I'm not sure why "opinions" of others who might be less or more into fitness even needs to be stated. Suggestions are helpful, but how is "that's too much for me" or "you're too extreme," constructive at all?
I waited for about 9 or 10 pages to post because I am at a bit of a different level than many in terms of my seriousness of it. None of it related to me much, which is fine. I've still read all of it out of interest. People have different goals, interests, lifestyles, etc.
Personally, I'm 27. I started lifting hard at 14. For 2 years in high school I had the 2nd to 3rd most days in the weight room, I loved it. Moving into college and beyond it has stuck with me. I've had a few breaks, longest being about a year and a half that ended about 5 years ago.
Personally, I love the gym, I love lifting weights, I love varying my diet and trying different things to see how my body reacts. I just find it all very interesting.
FYI, unless you're a high level competitor, there's no need to track every calorie and macro, obviously. I highly suggest doing it to find out exactly where you're at, but once you have a good baseline for your maintenance levels, the numbers don't matter too much. You know if you want to cut a bit, you cut back a bit. Want to bulk some, add a bit more. You should be able to guess roughly by doing it occasionally, but that's enough. It makes it easier to make smart choices. If I know I'm gonna go out and have a cheat meal for dinner, I may cut my meal prior in half to lessen the blow, etc.
I used to have such a high metabolism I was doing everything in the world to gain weight. I was having 300g protein, 400 g carbs, and tons of fat just in HEALTHY food. Then on top of that I'd have another 1500-2000 calories a day in "junk" just to try and put pounds on. It messed up my blood sugar for a while. I was constantly stuffing food down when I wasn't even hungry, it was miserable.
While I don't agree with the exact advice of this article, this is the best thing ever to portray the mind set people like me needed to have when trying to gain weight.
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=137831493