Quote:
Originally Posted by addicted golfer
You're right. I don't mean I'm burning 4500 calories during the workout. I meant to maintain my weight at my activity level the total number of calories per day I use is around 4500. I learned that for moderate activity people to take your body weight and multiply it by 15. Sedentary 10 and high activity level 20. That's just to maintain weight.
Typical day is bacon and eggs in am, salad with chili at lunch, Qudoba (or something similar) at night, and a small desert.
I guess what I'm looking for is a time machine back to when as long as I worked out I could drink / eat anything I wanted and not gain...
4500 is still a lot.. I'm not all that far off from your weight, and I actually started at around 260 before joining these forums. Even with 40 minutes to an hour of Zumba (which is considered high intensity for me), to lose 1 pound a week I need to keep under around 2800 calories because aside from the workout, my life is pretty sedentary. At the weight I'm currently at, it's close to 1800 calories per day, plus whatever I burn through exercise.
The day of food you described doesn't really sound bad, but if you're eating multiple servings in your portions it can quickly add up. I would really suggest using something like MyFitnessPal and tracking for a few days just to see how many calories you're really taking in versus what you're burning. Even if you don't lose it long term, it'll help to get an idea of where the problem is. I found out when I started that serving sizes were a lot smaller than I thought they'd be.. me eyeballing a cup of something doesn't work, and there are a lot more calories in some of my old favorites than I would have guessed.
I also get the idea that you really, really don't want to diet, restrict, or count calories. Intuitive eating may be a plan to look into for you. It doesn't involve tracking anything, and more involves getting to know your body and what it needs again so that you can rely on it's signals instead of having to count all the things. Wannabeskinny could definitely give you more information on it, and there's a thread in one of the other sub forums about it too.
With the food thing it does seem to be all about finding the plan that works for you. I've done most of the diets you've read about over the past decade, and failed at all of them, plus gained more than what I lost when I failed. Not a single one of them lasted over a month. This go around I've been doing Weight Watchers, or at least using online tools I found for it for free. The plan meshes well with my lifestyle and is finally something I can do long term, which is important for maintenance later. Nothing is off limits but it does steer you towards healthier choices, and helps you learn portion control. It's not for everyone, but it works for me.. you just have to find the one that works for you, and that tends to take a lot of trial and error.