What other people appear to eat can be deceiving. When I’m out with friends, I may get a cheeseburger and beers and the whole bit. If that’s the only time you saw me, you’d think I was a pretty hearty eater.
On a daily basis, I eat a small cup of yogurt for breakfast, a 6" Subway sandwich or cup of soup (<500 calories) for lunch, and a sensible dinner. I basically never drink sodas or eat candy, and my weekly bag of chips lasts me all week. I’m active both intentionally (through running) and as a part of my daily routine (no car, so walking a couple miles isn’t special- it’s getting to work). I prefer to save my calories for when they are really fun, and for daily meals I take a “food is fuel” approach.
Honestly, I think a lot of people’s calorie intake is in the “extras” that you don’t notice. It’s not dinner that makes people gain weight. It’s the cream in the coffee, the cup of soda with lunch, the extra handful of nuts before dinner, the candy bar at break, day after day, year after year.
Divide your daily caloric intake by your weight and post it, it’d be interesting.
As an example, when I was in college and I was more physically active (gym 4x a week plus several hours a week of walking) I needed about 16 calories per pound of bodyweight per day.
In my current life when I am less physically active and I’ve gained some fat but not muscle (muscle is more metabolically active, obviously) I only need about 12 calories per pound per day.
From the sounds of it, you sound like you may only need 7 or 8 calories per pound per day. I’m sure it is possible, but it is a pretty efficient metabolism.
Does anyone here have a calorie tracker app to recommend (iOS for me)? I’ve wanted to get one, instead of using my stupid notepad file that’s bound to my desktop, but there’s a billion of them and I have no idea which ones are good.
I eat lightly too, but I am pretty much Mr. Zero Body Fat. If I ate as much as I see other people eating, I’d be somewhere between hefty and chunky. A handful of ground beef and an orange sounds like a pretty good lunch, especially if you’re avoiding carbs.
I ate about 1 1/2 times as much as my ex and he weighed 60 lbs more than I do (and we had a similar activity level). Bodies are different. As long as you don’t feel starving or exhausted, you’re eating enough. If you started exercising your appetite would almost undoubtedly increase.
ETA: By Wesley Clark’s math I am eating somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 calories per pound of bodyweight per day, lately.
My dad would be one of those people. My mom, for years, was always surprised that he would come home from work and not be hungry for dinner (she didn’t care, she was just surprised since he had been at work for 12 hours). She’d ask him what he ate at work and his answer would be something like “Oh, not much, a sandwich and some soup around noon, that was it, a few Mt Dews thoughout the day”
Then she started working with him and actually saw what he did (FTR, I work there too, so I see this). Yeah, a sandwich and soup for lunch…then he goes back out into the store and gets another bowl of soup. Then an hour later he’ll eat some cookies. Then he sees someone was doing something with cashews for a recipe so he’ll grab a handful of them and 10 minutes later the box is still open so he’ll grab another handful. An hour later a vendor will stop in with some samples and we’ll all try some of them to decide if we want to sell them. Later on, a bag of chips, maybe that box of cashews is still on the counter and hey those samples of [something or other] are still out from the vendor so he’ll eat some of them. But it’s just been a little here and there so now, it’s getting later and he’s hungry, so he grabs another sandwich and this goes on all day.
When he gets home all he remembers is what he purposely ate not the grazing he did all day. Most people don’t graze for carrot sticks and bottles of water, it’s M&M’s and Mt Dew and samples from vendors and whatever is laying around in the backroom.
One of his other issues is that he’s a very unpicky eater. Even if he doesn’t like something, he’ll still eat it if it’s out and in front of him. It also doesn’t help that he either lies to himself, kids himself or just has no will power when it comes to food. For example, there was a big giant caramel apple in back one day. I watched as he cut off a slice, walked into the office and ate it. A few minutes later, he walked back out, cut off a slice…I’ve known him for long enough that to know that with each slice he told himself that it’s all he was going to have even though we all know he was going to eat it all, but in his mind, if he just has a little bit at a time ‘it doesn’t count’
BTW, For all that I’ve said, he’s not some giant 400 pound slob or anything, he could probably stand to lose about 40-50 pounds though.
TL;DR Don’t forget to count any grazing you do during the course of the day. People tend to ignore the ‘one cookie’ or the ‘handful of M&M’s’ which is fine for some, but it adds up if you do it all day and you’re trying to lose weight. It’s like wondering why your credit card bill won’t go down but not counting interest as part of your ‘spending’ even though it is.
Sparkpeoplehas one, with a bonus of exercise tracker and recipe builder as well, along with profiles and forums and goal trackers and such. It’s a website, but they have an app for Android, and I’m relatively certain they have one for iOS as well. Should be free. I’ve used this website in the past, and it’s pretty seamless. It’s also nice to be able to access anywhere - your phone, your home computer, whatever. I’ve found their calorie tracker database to be pretty comprehensive, and the recipe builder is great for stuff I make at home. Highly recommended.
There’s also one at Livestrong (I think it’s called The Daily Plate, or something?), though I can’t vouch for it. I’ve used it, but a while ago and not recently. Pretty sure they have apps in addition to the website too.
If I wasn’t one of the people that make experts say “most adults with ADHD outgrow hyperactivity by age 30” instead of “adults with ADHD outgrow hyperactivity by age 30” I’d be screwed too. Fortunately, daily exercise on top of being unable to sit still burns a lot of calories. I’ve eaten 3-5lbs of chocolate in the past 5 weeks without gaining weight… I’m not staying a size 8 through healthy diet, that’s for damn sure.