This is a question that many of us have!
What's the answer? Watch the video below or keep reading.
Have You Been Eating Like a Toddler?
Here are some facts for you fro the WebMD website.
Children between ages 4-8 need 1000-1400 calories a day.
Children between ages 9-13 need 1600-2200 calories a day.
Children between ages 14-30 need 1800-2400 calories a day.
But when we think about it… There's been a time in our lives when we ate (or are currently eating) like a toddler or a young teenager, yet we're adult, active women.
This is why we run into issues like broken metabolism, loss of period, loss of hair, feeling cold all the time, and other symptoms.
3 Mistakes We Make When Calculating Our Daily Calories
Here are the 3 common mistakes:
We Believe Wrong Numbers
We've been brainwashed to believe that 1200 calories is enough for an active woman. Okay, some health magazines are as generous as offering us 1500 calories. This is not enough for an active woman, so let's stop believing these low numbers.
We Eat No More Than Our BMR Is
It's easy to go online and calculate our BMR — basal metabolic rate. But we should never use this number as a guideline to how much to eat. This number tells us how much energy we need a day, to keep our basic bodily functions happening — our brains working, respiratory system working, heart beating, digestion running.
If we eat less than BMR, which a lot of us do, this is pretty much a guaranteed ticket to health issues and in women, often also to hypothalamic amenorrhea.
We Think That We Have to Eat As Little As Possible
The nature actually doesn't want us to be string bean thin. It wants us to be strong and resilient. It doesn't matter if we want to have kids or not, the nature has designed in such way that we can have kids — and because of that, it wants us to have some fat on our bodies.
Therefore, it's not a race — who is able to eat less calories, or — let's see how little I can eat and still survive. Our bodies like abundant energy.
How Much Calories Can I Eat and Not Gain Weight?
Finally, to the main question!
I can't give you the exact answer, but I can tell you one thing: More than you thought. It will take some time to get to the point where the body is completely recovered from years of under eating and overtraining, but once it has recovered, we can actually eat a good amount of food and not gain anything.
That's because
1) our metabolism knows what to do with the energy, and it uses it up
2) if we eat more than usual one day, then the next day our appetite tends to be smaller so in general, it evens out.
Of course, all that is given that we actually listen to our hunger signals and mostly eat to satisfy our physical needs, but sometimes also eat for fun. Nothing wrong with that either.
I know that personally my daily average is somewhere between 2300-2600 calories, and I've maintained the same weight for couple of years now. And it doesn't take hard work, I don't have to restrict, and I feel full and satisfied after my meals. I have had my periods back since May 2017.
So, it may take time to heal your metabolism but after it's running well again, you can eat more than you probably think!
This helps alot