How in the heck can you eat that many calories?!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James bananaman Bailey on May 2, 2012 at 2:50am

how can you only eat that much??! i have a small-ish blender, (cusinart) and my smothies are between 1000 - 1500 cals each! i never bother to count the cals from greens, only fruits. in terms of cals, thats all that really matters

make it.

drink it.

repeat...

done.

if you find it hard to get your cals with a blender, your not tring!! ..sorry! :)

Permalink Reply by M. Lee on May 2, 2012 at 3:03am

Does your stomach grow and get used to this quantity of food?  I really feel like I can't choke down that much food.  A smoothie for me is usually 2 bananas, several cups of greens, a pear, and some pineapple.

Permalink Reply by James bananaman Bailey on May 2, 2012 at 3:31am

first thing id do if i were you, is to have a mono smoothie. its less work on your digestion so you may find it easyer to digest.

...i surpose it does although i 'learnt' how to do this on cooked food. in a three month period i went from nine stone to twelve, whilst still keeping my body fat fairly low, (strong flat stomic, was how a judged this). eat to live!!

dont worry about the greens so much at first and dont worry about counting them as a cal source ether! 2 bananas is a waste of time!!...next time you go to the blender make a five/six banana smoothie, only add water, drink it untill its all gone! (if you find this hard, the faster you do it the easyer it will go down!) make your smoothie, stand at the counter and drink it!  every two/three days up the amount of bananas by two-ish. once your at 1000cals and happy with it, then start adding things to it. some ppl have issues combing pears, so once your happy with a 1000 cal smothie, add them! ..see if you do. if you do, you know to stop adding them! ;)

*start mono

*increase incrementally

*keep it simple

*once settled, start having fun with what works for you!

:)

Permalink Reply by DCDrew on May 2, 2012 at 3:00am

You lack energy because it appears you are not eating that many carbs.  Only 5 bananas and 18 dates? Only 1 cup of pineapple? You need at least 3x more fruit. 

Permalink Reply by Don Bennett on May 2, 2012 at 3:12am

M, First, the number of calories assigned to the nuts you eat really shouldn't be tallied as part of the calories you need for the day for cell fuel. We do assign a number of calories to high fat and high protein foods, but that can be misleading in that we're not supposed to fuel our cells' energy needs from fat or protein; optimally that fuel should come from simple carbs (fruit). When we say "...and no more than 10% of total calories from fat..." it can be misinterpreted to mean that the fat portion of our diet does indeed supply us with some of our caloric needs, and optimally, it shouldn't. (It will if we're not eating enough carbs though.)

So the 100 calories from a banana include 3 calories from fat and 4 calories from protein, technically. But the fat and protein in a banana is not used for fuel normally, it's used to supply our body with fat and protein for the processes that require fat and protein, and the conversion of fat and protein into carbs to be used as fuel for the cells is only done when there is not enough carbs to meet our needs.

Secondly, there is some good info in this article on how to figure out how many calories of carbs you should be eating in a day. If you're eating enough carbs to maintain your ideal weight, your fat and protein requirements should be easily met. A possible exception is when you are under-muscled, and you embark on a strength training program to get your musculature up to be where it should be. You'll either need a bit more protein during this time if you want to "get there" as soon as possible, or if you don't eat proportionally more protein, you'll still "get there" but it will just take longer. Some folks choose to add something like hemp seed protein powder to their banana smoothie to help during this abnormal training phase (abnormal because in nature you'd never have gotten out of great shape in the first place). I'm not recommending you do this, I just mention it because this question comes up all the time ("Do you need proportionally more protein when you're building up muscle?"). Now, some say that when add a strength training program to your lifestyle, you'll burn more calories so you'll eat more food, so you'll get more protein. This is true but only to a certain degree. Working with weights to increase muscle mass isn't as calorically intense as running for an hour, so you don't need boat-loads of additional carbs to fuel a properly done strength-building workout. I should also say that If you are already in good shape muscularly, and work out to maintain that fit status, the above discussion on additional protein does not apply.

Another point to consider: If you're saying that you eat 1,200 calories of food and are not hungry for more food, but you feel that you should need more than 1,200 calories of fuel in a day, this can be for one of two reasons: 1. An overweight condition (over-fat), and your body is trying to shed some excess body fat and doesn't need the amount of SAD food that you used to eat because the food you're eating now is more nutrient dense and thus is satisfying your body's nutritional needs, and 2. Your body wants you to fast, and if you stopped eating you'd notice that you don't get hungry. The body wants to fast when it is dealing with a semi-serious issue and wants to keep it from becoming a serious/life-threatening issue, and to be able to deal with it as expeditiously as possible it wants maximal nerve energy available for healing. And since digestion is the biggest user of nerve energy, the body wants no digestion for a while so it can "get ahead" of the problem, instead of losing ground as it has been doing. But fasting is a whole 'nuther topic.

NOTE: Due to time constraints, I will not be following this discussion. But there is more info here.

