Undereating?

The past three days, I have been monitoring my calorie intake, and I've run into a problem I did not expect to run into: undereating.

The recommended minimum daily calorie intake is 1200 calories. Based on several online calculators, I decided that I was going to aim for around 1345 calories in a day. Here is what I have accomplished so far:

Sunday: 1040 (!!)

Monday: 1245

Tuesday: 1127 --> 1264

After I finished my last Sunday meal, I knew I had to do something different to my meal plan, so I added some calories to my lunch. Eating two cookies from the cafeteria at lunch certainly helped, plus the two Yakult at the end of my workout. So I thought, maybe if I substitute cookies with a healthier alternative, like Popchips, everything will be fine.

Somehow, as I finished off my last meal of the night, I only wound up with 1127 calories in total. I stared at my spreadsheet and wondered what to do. I am undereating. That is just as unhealthy as overeating. Luckily, I have some seedless red grapes, so I pulled those out, weighed them, calculated the calories, and it put me at just over the minimum.

I never thought that undereating would be a problem for me. I may suffer from (admittedly undiagnosed) depression, but I always thought myself stronger than an eating disorder. And, in a way, I know I'm in no danger of it. I may count my calories, but I do not allow myself to starve; I may pay attention to my nutrition, but I'll eat a cookie or a slice of pie or cake every once in a while because I know I deserve it. Being faced with how little of calories I'm eating, and while training for a half marathon? I'm not patting myself on the back. I'm horrified.

A part of me is hoping that I'm underestimating how many calories are in my salads and dinners. If I'm actually eating more than my goal intake, that will actually help me feel a little bit better. The last thing I want to do is to gain weight because my body has entered starvation mode!

So, my goal for tomorrow is to have something a little extra with my salad at lunch. We'll see what they're serving at the cafeteria; maybe I'll supplement with a soup. I plan on eating curry tomorrow; hopefully the ingredients in that will give me enough extra calories.

Ah, well. This is a learning process, isn't it?