's why MFP is set to 1200 minimum for women and 1500 for men.

Im on here for the purpose of being able to track for this reason. I'm glad there's a platform included to be able to reach out! Do you feel it's something to stress about in the short term or so long as I just keep slowly moving towards the goal and doing the best I can, do you think that's okay?

I think that's a question for someone who specialises in dealing with eating disorders