Major sucess with higher calories!

What is DTEE?

will somebody check my calculations for me? i just can't believe i am supposed to eat so much.

female, age 22, 5'9", 176 lbs, moderately active
goal = 155 lbs

i got 2,540 for my BMR. i can't imagine losing weight eating that much since i've had so much success eating at net ~1400 for the past three months (lost 25 lbs). wtf? i have hit a little bit of a plateau, but i increased my net calories to ~1600, should i really increase it more?

What is DTEE?

It's TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure, or the number of calories you burn in a day just living & breathing.

bump

I've been thinking this is my problem...started eating more the other day. The way you put it makes total sense! Weeee, more food for meee!

bump-gotta read this thoroughly later K!

I was so back and forth on my weight with 1200 calories plus I was always tired. I upped my calories this past week to 1400. We'll see if this works :-)

I just started on here so no results to speak of yet. However as far as this discussion is concerned it is the truth. Why? The answer is metabolism. If you starve yourself, you will not burn more fat because your metabolism will slow way down trying to conserve calories. Your body knows it needs like 2,000 to 2,200 calories per day just to keep you alive. When you're taking in more calories (good calories) your metabolism increases because your body is no longer in conservation mode and you will lose pounds faster because your body is "willing" to feed off its fat stores if it is being properly fueled. The goal is to create a calorie deficit but not to the point of tricking your body into believing you are starving. 3 healthy meals and up to 4 healthy snacks per day will keep your body in constant supply of fuel while still allowing it to burn off fat stores for weight loss. If you starve yourself your body will literally store EVERY calorie it can spare to fat and in that situation you can actually gain weight.

Truth be told I find it very difficult when eating healthy to eat enough food in a day to meet my caloric needs. With my workout program and my recommended daily intake of calories I'm well into the 3,000 + calories per day category. Half the time I simply cannot eat that much food and I have to start looking into shakes and other healthy sorts of things just to be able to keep my caloric intake high enough. On heavy workout days I find myself falling over 1,000 calories short of goal and I've eaten all day long.

I believe you just so hard to break those old "diet thinking" patterns. Thanks for the reminder.

I am a somewhat active person by nature. My daily caloric goal is 2,815 and then take into consideration on my big days at the gym when I do cardio and weight training I burn about 1,200 calories just at the gym! So if I take in 3,000 calories on that day I still have a calorie deficit of roughly 1,000 calories just for that one day alone! So even though I took in 3,000 I still burned off around 1,000 because that is what I was short of my body actually using. I don't care if you never get out of bed all day long your body is still going to use 2,000 calories per day just to lay in bed. That is what people aren't accounting for. Your body just for keeping your heart going, breathing, keeping your other organs functioning and so forth is using about 2 calories per minute on average. Do the math.

I have some friends that are just huge like the Hulk and they take in upwards near 4,500 calories on a heavy day of lifting and they have like 3% to 5% body fat...