Man of Honour
As your muscle mass will undoubtedly be exploding you beast, you'll be able to start to reestablish a new BMR in time I reckon. small steps though, you're doing amazingly.
Struggling to eat enough...
- Thread starter wire-screw
- Start date
As your muscle mass will undoubtedly be exploding you beast, you'll be able to start to reestablish a new BMR in time I reckon. small steps though, you're doing amazingly.
Associate
It's more to provide as an additional intake, helps gain mass easily when trying to hit high targets like 4000kcal etc.
Caporegime
I tracked my calories as best I could for a few weeks once and its so easy to hit your limit. Things like cups of tea and coffee all add up, anything sweet and then things like oil and butter. Easily add 500 calories just on these "extras". I think thats where so many people go wrong with the diets.
Everyone wants a magic bullet that removes the burden of blame from themselves when it comes to their weight. "Oh I have been eating too many carbs". No, you have been eating too much period and a lot of people who eat too many carbs are just eating too much sugar.
Adding calories to gain weight is pretty simple for most people. If it wasn't we wouldn't have so many fat people in this country. Losing weight is far harder.
Man of Honour
Spot on.
Associate
I have tracked mine for about 18 months now - using MyFitnessPal. It is pretty good, most things are spot on, but as you have aluded to you really do have to be careful you are recording everything - again as you have said oils etc.
But there are simple alternatives. I rarely use any oil in cooking anything now - but if I do I will just use a 1 calorie spray. Things like coffee (I don't drink tea), I have just swapped semi-skimmed for fully skimmed - works out at 30 calories per cup of coffee now.
I think when you start recording things it becomes obvious where things are going wrong. Going back 18 months ago, my diet during the week would be pretty much spot on, but at the weekend it would go pear shaped. It would be things like Chilli Peanuts - if I opened a bag I would finish them - I thnk they are about 2500 calories per bag, so it didn't matter that I had done well during the week, at the weekend I would overeat by 2 or 3 days. Frightening.
Caporegime
People who lie to themselves about their diets or their calories are excellent at avoiding this though. They will record it for a bit and then tell themselves they are too busy or it was too much effort and that they now "know what sort of calories I'm eating so I don't need to do it anymore".
I do have sympathy, especially for women because their calorie requirements are much lower than many mens but all the spiel about how peoples weight isn't their own fault is horrendously damaging not only to peoples health but the the environment and public purse. God knows why fat acceptance is so prevalent.
What is quite fascinating is some of the science around weight gain and loss and just how good our bodies are at resisting change. Over-consuming vast quantities of calories doesn't have anything like the negative effect it should do. You will obviously gain weight but it's something silly like the average person overeating by 1000 calories a day will only put on the equivalent amount of fat to 3 calories/day in a year.