How do I eat more?

L

langley7

New member
I'm 5'4 125lbs, my maintenance macros seem to be 1650-1700 cals with 125g p

An acquaintance of mine is shorter than me (like maybe 5') 120lbs and her CUTTING cals are 1800. How? I'm so jealous.

She's been lifting for about 8 or 10 years while I've been lifting for 4. Is that the difference? I'm also about 5 years older than her but I try to work hard and not to blame things on hormones
 
@langley7 Usually comes down to activity and muscle mass. The more active you are and the more lean muscle mass you have the more calories your body needs to maintain its weight.
 
@langley7 Muscle mass is a really big factor, but so is overall lifestyle.

Is this person working an active job? Do they move around a lot in their typical day? What does their training look like? And do they honest-to-god track every morsel? I personally tend to take other people's numbers with a grain of salt because I can't validate them.

If you want to eat more, it might be worth it to consider a building phase to add some more muscle mass.

Have you attempted to bump your calories up? Anecdotal, but when I move my calories up, especially after a diet, my NEAT tends to trend up to compensate and I end up maintaining. Something like MacroFactor might be great if you wanted to experiment with more calories.
 
@mj_1969 Thanks. I think they do more cardio than me, I don't do much.

Every time I bump up, I hate the fat gain. I've been at 1600-1700 cals for years now. I recently noticed that those were initially my cutting cals when I started lifting. I don't know how much truth there is to your metabolism slowing to match the cals that you eat. There's just too much info out there!
 
@langley7 It’s probably a combination of higher muscle mass and activity level/cardio. My cutting cals are around 1800 (0.5lb loss/week) and I’m the same stats as you.Took time to get there though, and adding in running was key in my experience.
 
@wellsja Thanks for the comment! Do u know your muscle mass? (My fitness watch says I'm 29%, scale says 23% so, I say that I'm 26 😊)

Did you do anything to purposely increase cals? Like increasing them slowly. Or, were you just hungrier over time?
 
@langley7 Watches and scales are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to bf% so I don’t track that and don’t know. I’d say from online photo charts I’m in between 22-25%.

Strength training was really key. I followed lifting programs that incorporated progressive overload, so I was lifting heavy for compound lifts and moderate ranges for accessories (I recently posted a recap if you want to see more details in my post history). Personally the low weight high reps scheme didn’t work for me. I also took up running and that made me hungrier and I ate more, but didn’t gain weight. I’m averaging probably 2200 cals and maintaining within 125-126 lbs.
 
@wellsja I did notice that I match the photo chart more than my watch. I just use it as a tracking tool, if it got up to 33 or something, I'd know to do more exercise or lower cals. Sounds like more cardio is my answer. Thanks for your feedback! Sounds like you work hard at it, that's awesome 😊
 
@langley7 I think lifting base is really important! So keep at it. But I was also doing zero cardio before running lol so incorporating even incline walks probably would help
 
@langley7 BMR is mostly determined by genetics.

You can increase your TDEE by increasing your NEAT, eating a high protein and whole foods focused diet (which increases your TEF), strength training to increase lean body mass, and never staying in a calorie deficit for too long.

But it’s really best to just not compare. Your numbers are your numbers.
 
@langley7 Pretty standard for a small woman.

But the total calories you expend daily is higher than that. Thats how many calories you would require to keep your organs functioning if you were in a coma.
 
@loveyhwh I know 😊 I just mean, I try to use macros calculators and things that assume people's BMR is above 1200. I need to stop basing my macros off of those and, like you said, stop comparing to others 😁
 
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