Eating enough good calories in a day

[SunsetRunner]

So I just really started with getting my health in order. I have read and visited all kinds of site and links , and so forth about weight loss exercise and eating right amount of calories and they resulting in the same theme for me. For roughly 2lb weekly weight loss with my current output the caloric intake is about 1953 cal.  Ok thats great there was a time in my life small pie with extra cheese and pepperoni large A&W boom calories complete...LoL.  But seriously I put out about 4K cal daily( and about to increase as I move to two a day workouts) and the bulk of that comes in after i get of work from my Deskjockey job. By days end I'm short like 900+ cal and it hard to make that happen knowing  I'll be in bed shortly after that. So lots of time i end up short on intake.

So the question:

1. With my biggest output at night will hurt to have that many calories then go to bed within 2-3hours

2. Better ways to get heathlier calories in during the work day.

3. Name some higher cal foods that are office friendly.

And the catch is I live in a remote part of the world and our supplies are vesseled in bi weekly so limited on choice.

[A_Lurker]

I'm bad with office snacks (ie. I should take them, but I don't always).  Also, once I'm there I have to watch that I'm burning enough calories that day to eat them.

Fridge - hummus and veggies, fruit, cheese

No fridge - nuts, trail mix, beef jerky

That's been my fall-down lately.  Maybe before I'm back to work I'll lay in some supplies.  Trail mixes are good and bad.  I have to measure them out, because you can grab 'just one more handful' and do serious damage to your calorie count.

I'm also bad about not eating enough calories during the day as well.  I don't worry about what I'm eating late at night.  Tonight I've got hummus and crackers set aside, had some fruit when I was upstairs (peaches in season) and I will take something most people wouldn't consider as healthy (brookfield dark chocolate covered fruit - in 20g bags).  I limit them because they aren't enough bulk for the calories, however, when I'm at Costco tomorrow I'm definitely picking more up.

ETA:  Oops, missed the line about supplies only coming in bi-weekly.  I'm guessing that nuts, trail mix and the beef jerky still might work.  Just get either some containers, or just sandwich bags which you can use over and over.  Portion out the stuff, don't take a big container into work!

[Dominique]

Two things: 1) be careful with calories burned as reported by your Fitbit, especially when that number is very high (as in your case). Just because Fitbit says you burned 4000 calories doesn’t mean you actually burned that much. Estimating calories burned isn’t an exact science, and it could just as well be 3500. You will need to "calibrate" that number against your weight loss, based on your intake. 2) the timing of your meals doesn’t matter (or it matters very little) from the point of view of weight loss. What matters is the energy balance over 24 hours: as long as you are in a deficit over the course of the day, you will lose weight, regardless of when you eat and when you exercise. Note this is not necessarily linear, so you will have to look at the trend over a longer period, as your weight may fluctuate on a daily basis independently of energy balance. 

[JohnRi · Accepted solution]

Hello, while most would say eating late at night is bad, I think it is mainly for those with digestive issues, or sugar issues.

I used to be one of those people.  If I ate after 8-9, and went to bed by 10, I had all kinds of issues.  Now I'm completely different.  Today for example, I will eat breakfast at 7:25 am, a banana at 11:00 AM, lunch around 1:00 PM (Around 900 calories), a fiber bar around 4:00 PM (140 calories).  After I get off work at 5:00 PM, I'll hit the park around 5:45 for at least 4-5 miles, around 60-75 minutes.  Then I'll come home and down 1 hour of weight lifting.  If I hussle, and don't rest much between the two, I'll be done by 9:00-9:30.  Once I shower, it could be 9:45-10:15 before I eat dinner (around 1000 calories), and go to bed by 11:00 pm. 

I've lost about 2 lbs in the last week.  Unexpected, as I get closer to my goal, I've increased my diet, and I'm losing faster now.  I'm scratching my head...  But I'm not complaining... 

So I agree with @Dominique, I don't think when matters as much as how much you eat in a day.

As for being short, that's ok, as long as you eat at least 1800 calories a day, and two are not hungry.  I'm short at least 250 calories most days, while trying to maintain a 750 deficit. 

You'll know if you are eating too little or too much based on your weight loss.  I highly recommend you use http://trendweight.com  and link it to your fitbit account.  Even if you don't have a Aria, you can monitor your weight loss trend, and see the rate you are losing on the site. 

And your tracker could be over estimating calories burned by 500 calories or more.  So like Dom said, use your weight loss as a better gauge.

[A_Lurker]

I should have added that lately I have started capping my food in at 2500 calories a day (almost 2 hours before midnight and I'm over 4000 today.  Anyway, I decided to actually do what I suggested, I've packed a bag of stuff for my desk drawer.  I hit Costco today and bought a couple of different trail mixes / dried fruit and some prepackaged stuff.  I then grabbed some containers, did some quick calculations and made up my own 100 calorie packs.  Some of the items I already had.  I basically kept going until I ran out of containers.  I have some individual packs of hummus that I can put in the fridge there and I'm all set.  I just need to make sure I don't mindlessly snack.  I'll log them under anytime so I know what I need to refill each night.

[SunsetRunner]

You did a great job geting that all step up. I will have to make a version of that for myself here. Makes it look so easy to follow through with the plan. I am learning to enjoy peanuts and such, I don''t like them but I know they are a good source of so many things.