Women who eat a ton without gaining.... page 16

[andycotterQ]

How can one maintain a good and active metabolism even after years. I heard once a person turns older it slows down.

[PaleoMom]

I'm this way and I've always found it frustrating. I'm 18, am 5'9 and weigh only 120 pounds even though I eat just as much as anyone else. Obviously if I give it another 20 years I'll be saying this opposite but at the moment it's seriously bugging the heck out of me...

Just curious, how many calories do you think you normally eat? Just wanting to collect data...

At only 18 though you might find the next 5 years might continue to fill you out. I was early that way, but I remember many girls that didn't really fill in all the way until mid-late college.

[PaleoMom]

How can one maintain a good and active metabolism even after years. I heard once a person turns older it slows down.

I have always assumed this had a lot to due with loss of muscle with age. Keep up the weight training and this might not happen?

[JoanieL]

I've always heard that also, but no one agrees on how much. I've read everything from two percent post menopause to 10%. Building muscle almost has to help as muscle is more metabolically active than organs, bones, and fat. Here: How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn? (and Why It’s Not About Calories Anyway) | Mark's Daily Apple Mark states:

a pound of muscle, at rest, burns about six calories per day (and a pound of fat burns about two). -

So while the article is really about showing that being a musclehead doesn't mean you can eat a gazillion calories a day, and that being strong/lean helps other health issues, that sentence/fragment alone shows that it's better to be muscular than flabby if you're not going to eat less in general.

But another thing to consider is that middle age just isn't naturally as active as youth. Hopefully by middle age we've decent jobs (and maybe we're getting ready to retire), we've got our homes, family, etc. Compared to the hectic life of say a college student, who goes to classes, works a job that may require her/him to be on one's feet the whole shift, studies, and parties, I'm guessing a lot of middle age weight gain is from life slowing down a bit.

[magnolia1973]

To the people that eat a lot, and stay relatively low carb (the +/- 100 gram type, not ketosis), what are you eating and do you track it?

I did an experiment yesterday and ate "a lot". I ended up around 1700 calories and can't imagine a primal way to easily get up to 2200 calories. I can imagine a high carb way.
Breakfast was 3 eggs, bacon, asparagus, coffee with full fat coconut milk
lunch was a banana, blueberries, roast beef ( lot of it)
dinner was a steak, cauliflower in coconut oil, and a salad with dressing and avocado.

I thought FOR CERTAIN I was going to be over 2000 calories.

I just wonder if big primal eaters overestimate calories? And if not, how do you afford it?

[gopintos]

To the people that eat a lot, and stay relatively low carb (the +/- 100 gram type, not ketosis), what are you eating and do you track it?

I did an experiment yesterday and ate "a lot". I ended up around 1700 calories and can't imagine a primal way to easily get up to 2200 calories. I can imagine a high carb way.

This was my trouble and why I ate so low for so long, when I was HFLC. I just wasn't hungry. Now I have shifted macros to about a 3 way split, but still eating under BMR. This is probably why/where the refeeds come in and are SO important, (which I missed that part before) and maybe where the 20% can be beneficial. We went out for breakfast yesterday, which I hardly ever do anymore. So I had pancakes. Sorry, that is the one thing I really miss. And I thought that would make me hungry again, starving even, in a few hours. Ya know, start out your day eating like Prey and end up grazing all day. But it didnt and I ate right the rest of the day, and still came in at 1640.

[Beets]

It doesn't at all sound like how we get fat to me. It sounds like how we're told we get fat, but it doesn't sound at all like the way I've observed it to actually happen.

Edited to add awesome link: http://www.caloriegate.com/i-want-to...ies-dont-count

Great piece! Thanks so much. I'm going to post it all over every single silly "I'm doing a radical eat less/move more" diet board argument.

[Beets]

Although, one obvious question that article doesn't answer is: if you eat too many calories, won't you gain weight?

This is listed in the "questions raised by Taubes' hypothesis" section but it does the piece a disservice to leave it unaddressed. I in general find the piece compelling but something I was taught about reporting is: never raise a question you don't answer. And that's a pretty big one.

And I have been familiar with this line of thinking for years. I read Scwartzbein Principle, Nourishing Traditions and Mary Enig's Know Your Fats fifteen years ago--all of which advocate eating more fat and less garbage.

Still, I know that in my past I gained weight when I went from living alone and making all of my food--mostly nutritious--to living with my boyfriend at the time and eating a lot more food. I was a size four, then 6 then a size 8, 10. Maybe somewhere around there my fat started acting to accumulate fat (and I was taking antidepressants) but surely in the beginning eating more chicken pot pie was one of the culprits.

There has to be some truth to the idea that eating more calories does indeed cause the initial weight gain. After that then, yes, the accumulated fat can act. But yet overrating in itself (without any black box mystery) does also cause some weight gain. No?

[calee]

I'm still trying to understand the Black Box. While the article appears to be excellent, I'm still confused.

The only way that I can gt my fat up is putting HWC in my coffee and tea. Even with that, while eating low carb, my calorie max is around 1400-1500.

[Beets]

I also wonder how to get calories that high on primal. I struggle to get mine to 1600 eating all healthful stuff. Unless I'm just eating tablespoons of coconut oil or butter plain to up the cal count.