nutrition, tdee, bmr and my bullshit
(I swear this will be my last long rant before I go back to tracking workouts and keeping it short and simple. This is a rant, it’s trash, don’t even read it) Before I begin I want to caveat this by saying: Diets, eating styles and nutrition are highly individualistic and there are many factors that come into play for any one person. Something that works for one person may not work for another and I know this. I speak very generally and in relation to myself. Being overweight does not necessarily mean you are unhealthy and being skinny/shredded does not mean you are healthy. None of that matters if you feel awesome or feel like shit. That being said:
Personally, I went through a very high stress time where I was restricting my intake (barely eating at all) with sporadic days of actually eating enough. Yes, I did drop weight almost overnight from it (people did actually notice and complimented me. A lot was muscle too.) but I felt like shit and my system is slowly recovering. This is by far the weirdest recovery I have ever done with myself. It dawned on me the other day that things felt very “out of control” and a way to control it, in a sense, may have been to control that I wasn't eating. It’s not something I'd like to admit I did on purpose but maybe subconsciously. I’m not sure, might not ever know but I am definitely willing to recognize those darker parts of myself if I'm being objective and deal with them. I may get things wrong sometimes (often) but I never fucking quit. I really can't ever see myself quitting. Managing my stress has been vital and things seem to be falling back into “normal”. I credit this to making sure I e a t and following a sleep schedule.
I am slowly increasing my intake up to a 2,000+ calorie diet by adding calories every week and monitoring how I respond. I’m eating whole foods, keeping nutritional quality in mind and following 80/20 rule. 80% whole foods and 20% snickers bars (jk). If it’s the weekend and I want to have a bagel, I'm going to have a bagel. I am tracking macros to make sure I stay in range get enough carbs, protein and fat. My calories are increasing as my activity level increases (the more energy I get from food over time, the more energy I have to workout harder etc).
My body has seen a massive deficit for a very long time. Right now my days look like 1600 -1700 calories (which is still a deficit for me but it’s where I'm at) but I should be ramping up to 2,300 calories over time. My BMR (basal metabolic rate), on paper, is 1,500+ calories. That’s the calories needed for me to sit in bed all day and not doing anything. I should never be dropping below that number, or even close to, if I want to simply live. I am incredibly active and get 12,000 - 18,000 steps a day according to my Garmin, not including any workouts, runs, or activity I do outside of my normal 10,000+ steps.
Metabolic Adaptation: (time for some science) Metabolic adaption occurs when your body is in a deficit (burning more than taking in) for an extended period of time, and your body tries to close that gap on it’s own by adapting. If you look at “dieting” as essentially being starvation in a controlled environment, the body naturally wants to combat this. (I want to make it clear I am not “dieting” but speaking as dieting being a form of calories in vs calories out. I know full well I do not have any actual weight to lose or gain. Looking at me you it would seem I am quite healthy. But my intake has plummeted when I stopped eating and it responded to my low intake) The body adapts by adjusting your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) because you’re essentially starving yourself (it makes you burn less/run more efficiently over time/be less careless with the calories it gets). Calories in EFFECTS calories out. It’s science. I am trying to ramp mine up, to eat more food to support more training and combat this tiredness (recovering from my great fuck up of the year still) etc. - Your TDEE takes into account your BMR (basal metabolic rate -what you need to keep your lights on), NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis - walking, typing, fidgeting etc), TEF (thermic effect of food), and your EA (exercise activity). The last thing I want to do is drop below the calories I need to simply exist (functioning organs).. then I need to add on the calories to literally be here and live, then how many calories (aka ENERGY) you get from food (you have to put energy in to get energy out)(looking at calories as energy), lastly, activity level. If you aren't eating enough to fuel activity then you won't get anywhere and in fact, you’ll be holding yourself back. What I'm trying to say is: Your body doesn't want to starve. IF you stop eating as much as you NEED your body ADAPTS to make you burn LESS over time so it gets HARDER.
Some Math: [We do live in a diet culture but even worse than that is the fact that we live in a culture that tries to tell us we need anything but real food and complete diets lmao (I understand that different styles of eating work for different bodies but i’m speaking very generally). Quality food does matter too. I mean, most girls have been dieting since.. they got their first bra? Pretty nuts. It’s engrained in our brains to always eat in a deficit which makes things harder when we DO want to diet because our body DOES NOT. No wonder diets fail and we’re essentially fucked. Because we’ve been dieting for 10 or 20+ years on shitty foods and constantly lowering and lowering our intake for years to reach those same results we might have seen once. There is a time and place for calorie restriction but not until your (my) metabolism is up to speed to be able to handle the impact of being in a deficit.] If you start off your diet and you are already eating 2300 calories a day, you slowly cut over the course of weeks, your body will be able to handle it better. But if you’re eating 1400 shitty calories and want to diet even more from that... you don't have much room to drop.... 1200??? and what if 1200 is below your TDEE to even be alive? Good fucking luck. You might see some initially progress but not for long and you will hit a wall and start the cycle all over again. Then, you unintentionally lower your body set point even further. If you are dieting and it’s going well that’s because your energy input is less than your energy output. You created a gap. Your body doesn’t want to starve and it will naturally try to close the gap. (I know there are studies on rats living longer on a calorie restricted diet but I digress and that is not my point here but interesting to note)
I don’t want a gap and I want to eat to fuel big dreams lolololol. End rant. It feels weird to... eat enough real food. I get so full. Raising my calories is weird and scary but............ I’MA DO IT ANYWAYS. 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000. bam. back up to speed with minimal impact (I hope).
I’m just a girl.. sitting in front of a Tumblr page... asking to run all the miles, lift all the weight, be a strong mother fucker and eat all the food while I'm at it.
(I swear this is my last lengthy (rant) post and it’ll be back to your regularly scheduled programing consisting of reblogs and a few scattered runs downs of workouts. I just fucked up and I’m just being honest. I can't beat myself up about it. I’m learning to deal with it)
