Finding it hard to eat enough calories?
 

I input my information into the TDEE calculator and it told me my maintenance calories are 2148 and to eat 1648 a day to lose weight (4'10", 159 lbs and I work out about 4-5 times a week). I know it's important to eat more because it's better for your metabolism and long term weight loss, but I have such a hard time eating that much! For example, yesterday I went on the elliptical for 20 minutes and did yoga for an hour but only had 1500 calories. I was so, so full from eating a lot of vegetables and other things that I couldn't bring myself to eat more. How do I eat more calories? Preferably calories that don't come from junk food

Also, do I eat that many calories even on days that I don't work out? (I mostly weight lift). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Sometimes I'm suspicious of calorie calculators, to be honest. I just used one that told me to maintain I need ~2400. I most certainly gain at that level. 1500 sounds pretty reasonable to me for an amount, and if you feel full, you shouldn't eat more. Except in cases of eating disorders or specific health situations, it's my philosophy that you should NEVER eat more than you want. Being taught to eat everything on my plate as a child turned into a problem later down the road, when I ate way too much simply because food was being offered to me or because the restaurant put all of it on one plate.

All that said, if you want to increase calories without increasing fullness, try eating nut butters or cooking with more healthy oils. Eat a couple of squares of dark chocolate. Choosing more calorie dense foods (that still aren't Twinkies) should do the trick.

It's best to eat the same number of calories every day, though with a wee bit of flexibility. People who have tried adjusting it to how much exercise they are doing on individual days say that it doesn't work out, it gets weird, and it's easier to focus on an overall amount.

Those calories calculators are a bit hit or miss. 1500 cal sounds fine. Try it for a while, see how you get on with it. None of these decisions are lifetime commitments, you adjust as you go along.

Although if you really do want to add calories, 7 almonds is about 50 cal, so nuts are an easy way of doing it.

I had suspicious of those calorie counters too, they told me I could eat like 2,000 calories a day and maintain. I tried that for 2 weeks and got super big haha

They're probably not as accurate for people our height. It's hard for me to tell, I make sedentary people look active by comparison, so none of these calculations really apply to me. Sooner or later you will work out what calorie level works for you, and you can adjust as you go. Remember that weight loss is faster in the first week or two, so don't use that as your basis for calculations. A lot of it is about what level of calories you can work with, one where you feel properly sustained on the food and not deprived or starving hungry all the time. There's no point picking an ideal calorie number based on someone else's calculation if you then find that you're too exhausted to lift weights, or that you're so hungry it's messing with your head and you're ending up bingeing.

I think it was in another thread, but did I mention what gluten? It's an excellent protein source and very tasty stuff. We brought some "vegetarian mock chicken" home in triumph from the Chinese supermarket yesterday, and it was delicious in a stir-fry. They do different types, some have a lot of added oil, so check the back.