I am 19 years old, 5'1, and I weigh 105 pounds. I would like to weigh about 98-100. According to calculators, my bmr (calories I would need to maintain if I laid in bed all day) is 1300. I am not really sure if my life style is lightly active or moderately active. Lightly would require about 1800 and moderately about 2000 to maintain. I am a college student so I probably walk around campus for about an hour everyday at a moderate pace. I also go to the gym about 4-5 times per week for an hour. I do cardio and weight lifting and burn about 300 calories during each gym session.
For two weeks I ate about 900 calories per day. I lost four pounds initially but then gained two back after a week and a half. For the past week and a half I have been eating 1350 per day and gained back the last two and am still continuing to gain at a rate of about .2 pounds per day. It doesn't really make sense that I am gaining on such a low amount but, I feel like I am eating too much. I would be completely satisfied eating about 150 less calories than I am eating currently. I don't get hungry very often. Is it possible that i just have a slow metabolism and I only need about 1200 to maintain? or is my metabolism still recovering from when I was eating 900 calories per day?
Also, is it possible that the nutrition info on the labels I am reading are inaccurate? Most of the packaged food that I eat are prepared by my school but the nutrition labels come from Sodexo. Sodexo is the company where my school gets their food. I feel like there could definitely be discrepancies depending on who is preparing the food. For example, for lunch today I ate a salad with two small chicken breasts and probably about a cup of noodles in a creamy thai peanut sauce. The label said the meal was 360 calories, which I find very hard to believe. Without reading the label, i would guess the meal had about 525 calories.
