How Often Do You Eat?

I'm looking for input.

Tuesday my nutritionist and I got into this conversation how often I should be eating. She says every three to four hours. This is the first time I wanted to pop out with, "you haven't had the surgery, you have NO clue what MY body is doing." My mom had the surgery. She and I both get hungry right about the 2-2.5  hour marker. Now, I will get hungrier sooner if I eat something too fast ( I try not to do that). And I still have the hardest time meeting my caloric intake (I do get my protien in).

How about you? How often do you get hungry? How often do you eat? Do you listen to your pouch?

Thanks!

Hi there.....what is your calorie goals for the day?

1100, but I can go to 1500.

It's a good day if I can hit 1,000.

I should reclarify.

My NUT originally said 1,100, that was a couple of months ago. I'm using myfitnesspal on my phone to log my food and I've been in the gym, and it's saying 1,500 calories. She said I could go 1100-1500.

You have done such a wonferful job. I eat to satisfy my protein intake of 60+ grams of protein which lands me at about 800-1100 calories a day and I eat three meals plus one snack, as recommended by my surgeon. I stick to it. Between eating and drinking, I am "intaking" something into my body all of the time.

I feel like I eat all the time.

My protein intake is 90 grams a day (apparently my NUT said my height and build have something to do with that). Which I acheive on icky shakes. It's getting teh total calories in. I swear some days it's just a pain.

I have 3 meals a day and generally 2 small snacks. I only snack if I get hungry between meals, and I am a work a progress in making sure the snacks are protein rich and not just junk food.

When in training mode, which is most of the time I will eat 8-10 times a day and this is to meet specific caloric and protein goals.  When not in training I will eat 3-4 times a day if I remember.

As for judging your caloric intake based on what an app says you need you should be cautious and also base it on if you are still wanting to lose or maintain.  Those deficit calculators work off a net calorie where you get more calories to replace those you burn. Unless you are doing serious training with thousands of calories being burned yor really don't need to worry about offsetting the calories burned. 

Personally unless I have burned 2500 or more calories I don't worry about replacing them and just shoot for my RMR.  Which is another thing those apps aren't good at.  Most machines and calculators base calories burned on an average person of average athlettic fitness.  When starting out we are anything but and depending on the intensity of the activity may burn more or less.  Again for me these can be off by as many as 150-200 calories for a 5K my shortest run and almost 1000 calories for 13.1 miles.  If you are wanting to track you burn rate then you need a device that bases the calculation on your heart rate and then understand the calculation it uses because there are different formulas that can produce different results.

So if you are getting hungry every 2-2.5 hours, which may or may not be a bad thing you need to look at.
1) What are you eating.  If you are eating mainly slider type foods then yes you will get hungry more frequently. Does this happen after you eat say some chicken or other form of dense protein?

2) How much you are eating.  Are you eating 1 cheese stick rather than say a half a cup of something.

3) Head Hunger.  What are you clues that this is physical hunger as opposed to head hunger? Maybe you have become so accustomed to eating that frequently that your body or rather brain believes you need to.  we are creatures of habit and it are these habits that can get us in trouble.

To just discount your NUT could be foolish, as she sounds to be on the more correct side as many NUTS are still 3 meals a day no snacks.  Did you ask on how she reached this number in your case?  did you discuss your issues with her?

I eat about every three hours, give or take a little.

Are you eating dense protein?  Not slider foods?  And not drinking with meals?

The dense foods was a good question. I have been more on the side of slider foods (hadn't really thought about it).

I"ll start changing that up and see how that works.