As embarrassed as I am to now be starting one of those threads... OMG how do I eat this much food?
I have a long history of weight problems -- from morbidly obese, to underweight, and back and forth with everything in between -- so at this point in my life I really have no frame of reference that means anything.
I lost about 80 pounds in the past 9 or so months. I am at (well, under) my goal weight. I did not have much muscle to begin with, and I did lose some on the way down. But in general I had good success and am happy with the results.
My goals are now maintenance and recomposition (i.e. trying to say build some muscle tone without bringing to mind "I pick things up I put them down" extremes).
I rode a range of around 1300-1400 calories a day during my weight loss.
My doctor and the online calorie guides all say my calories are much lower than they need to be in general -- never mind if I'm trying to build muscle.
They want me over 2,000. The numbers keep coming up around 2,100 if I'm doing strength training a few times a week (and that's with specifically no cardio). The consensus seems to be 1,800-1,900 should be my just plain existing maintaining range.
My gym tells me I should be at some obscene like 3,500 calories on lifting days and at least 2,500 on the resting days. That just doesn't make any sense to me. How would I not get fat on that?
Is my doctor really high? Or has my past range been extremely low? It just seems like so much food! (Unless of course I slip in lots of junk food calories)
The only thing I know works for me is eating lots and lots of junk and getting fat, or being quite content with a nicely managed 1300-1400 calories and loosing weight. Maintaining and/or muscle building is foreign to me.
This is what's in my tracker for today's plan. Looking at it on the screen it doesn't seem "normal".
Any thoughts? Am I just so screwed up that my doctor's suggestion really is somewhat normal and I should just go with it and see what happens?
At this point I'm kind of going with my gym is crazy and has different goals than I do, so I can ignore their calorie suggestions -- but maybe I'm wrong?
---
Breakfast:
150 calories - Egg, Cheese, English Muffin Sandwich
21 calories - 1/4 cup skim milk (spread out in my coffee over the day)
Lunch:
270 calories - Red Pepper Marinara Frozen Dinner
Dinner:
265 calories - extra lean ground beef patty
130 calories - hamburger bun
30 calories - cheese slice
Snacks (spread throughout the day):
300 calories - 12 oz turkey
160 calories - 1 cup fat free cottage cheese
120 calories - 3 tbsp popping corn
100 calories - Chocolate Vitatop
160 calories - Breyer's Cookie Sandwich
-- just over 1700 calories. So supposedly I still need to fit another few hundred in there.
I'm probably going to put what remains of my planned turkey on a salad tonight so I can throw some veggies in there, but even a few cups of veggies will only add a few dozen more calories.