wait, so i shouldnt be restricting calories?

[DCS]

I'm so confused. I've been watching a lot of fitness and health videos on YouTube and I'm noticing a lot of people saying reducing calories is bad. Which I understand because obviously once you go back to eating 2000 cals a day or whatever you will be putting on weight. I'm currently breastfeeding DD. Mfp suggests I should be eating 1200 a day but I upped it to 1600. I usually eat 1600 a day or there aBouts but burn off about 300 through walking each day.
I'm never hungry. I've reduced my portion sizes but upped the amount of veg and salad. I'm actually having a smoothie breakfast each morning. I never used to eat breakfast. Like I said, I'm never hungry. I was over eating before I started. I have a lot of snacks especially in the evening but I feel like I'm making better choices. But I'm so confused about calories.

I know I need to exercise more.

Can anyone help?! I feel like I could benefit from seeing a personal trainer or a nutritionalist or someone who is clued up but quite honestly we can't afford it ATM.

 

[Kitteh_Kat]

If you're truly concerned, discussing it with a medical professional is the best course. Everybody is different, so it's hard to say what is right or wrong. Many people eat around 1200 a day without a problem (including myself - been doing it on and off since July 2013!). If you're losing weight and feel okay, then I don't see a reason why you need to eat more just because random people on YouTube say so.

Also, 2000 calories as a baseline is really inaccurate. I know my maintenance calories on the days I don't exercise is only 1500. So if I ate 2000 calories I'd gain weight! The smaller you are the less calories your body needs to maintain itself. For the future you might want to check out a TDEE calculator; that should help you figure out what works for your personal stats based on whether you want to lose an X amount per week, or maintain.

There's also apparently a line item for breastfeeding that you can add to your diary on MFP to give you extra calories for it. (I know you said you've already up'd your calories, but I figured I'd mention that feature!)

 

[DCS]

Thank you. I tend to over think things. I think I will just keep as I am. Will deffo check out the tdee calculator now.

 

[Lara310809]

This is a good website to check how many calories your body really needs per day:

https://thefastdiet.co.uk/how-many-calories-on-a-non-fast-day/

The TDEE is the number you're looking at. The TDEE is the amount of calories your body needs in order to MAINTAIN its current weight. I know you don't want to maintain, but I'm going to explain how to turn that into a loss, so bare with me for a minute.

Everyone is different and you have to be realistic about the amount of activity you do; apparently most people exaggerate it when they answer it, mine is set to sedentary and I should be having 1760 cals per day to MAINTAIN your current weight

other websites, like this one:

https://www.coachcalorie.com/how-to-repair-a-broken-metabolism/

Will tell you that you should only aim to eat 10-20% less than your TDEE to successfully lose weight. Less than that and yes you'll lose weight initially, but eventually your body becomes used to the restriction and learns to work with less, which means it will stop responding to the lack of calories and you'll stop losing weight.

Pretty interesting really. So if my TDEE is 1760, which it is (you should calculate yours because it will probably be different), then to lose weight I should be looking at eating between 1400-1580 calories per day. I'm doing the 5:2 diet however, which works a little differently, but that is the main idea. Eat 10-20% less than your TDEE, and you should lose weight.