Do I need to eat more?

No, what i've been saying is that I had been trying to eat my TDEE and I had still been gaining alot of weight there, I know it's where you maintain weight, but I wasn't is my point. But what I usually eat is probably closer to what you said is my TDEE. Even though i'm almost positive I didn't eat over that, I'll just go ahead and eat around 2000 and see what happens and check back in with you guys in a month.

Make sure you get your proteins in as Sidesteal recommended.

Also make sure you track everything you put in your mouth. Trust me...what you DON'T track...can build up in a freaking hurry. A couple oreos can throw your day into a complete tailspin calorie wise.

If you are gaining weight then your intake must be over your (14lb is a lot over only 3 weeks).

It has already been mentioned by Sidesteal, but you should be really careful in your tracking of what you eat. Weigh and measure everything that is not pre-portioned and include everything - condiments, oil, dressings, drinks etc.

To give another perspective to crisanderson27's. I am female, a depessing amount of years older than you, 5 6" and not hugely active, all of which should mean that I have a lower TDEE than you. I eat 2,000 calories a day and lose weight at about 1/2 - 1lb a week. Eating at the 2,000 suggested by Sidesteal should mean you lose weight.

Also look at how OFTEN your eating.
I'm eating 5 times a day to keep the metabalism going, and it's working for me!
Between 2000 and 2500 sounds about right to lose as well.

I eat once a day, twice tops. 1000-2700cal depending on the day. I lost 40lbs of fat in 3mos with that method...and am regularly losing 1-2lbs a week again, on this same method.

I don't mean this in a rude manner, and I see you only have two posts so please don't run off...but meal timing being a necessity, or even an assist for weight loss is a complete and total myth. If it helps you stay under your intake...keep doing it by all means! But understand its helping you maintain self control, not helping your body burn fat.

@Sidesteal Well my point was that I'm still gaining weight, even though I barely reach my TDEE, which should, in theory, make me lose weight, which is really weird and rather disconcerting to me. Not sure how 2000 is gonna help, but I guess I can try it and enter it all in MFP.

oh, and to whoever asked, I'm 5'9"

I'll tell you when I started entering everything into MFP, it surprised the **** outta me.

only eating crappy deli meats and low carb atkins bars was what killed you honestly. you need a more varied selection.. and not to mention vegetables.

Might not be exactly the one, but this is relevant to the topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615615

Looks like it is correct. I'll have to find the expanded version of it.

Something doesn't ring true.

290 kJ/kgd
69.3 cal / kgd
152.5 calories / lb / day

When they measure your RMR via indirect calorimetry, the RER or RQ usually shows about 70% fat is used.

If this is a person with say 30 lbs of fat, that would mean 4574 calories day.
If this person had RMR of 1800 and laid around all day awake, they'd burn 1260 of that in fat.

So even if they could somehow burn total fat, it's not used up for the a whole day.

And we haven't even started moving around yet.

I don't see the problem, except in the case of my ultramarathoners - whose training has obviously gotten them around this issue the study found.

Even your goal weight 160 lb guys with 12% BF or 19.2 lbs would see 2928 calories available from fat in a day.

Shoot, I found a calculator on it, and it says I could actually shoot for 2lbs a day safely as far as how much energy the fat could supply.

http://www.weightrainer.net/losscalc.html

I don't see it as an issue except for the lean and trim doing endurance events that is primarily fat burning.

For the majority on MFP - I just don't see it causing an issue.

You keep forgetting that your body can only metabolize so much fat in one day. If you only eat enough to support your LBM, and what your body can pull from fat reserves in a day isn't enough to supply the additional energy...your body WILL metabolize lean mass.

Its science man...plain and simple.

I've heard that mentioned 2 times now - your body can only metabolize so much fat in a day.

Where is the study for this, I've never found it?

I find instead studies of ultramarathoners who have trained their aerobic system so well that they slip into 50% fat burning mode for 24 hrs and have no issues. At some point in there the glucose is usually used up and they do burn some muscle, but the fat burning stayed at 50% or better.

That is a lot of fat burned in a day, so I'd love to see that study.

I used to run marathons. One cool thing about running for long distance is your body learns to conserve glycogen so you don't hit the dreaded wall (I.e. run out of glycogen). The body also wants to hang onto lean mass as it needs it to run. You become a super fat burning machine and burn a higher proportion of fat than the average person.

The only thing the body can only burn a certain amount of in a day is glycogen as there is a limited supply and believe me you know when you've run out of it. Cyclists call it bonking. Cleverly eating a high energy snack can start restoring it immediately.

