Do you eat back your exercise calories?

[24601 210]

Just curious. I am a little over 2 months post op and am really active. I am supposed to be eating 900-1000 calories by now according to my surgeon. I can sometimes get to 800 calories if I really work at it, but it is usually closer to 700. I do taekwondo twice a week and each class I burn about 600 calories. Twice a week I do other workouts that each burn approximately 300 calories. Now I am getting these headaches. I drink lots of Water and take my Vitamins, do the high Protein thing, blah, blah, blah. Maybe I am just too low on calories with the workouts? What do you do? Do you eat back the calories you burn?

[BigViffer 3,544]

According to my surgeon, no. If you adhere to the food plan given to you, you most likely wouldn't be able to do it anyway. According to my fitbit adjustment, I would have to eat around 3000 calories to break even and there just is no way I could physically eat that much unless it was lard fried bacon pastry puffs!

That being said, After you hit your Protein goal for the day, you might want to focus on complex carbs for energy. Grape Nuts or bran flakes are good, prunes and apricots too. That will help keep you regular with such a dense Protein diet.

[JamieLogical 8,708]

I had to push up over 800 calories a day to even do moderate workouts and then get up over 1200 calories a day when I started running regularly. Now I am in maintenance and training for a half marathon and working to try to get over 2000 calories a day. Have to get creative!

[Inner Surfer Girl 12,015]

No, I don't eat back my exercise calories, but I do get in more calories than you.

What is your Protein target? My Protein target is 100 grams a day so there is no way I could eat healthy with only 700 or 800 calories.

[24601 210]

My Protein target is 60-75g a day. Since I am only a couple months post op, I think this is pretty reasonable at ~700 calories, no?

[Inner Surfer Girl 12,015]

My Protein target is 60-75g a day. Since I am only a couple months post op, I think this is pretty reasonable at ~700 calories, no?

That sounds like a great question for your NUT.