So I'm ben,15, and in the past my limit was 1,500 calories... Until some people told me it was wrong so I bumped it up to 1,900 calories max. Well I have tried this for almost a week now. (Saturday morning is my weigh in which will make it a week.) I feel pretty good when I have 1,800-1,900 calories a day. Sometimes I'm kind of hungry SO maybe this week I will try having my limit 2,100... Then if that works I can have it 2,200. so on and so forth.
I don't want to jump from having 1,500 calories a day to 2,400 calories a day. I don't think my body would be able to do that since my metabalism probably isn't that high... I'm working on it though!
Anyway... Is this a good plan? Should I keep on experimenting?
As a teen and a guy, you are going to be able to eat a lot. And if I remember correctly, you don't really have much, if any, weight to lose, and if anything are still growing - so I'd say keep upping those calories. No reason to restrict calories which can end up limiting your growth (height, but also in other ways).
If I had a nickel for each guy I knew who went away for a summer during high school and came back a foot taller... well, I'd have a lot of nickels.
hahaha a foot taller? I know, not the point...
I'm working on the calories though. My goal is to raise it GRADUALLY. This is good right?
Original Post by bennyboy5:
This is good right?
As I suggested in a previous thread your body really needs 2700-2800 to be well-nourished and grow strongly. It would not struggle to accommodate that amount of food and your metabolism, because you're a young man, would speed up almost instantly. Increasing gradually just means you spend several more months not eating enough...
What you're struggling with is the mental aspect of eating more, not the physical one. Have you spoken to someone about your problem? Got some support in real life?
I don't get what I should eat more of. Like ok, example.
Last night a few neighborhood familys and my family had a camp out in one of their back yards. I was really tired because I had to wake up at 6 every morning for summer school and I had a project which kept me up until 12 one night. So I skipped out on that, got my sleep, and in the morning my mom makes this french toast stuff. It's not really french toast it's hard to explain.
Its like bread, brown sugar sauce, brown sugar, butter, eggs, and a few other things. Anyway, it has to be really fattening because the last time I tried it it was amazing.
Then there were chocolate chip pancakes, and some other stuff. Should I have eaten that? I mean, I would have gotten no fruit, next to no protein, tons of fat, saturated fat, and sugar. Nothing good would have came out of it. So instead, I skipped out on it and had a cup of cereal, 2 eggs, and an apple. I felt pretty satisfied and then I worked out and just had a protein shake and don't feel hungry...
So far I have eaten about 520 calories. SO FAR... I haven't eaten lunch, snack, olr dinner yet.
So are you saying I can pig out on crap and not feel bad about it?
"pigging out on crap" is obviously not the point, although you could probably get away with it more than most people on CC!
There are a lot of ways you can add calories. Have a slice of toast with peanut butter along with your morning snack, add some cheese and veggies to your eggs and make it an omelette or scramble, have a little bit of junk calories every now and then (a candy bar or some ice cream once in a while won't hurt). Use milk in your protein shake instead of water if you're not already. In the ED forums, you'll see a lot of threads on how you can add more calories to your diet without stuffing yourself. Please...enjoy the extra calories for as long as your metabolism will let you! I miss those days :)
Balance. Don't miss out on the good tasting food that mom makes....maybe eat two eggs, an apple, and a smaller amount of french toast. I'm losing weight...and I still eat some of the things I used to...just in smaller amounts....so if you are trying to gain or maintain....I think that can also be a good idea. Vary what you eat. Don't go overboard on "healthy" foods. Balance. And I agree with gi-jane that you need some support in RL. There are all kinds of mental aspects to eating that can cause us problems, no matter who you are.
So a lot of good healthy stuff and small amounts of the sort of healthy un healthy stuff? I guess that makes sense. I weighed in at 101 today in the morning... But that was when my bladder was empty and I hadn't eaten breakfast. After I ate breakfast it was 102.4... So I want to increase my calorie intake to 2,200 calories. So at breakfast I had 2 cups of my special mix cereal.lol It's 1 cup of kashi go lean and one cup of kix mixed up. Then I add a half cup of skim milk... not bad... I also had an apple and for a little extra calories I had some honey roasted peanuts... I love those things so much and I have wanted them so badly so I had some. That added an extra 100 calories. I just had a protein shake so it all equals about 600 calories.
This is my plan... 500 calories at breakfast, 500-600 calories at lunch, 400 calories at dinner. That's 1,500 then I will have 500-700 calories worth of snacks. Then I will see how that goes and if it turns out good I will up my calories to 2,400 calories...
Is this a good plan?
Sounds like a vast improvement from where you're at now! Peanuts are good for you in moderation, so go ahead and enjoy them!
Bennyboy, that sounds like a great plan. If you find yourself gaining more weight than you expect in the short term, I'd still stick with it for a bit (like a week or two), and see if your body adjusts. Then keep bumping it up. I think several people have told you that you should likely be over 2500. And if you take some of the other suggestions for weight training, then you're looking at over 3000, most likely.
Ah, if only I could eat like I did when I was a teenager... My mom used to make one portion for me, and an equivalent amount for the rest of the family (4 other people). And I'd still be eating snacks until I went to bed each night. At the time, I cared nothing about quality of food, just quantity.
Clint