Dieting conversely teaches the body to conserve fat over lean tissue. Got to love the human body's ability to adapt to survive.

I know what they say about eating more but I think its bull unless your burning most of it off. I went to the gym for a year and my trainer told me i should be eating more to lose weight especially when I was training alot, which at one stage was 5 times a week. Now to answer the carb thing, ive also looked up so much info about this and when i started my new diet at the end of april I went for eating as much protein as i could, I still had carbs but mine would have been between 50-100g per day coz Im not giving up fruit and cereal. But I did read that when you go low low carb as soon as you start to eat carbs again you pile it back on, it said that one cake might make you out on 4llbs and more, not i dont know if this is realyl true or not, but one thing i do know, its its bloody hard to keep your carbs as low as you have, there are carbs in most thing, fruits and veg, so what are you supposed to do.
They say eat like a cave man, the cave man was slim as he ate protein all the time, as thats all they would have, they ate seasonal so ate very little fruits or veg in a year.BUT YOUR BODY NEED PROTEIN, AND CARBS AND FAT TOO to wrork correctly, your brain needs some fat to help it function.
So like you id did the same, low carbs and one day after 3 weeks of doing it, i was starving and out shopping and the thought of a cupcake was too much so i had one, needless to say with days my weight had went up a few pounds, and for the next for weeks it didnt budge, which actually made me sad and i totally felt like giving in, and was annoyed with myself that i had eaten that one small cupcake which was withing my cals allowence for that day, grrrrrrrrrrr.
There is no one on here that can provide you with sceintific evidence that suddenly eating something high carb would put alot of weight on you, I only wish there was someone who could actually say that one little cake woudl ruin your diet, rubbish. My weight goes up and down every day, today i am 1 quarter pound up and i think crap, I ate a wispa yesterday.
I think that the reason you have gained is that your eating too many calouries and not burning them off. When i eat normal i can easy shove away 3000 in one day and my weight goes up slowely but it goes up goes im not doing much exercise. And on the other hand of the coin i did weight watchers since january but had 2 days off per week and never lost anything, it took me to reaslise to stick to it each day and then all of a sudden i had lost 8 llbs in 3 weeks. I hope you can see what Im going on about mate.

There is no one on here that can provide you with sceintific evidence that suddenly eating something high carb would put alot of weight on you, I only wish there was someone who could actually say that one little cake woudl ruin your diet, rubbish. My weight goes up and down every day, today i am 1 quarter pound up and i think crap, I ate a wispa yesterday.
I think that the reason you have gained is that your eating too many calouries and not burning them off. When i eat normal i can easy shove away 3000 in one day and my weight goes up slowely but it goes up goes im not doing much exercise. And on the other hand of the coin i did weight watchers since january but had 2 days off per week and never lost anything, it took me to reaslise to stick to it each day and then all of a sudden i had lost 8 llbs in 3 weeks. I hope you can see what Im going on about mate.

Here's an explanation. It's the reverse of when someone drops a lot of weight on the first week of their diet. It's water weight, not fat.

http://www.justinowings.com/understanding-bodyweight-and-glycogen-de/

only eating crappy deli meats and low carb atkins bars was what killed you honestly. you need a more varied selection.. and not to mention vegetables.

From a weight loss perspective, you can eat crappy deli meats and low carb atkins bars and lose weight as long as you are at a reasonable deficit from your TDEE (although as one poster noted, the deli meats could cause more water weight). Is it particularly nutritious - no, will it stop weight loss, assuming calories are below TDEE, no.

as the person who has eaten 30 oreo cookies in a day, you can loose weight eating crappy foods.

As for the how often you eat per day comments. I had to test this one out for a period of time to prove a point. I'm one of those weigh myself a million times a day for scientific research people lol. The down low of it is when I ate gazillion meals a day at approximately the same calories, I'd wake up heavier, but my highest weight would be lower. This makes sense, I never had a large amount of food in me at any given time, so I was lighter then usual the rest of the day. But I was heavier by the end of the day because I ate across a larger time frame...so the difference in time between my last meal and my breakfast was shorter. And if I went with my regular 3 meals a day, I would wake up lighter but have a higher top weight at some point during the day. (large meals = more weight for digestion period) In conclusion, what does it really matter? Your average weight is going to be the same. Do you really want to go around saying you're top weight is lower because you eat mouse meals? You could do the same thing for eating veeerrryyy slowwwlyyy with big meals. Is it really that important? Do what you enjoy, don't do it for the ridiculously low delta difference in weight factor.