Eating = Ow?

[Eilyd]

I guess this goes here.

 

I'm little, and always have been.  I'm 22, 5'3", weight in the past 5 years has been from 118-130.  With the exception of the 3-year college interval and good ol' drinks-and-pizza nights, I have habitually eaten fairly healthy food as long as I can remember.  Either my mother was on a diet, so we ate more or less what she ate, or when she wasn't it was still some combination of farm-friendly/low carb/veggie-grain-protein balanced habits that she/we had picked up through the various diets.  The worst we normally ate was Chinese (though good Chinese), pizza, and hamburger helper.

 

I also have a pretty efficient metabolism, apparently.  Over the past 5 years I've tended to eat around 1200-1500 calories daily (pizza and drinks nights excepted). I've kept this up over the past year since I've started to exercise regularly.  About September of 2012 I started lifting for serious, 3 days a week, with something else 1-2 other days.  Still eating about the same calories, though September also marked the beginning of wheat-eschewing and eating 75% paleo-inclined most of the time.  (I still eat dairy, though less cheese than I used to, and I can't afford the all-natural, grass-fed, etc meats. Beans are included when I need food fast.)  I kept the low calorie intake (sometime netting out around 800-1000) in an effort to make my body fast % drop.  It started at 20%, I just wanted to get down to about 17%.

 

It hasn't moved since I started tracking it around January. Bounces between 19.5 and 20.5  Weight wanders between 125 and 130.

So I figured, after these statistics and what other people have been saying around here, I should probably increase my calories.  So for this challenge my goal is to eat around 2000+ calories a day, with a goal to net 1800-ish after exercise. 100+g of protein, lots of strength training.  I figure if I can't lose fat I'll at least gain muscle.

That's a lot of background, sorry.  I am sharing it so that my actual question has context:

After 3 days of eating ~2000 calories, I feel sick. Halfway through yesterday I felt sort of full, but not in an ate-too-much way.  More like my stomach saying, "Go away, I don't want to digest this".  So I waited a while, at an apple for fiber, had beans with dinner, still trying to end up at least above 1500 for the day.  In the evening I felt sluggish. Today I still feel about the same, like I don't want to eat. I had half of a peanut butter/spinach protein shake for breakfast and an apple mid-morning.  I get brief hunger pangs, but mostly the "I never want to eat again" persists. Also I'm really really hot.  Basically, I feel sick without being ill.

So I'm wondering, is this sudden caloric change of 30% making my body whacko? Is this something other people have experienced?  Is it just because it's not used to processing this many calories in this quantity of food? (Since it takes 3 times as much healthy food, volume-wise, to get there as pizza and chips)  It's rather unsettling, and I'd like to be able to eat comfortably and feel well.

[Duality]

Your body has been used to something for a while and suddenly a drastic change like that can cause havok.

 

Personally, I'd take it slower and up the calories gradually.

[Eilyd]

Correction for accuracy:

1900 net June 2 and 3
900 net June 4
1700 net June 5

250-300 calories burned per day through exercise.

[cline]

Quickly, I'd say you might want to look at what you are actually eating.  Adding in more food that tummies struggle to digest could be making you feel less than optimal.  For example, beans. 

 

Make sense?