I realized this morning how much of my day is spent contemplating my next meal or two, snacks, and whether or not I think I will meet my daily caloric goal. Today, Beautiful suggested that I explain how much I need to eat just to maintain my weight, so here it goes.

Requirements

According to a nutritional calculator at Mayo Clinic’s website, with my lightly active lifestyle, I should only need 1,900 Calories per day to maintain my weight as a 31 yr-old, 5′ 4″ male weighing ~120lbs. That would be nice! I also calculated Beautiful’s daily requirement as being 1,750 Calories. You’ll see the problem with that in a second.

If I go through a normal day of eating (pre-Fatboy) to just get through life without paying attention to eating enough, I’ll probably encounter 2,000-2,500 Calories and lose 2-3lbs by the next morning. If I make an effort to be sure I get enough to eat to get in the neighborhood of 4,000 Calories, I’ll break even. It’s not unless I intake 5,000-6,000 Calories that I can have any expectation of seeing the scale budge upward.
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