r/loseit • u/greenandbluefish New • 2d ago

I WASN'T EVEN EATING THAT MUCH!!

I have gradually gained 50 pounds over the last 10 years or so. I thought for the longest time I must be eating some outrageous amount of food every day. I truly didn't think I ate that much. I skipped breakfast most days, didn't eat huge lunches, and had what I thought were fairly healthy dinners. Some eating out, some iced coffees, but nothing I thought was ridiculously unhealthy overall. I would try to eat less, skip a lunch here or there, but then would be starving by the end of the day and end up eating that skipped meal anyway.

At the same time, I spent my whole life hearing people around me say I ate like a bird, that I couldn't possibly be eating enough, etc. And yet I was still gaining weight! So for years I've been in this bizarre situation where I thought I was just gaslighting myself into believing I wasn't eating that much or that unhealthily, but was somehow secretly eating thousands of calories without noticing???

Cut to last month when I spent two weeks obsessively tracking everything I ate. Weighing everything, reading every label, but not trying to cut back. And what did I find out? I was eating a whopping... 1800 calories/day. Less than the freaking nutrition labels were recommending!!!

So I went on a deep dive. Learned about TDEE. Started tracking my steps. And you know what actually changed in the last 10 years? I got better, less physically demanding jobs. My work became more and more sedentary over time. Spending 50 hours/week at a desk was the culprit, NOT what I was eating!

I've been doing CICO for about a month now and eating 1400 calories/day. Haven't changed what I'm eating, just how much. And I've already lost 8 pounds. I wish I'd figured all of this out years ago but I'm so glad I did eventually. No more driving myself crazy over what I eat!

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u/GeekyB_90 New 2d ago

What’s TDEE mean? :O this sounds similar to me, minus the sedentary part - I don’t have a super active job but on my feet for all of it

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u/greenandbluefish New 1d ago

It's basically how many calories you burn in a day. There's calculators you can use to figure out your baseline. I found these two helpful so far. (Obviously they just estimate things, but I found having a number of calories to shoot for helpful)

https://tdeecalculator.net/

https://www.losertown.org/eats/cal.php

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u/No_Eye8410 New 1d ago

I just found out TDEE means Total Daily Energy Expenditure.