I wish we had a like button for this post!

I don't even eat calories back from Heavy Exercise and there are days I have an extra 2K I could eat.

Thank you, my point exactly. And that, my friend, is why you remain at goal.

I never subtracted anything before surgery, and don't after either.

I always did.  It is one of the things that helped me become fat enough to need weight loss surgery.

Hallelujah! Atkins bars featured a "net carb" count. Bad idea! 

It's a rule of thumb and, like all rules of thumb, is useful but not entirely accurate.  Some fiber is likely to be digested; however, the amount varies due to a number of factors.  It's one of the reasons you may see a calorie value on a nutrition label that doesn't appear to add up.

I don't count carbs so there's nothing to subtract.

I still manly am eating nothing but protein because that goes first. I do when I eat protein bars go by the rules given me by my NUT. And that is to take total carbs - fiber and = sugar alcohols. I do this in picking out bars that I pray will not cause me issues If I need to use them when I am away from home and need to eat.

Interesting thread...the program I am in says not to count carbs at all, the nut's say that is an old way of doing things...they tell us to count only the sugars and that when we are done with the soft food stages to aim for no more than 15 grams of sugar per meal.

The problem for many of us is that too many carbs makes us crave more carbs.

And 15 grams a meal is a lot of sugar. I average 20-25 in a whole day and that is mostly from dairy products. Keeping my sugar intake low has definitely kept me at goal at 6.5 years out.