Any thoughts that anyone has here would be so useful for me.
When I first started this at 344 pounds, I concentrated on portion control and some exercise. I didn't count calories or use any program. That worked great until I went under 200 pounds. I felt that my weight loss was going too slow so I started to count calories and weigh things.
For the last 3 months I've been eating about 1300 calories a day. I am still losing weight - slowly, but losing it. I don't feel hungry, I'm sleeping pretty well and I don't feel run down. However, I work out twice per day. This would be a typical day of exercise - run 4 miles at lunch and then come home and spend 45 minutes doing body weight exercises.
I've had a couple people opine that for this amount of exercise I'm not eating enough. I ran my numbers through some calorie calculators and put in "moderate" for exercise and just about every one told me to lose 1 per week I should be eating 2000 calories per day (!!)
So yesterday I purposefully ate 1700 calories. I felt stuffed. My extra calories were all from good things - a little extra milk, some extra sweet potatoes, extra chicken, an apple. Today I ran at lunch and I felt so strong - 4.5 miles - was it the extra calories or just a good run day? I don't know.
I am afraid - very very afraid - of upping my calories and gaining, especially since I'm so pumped getting close to goal (which won't be 150 BTW, I'm looking at 130 now). Is this a trial and error thing? What are your thoughts?