X-Post Exercise & Calories

I have a calorie goal right now of 800 to 1000 cal per day.  When you manage your calorie goal - do you look at your actual calories reduced by the # of calories burned while exercising - or before factoring that in?

My personal trainer at GoodLife was giving me a hard time about calories intake - saying I should be 1500 a day while exercising.  I'm interested to know what those who are or have passed the 7 to 8 months post op mark were using as a calorie target and how many times a week you were exercising and average calories burned?

It's said that it is a very bad habit to add the calories burned while exercising as "credit," because as humans we tend to compensate by eating a little extra, or thinking,"Hey, I just ran 5 miles--I can eat that gigantic chocolate chip muffin and it won't affect me!"

The problem, as research has shown, is that we tend to OVERESTIMATE the number of calories we burn and the number of minutes in any strenuous activity, and underestimate our intake. 

A better way to find out your maintenance goal for caloric intake is to figure out your activity level--whether sedentary(exercise 1-2X wk for about an hour each time), moderately active(3-4X wk for about an hour each time), or very active(5-7 X wk for at least an hour each time). Bear in mind, these definitions may vary slightly depending on the source.
 
You take your weight and multiply it by 12, 15, or 20-25 respectively. That is an approximation of your daily caloric needs, or how much you can eat and maintain your weight. For instance, if I weigh 130 lbs. and I run for about an hour 4 days a week, that puts me into the moderately active category, and so to figure out what I should be eating, I multiply 130 X 15, which is 1,950 calories a day. However, at the same weight, if I were sedentary, I'd only be able to eat 1,560. 

If your daily intake goal is 800-1000, I would stay within that while exercising and religiously taking your vitamin and calcium supplements. Your trainer may not realize that the initial year to year and a half after WLS is the prime time for taking the weight off, and so that calorie goal is going to be lower than for a different person. "Healthy weight loss" for a non-morbidly obese person is 2 pounds a week.

ALWAYS make protein a goal--GOOD protein. That way, you won't lose muscle as your body consumes its fat stores. A fun way to estimate the speed at which this is happening is to calculate your current metabolic needs, subtract your actual intake, multiply by 7 days in a week, and divide by 3500 (the number of calories in a pound of fat).

So, if I weigh 200 pounds and work out twice a week, I can eat about 2400 calories a day without gaining weight. BUT if I consume only 1,000 calories per day, my body takes the remainder from my fat stores. That means that in a week, I've worked up a calorie deficit of 2.8 pounds, yo!

It's true that weight loss is not an exact science, as those of us who have honestly followed our diets on a daily basis and then STALLED, lost dribs and drabs of weight here and there, and then GIGANTIC gobs of weight all at once, can testify. Remember that you are carrying an abundant source of energy within your own body, and exercise will help you burn it while protein will help you build muscle to replace it! :)

Good luck, Godspeed, and Happy Hallowe'en!

Your trainer (a) may not be the best source of nutritional info in general (most of them have no training in it) and (b) probably doesn't have much, if any, experience with bariatric patients.

Just tell him you are under a doctor's care and following your program and getting regular lab work and to back off.

In my program, it's assumed we do a certain amount of exercise and that's factored into the recommendations. So everyone is expected to exercise 4-5x a week for 30-45 min. minimum and keep their calories below 800, their protein between 70-90 g, fat under 30 g and carbs under 40 g.

If you start exercising more than that, or have other extenuating factors, your protein goal gets increased. This may have the impact of raising your calories a bit, but nowhere near 1500.

For example, my protein goal was upped to 100 g pretty early on and that got me to 900 calories a day and 45 g of carbs. Then, I got upped to 120 g of protein, once I started serious triathlon training, and I found I couldn't get that in without upping my calories to 1200. I stayed around 1200 until I hit maintenance and then I jumped up to 1600. But I still was losing so then I gradually went up, about 100-200 calories at a time, to 2000 where I stopped because the weight loss stopped.

But, I was working out 8-10x a week at that time doing a lot of high-intensity interval training.

I think, for a bariatric patient who is less than a year out and not at goal, it's not a good idea to eat a lot of calories. You want to eat as little as you can while still having the energy to do your daily activities, including working out.

For one thing, it's really hard to eat that much early out without making choices that could hurt you in the long run (like eating junk food or drinking a lot of your calories). You don't want to stretch out your pouch by constantly overeating either.

Finally, while someone who hasn't had years of yo-yo dieting behind them may be able to lose weight on 1500 calories, it's quite possible that you won't be able to or won't be able to maintain on that amount of calories. Obviously, it's going to depends on your height, age, activity level, etc. But, in the past, just going to the gym a few times a week or when I was figure skating (fun but doesn't burn a lot of calories), I would gain on 1500 calories!

Something your trainer may not realize is that the former MO are not the same as the people who just want to lose 10-25 lb. Most of us have slower metabolisms than average and many of us have insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome.

I target 4000 - 5000 calories a day depending on my excercise...I can't stand calorie counting though, to be honest with you...I try to focus more on the nutrition that the food gives you... 40% protein 30% fats 30% carbs (Complex & simple). 1000 calories is no where near enough! Your body probably needs about 2000 Cals a day just to keep your organs functioning properly and not go into starvation mode, especially if you burn 700 Cals +/- p/ day. If you want to speed your metabolism up, eat often and make good choices, if you want to slow your metabolism down, eat less and 2-3 times a day and the weight that you lose will be muscle... That's all the  body has to use for energy if you don't give it the nourishment it needs.... IMHO. Take care.... I run 30-45 miles p/ week.... Cycle 125-175 miles p/ week, and swim 8-10 miles p/week (15 hours +/- p/ week training)

Dan is a Manimal don't let those calories throw you.
He is like that old Army commercial, we do more before 5:00 a.m. than most people do all day.
Hell, he swims further every day than I drive in my car.

Scott