Permalink Reply by Casey on May 2, 2012 at 4:30am

You need to make yourself eat more in the beginning until you're naturally used to it.  Your stomach has grown accustomed to eating calorie-dense foods like fats.  If you don't, then you will end up with terrible cravings and feeling like fruit is unsatisfying.  I'd cut out the nuts and just eat a lot more fruit per sitting.  It's not all about bananas and dates, I hardly ever eat those myself.  But whatever you do eat, eat a lot more of it.  1 cup of pineapple?  Why not the whole thing?    5 bananas?  I'm sure you can manage to get 10 down at a time, or maybe wait a short while between each bunch.  Keep pushing your limits at first because the stomach is naturally designed to expand more for meals and just needs to get back into shape. :)

Permalink Reply by Stephanie McClennon on May 2, 2012 at 4:42am

more dates! maybe cut out the nuts too. they don't digest well with fruits, and it's really easy to overdo it. if we were out in nature, nuts would only be available for a short period of time in the fall and we'd have to try to crack them open without our modern tools. it wouldn't be sustainable long term.

Permalink Reply by Mara Cordova on May 2, 2012 at 5:56am

2000 calorie diet broken into four meals of 500 calories or more usually is what works for me.

If you feel great right now, don't add stress obsessing over what you should- that's what'll make you crash.

Really, you should be eating 5 bananas a meal, think of it as your base. Add the rest, whatever it is you feel like, for variety. Same way most people would have bread, or pasta, or something else in a SAD diet.

Are you underweight? Or come from a background of under-eating? I have the opposite problem- I can eat all day, regardless, whatever is nearby without much thought put into it. On this diet, it's a blessing, but the way I was eating? Chips, multiple sandwiches, snack cakes- oh boy, what a problem!

It may take fifteen minutes to eat five bananas, but I find it easiest to pull five from a bunch (which usually have seven to eight bananas on them) peel them monkey style while still attached to each other, and slice them or nibble on them the way I would nibble at potato chips. Maybe you could do this either the night before  or in the morning, and put them in a baggie in their 5banana servings to carry around with you during the day.

Breakfast: bananas and whatever else you feel like.

Lunch/break at work: bananas in a baggie

Soccer practice: bananas in a baggie

Bartending/Dinner preparation: banana in a baggie, handful at a time.

Put it in a bag, make it "snack food" and, to me, at least, it's manageable fun snacking without guilt.

Maybe that doesn't work for you... but I guess the question is not how many calories are you getting in, but what your relationship is with the actual process of eating? Is it pleasureful, or fun, for you? Or is it some chore you'd hate regardless of the type of food you'd be eating? One raw fresh egg only has 72 calories, one medium banana has 105- this should be easier, not harder.

Permalink Reply by M. Lee on May 2, 2012 at 6:08am

Good way to look at things.  I'm overweight and have quite a few issues with food.  One of those people that has been on a diet since teenage years.  In the past I have eaten well, then binged on pizza or something equally awful for you.  I just need to learn to binge on fruit I guess.

I did end up eating an apple and about 20 dates for lunch.  So everyone's suggestions are very appreciated and I feel like I have a little more direction now.  I think switching from high fat raw last year to low fat raw might be part of my problem.  I've read so many things about doing veggies instead of fruit and limiting sweet fruits for candida and blood sugar.  I guess it feels like information overload and difficulty breaking old habits.

I keep reading about how much to eat, none of it seems feasible.  Thank you all for trying to help me how to figure out how to fit in food.  

Permalink Reply by Mara Cordova on May 2, 2012 at 6:17am

Look, it's absolutely nothing to beat yourself up over- that's what makes this such a great community; we're all going through this. I've been doing it for a bit over a month, and I'm still not perfect at it... I *just* had to stop myself from binging on some snackfood in the kitchen because some part of me says "You had the amount we agreed upon, you can't have bananas for another few hours" and I admit, I did have a handful of chips before going to the bananas and filling up two cups of water. Because I had to stop, say "I'm NOT done. And I don't need permission to have more." To myself. Because no one is controlling me but me.

It's like... well, for instance, at my grocery store, they've had reusable bags available for a long time- and a large majority of our customers, wanting to do the right thing, bought them- have HUGE quantities of bags... yet keep forgetting to use them! Leave them at home, leave them in the car... either buy more, defeating the purpose, or, worse, say hell with it, and use the plastic bags.

A lifetime of habit is REALLY hard to break. But they get it, eventually, and then it becomes natural to bring in their bags and not feel like they are breaking a rule somehow by having bags in the cart when they're shopping.

We'll get this. I'm not sure why the stigma over fruits... delicious wonderful fruits... but I do know, for me, the difficulty lay with still having the mindset of when I was five, and my mother scolded me for eating all the grapes in one sitting when we had JUST gotten home from the store with them. It all stems back to me having to give myself permission to do what's best for me, what my body wants me to have.

Permalink Reply by James bananaman Bailey on May 2, 2012 at 8:37pm

i had very serious candida issues due to being on a cocktail of antibiotics for 8/9 months. acidosis is all gone. candida is all gone. energy is high and very, very steady!  if you continue to struggle eating enough carb cals from raw food youd be much better off, (in my experience) going to clean cooked carbs, as oppossed to nuts. if you still eat alot of raw fiber, (a saled) with these cooked carbs this helps with digestion   ...if you fill in the gaps of hunger with high fat foods you are likely to have issues..

:)