In March 2017 I threw my back out after hitting 280. The most I've ever weighed in my life. This was the final kick I needed to start my most successful weight loss campaign. I became very strict with how much I would allow myself to eat and this has worked well. I'm now down to 188.6 with my goal of hitting 178 by the end of February. This is the lightest I've weighed since I was 12 years old. I have always been large, and never in a healthy way. It's taken me the whole of the last year to accomplish all of this keeping my calories around 1800.
According to the calculator on this site, I would need to be eating about 3000 calories a day to gain muscle. I understand that adhereing to well balanced macros is not the same thing as eating the crap that got me to where I was, but I'm feeling really hung up on the numbers. That's essentially 1.5x what I'm eating now and I get that what I'm eating now is the specific goal of losing weight. But I feel like I've developed a phobia of eating more. I conciously understand that it's not the same thing but I know it's going to be a huge mental block to deal with when I come to it. I have this mental image of walking a tight rope with it and any little screw up will somehow automatically lead to spiralling out of control.
Any thoughts on dealing with this would be appreciated.