Ok, the calorie issue. I keep hearing things like - You eat HOW much? Am I supposed to eat that much? Are you kidding me?
People tend to undereat for their activity level. They have some idea in their head about what they're supposed to eat and they won't let themselves go any higher. For most women, the magic numbers are somewhere in the 1200-1700 range. They get stuck there and that's how much they eat, for like decades. Never mind how brutal their workouts become or how many hours of cardio they're doing; they push their little salads around with their forks and complain about how they gain weight if they even look at food. Well, duh, that's because you're starving. Starving people gain weight when food suddenly becomes available. That's how they're going to make it through the famine.
You'd think that if you were undereating you'd lose weight, but that's not what happens. If you routinely fail to eat enough calories to meet your energy expenditure, your expenditure gradually becomes lower. The number of calories your body burns in a day drops to meet the amount you're actually eating. That's how I got myself into my original eating disordered predicament of gaining weight on anything over 800 calories a day. I kept cutting calories lower, and my metabolism kept dropping until it fell through the floor and died. If you'd told me back then that I would one day maintain on 2300+ calories a day with a couple of 3000-4000 calorie free days per week, I probably would have fainted. Of course, back then if I moved fast I fainted.
Note that the opposite is also true, if you routinely eat MORE than you burn, your metabolism increases to compensate for the surplus. That's why most nutrition programs include refeeds, cheat days, or zig-zags in calories. If you eat the same amount every day, you'll stall.
You also have to consider what and when you're eating. One person might maintain on 2,000 calories a day of mainly cereal, sandwiches, protein bars, and pasta dishes spread pretty evenly throughout the day. Another person with the exact same size and activity level might maintain on 3,500 calories a day of mainly lean beef, chicken, fish, egg whites, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats. Perhaps they include a complete lean protein with every meal and try to keep the bread and cereal to post-workout or early in the day. The big eater is choosing foods that are more costly to digest (thermic effect of food and all that), and timing/combining meals for maximum effect. The typical eater is choosing foods that don't have much impact on the metabolism and are easily stored as fat, and is eating them sort of willy-nilly throughout the day. So, if that person were to suddenly add an extra thousand calories a day of Wheaties, turkey sandwiches, pasta salad, and fruit roll-ups, of course they'd start gaining fat. But if they'd bring their calories up by only 200 or so a week and start emphasizing lean protein and high-fiber whole foods. Their metabolism would gradually ramp up to meet the new intake.
I talk to a lot of people who want to eat more, but they have some kind of a mental breakdown if they gain one or two pounds. If they gain three pounds, forget it, they're right back to their little elf portions. If you've been chronically undereating for years and you start to bring the calories up, of course you're going to gain something at first - muscle, glycogen, water, even a little fat. Remember, the scale is worthless for telling you what it is that you're gaining or losing. Who knows, maybe at the end of two weeks you'd still be up three pounds but your tape measurements or caliper pinches would be the same or down. If you're trying to bring your calories up, give it enough time to work, and use something other than scale weight to measure your progress.
Hi!