Calorie Intake?

I guess I'm resenting the attitude on this site that I'm using this as some sort of excuse - I was asking for advice NOT to be admonished. I'm frankly a little disappointed. 

However, I think my take away from everyone here is that I'm eating too many carbs which any health/fitness website is going to tell you that you require for the amount of running plus hours and hours of cross training I'm doing each week. I cut back on those I'll probably be fine. Thanks. 

I don't think anyone was accusing you of anything. It's very, very common for people to believe they need extra food because they exercise. Some websites make it worse by claiming to tell you exactly how many extra calories you can eat. They overestimate the number of calories we burn by a LOT.

But we as obese people don't need extra food. Fat is energy, and we have plenty of energy stored up. If we eat to much, we burn the new energy, not the stores.

Any website that tells you you need carbs for running and cross training is wrong. 105 pound marathoners might, but obese people do NOT. We can live just fine on zero carbs. Your body does not need a single carb to survive. Not one. Our bodies can make enough from other things. You need protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals, because you can't produce those.

But the simple concept remains, if you want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories. Exercise is great for health and well-being, but losing weight is all about calorie restriction.

I don't think anyone is giving you any such attitude -- but rather, trying to help you get to goal.  You were given wonderful advice by both people a bit further out than you are who have been successful and LONG term VETS -- who've not only reached goal but also maintained it.  Just because you don't like the advice, doesn't mean that it's not good advice based on wanting you to succeed!  If you are disappointed, that's because you had a different expectation, not because you weren't given perfectly good advice based on wanting you to be successful, too.  

Health and fitness websites are geared to normal weighted people who are exercising -- not those of us who are fighting obesity and in the honeymoon stage after WLS.  Any health and fitness site will also tell you that you shouldn't eat less than 1000 calories, should drink a lot with meals to feel full, and that carb-loading gives you energy.  These really don't apply to us as we aren't normal/typical weighted people.

Wishing you every success in your fight. 

What do you eat on an average day to get to 1800 calories? Do you have a log that you could share?

I ask because I'm supposed to eat 1800 cal/day (per my OB, as I'm pregnant), and I have an exceptionally difficult time hitting that number unless I eat things that are generally off-limits during the weight-loss phase (good carbs like whole-grain bread, non-SF yogurt, etc.). It would take a LOT of fruit/nuts/etc. to hit that number, so I'm wondering how exactly you're getting there.

As Grim, Tracy, Karen, and others have said, you are eating too much, are not gaining "massive" amounts of muscle, and likely still have quite a bit of weight to lose.  The reality is that women simply don't gain THAT much muscle unless they are very serious athletes.

Yes, the BMI chart is imperfect, but it isn't complete nonsense.  If your trainer is using calipers or an impedance scale to calculate your body fat percentage, though, those things are so unreliable that they are pretty close to nonsense. The BMI chart mostly fails to take into account that some people have unusual physical attributes like larger bones or more muscle than teh average person, or something like extremely large boobs or bottoms.

I truly don't say this to be hurtful, but to give you some honest, objective information. You have done well, but you still have quite a way to go.  With the height and weight you gave, you still fall into the "obese" category (and could still qualify for surgery if you had comorbidities!).  No one, especially someone so petite, should be eating 1800 calories when they are still trying to lose weight. That is just too many calories.

Many of us who are 4-8 inches taller than you eat only about 1400 calories to maintain our weight, so if you are hitting 1800 calories per day very often, it doesn't surprise me that you are only losing a couple of pounds a month.

Your weight loss is naturally going to slow at this point because, as a consequence of your body weight being smaller, your caloric deficit is less (even if you were eating the same numebr if calories you had been eating all along).  You are also slowly losing your caloric malabsorption and absorbing more of the calories you eat (so even if you eat the same, you are getting more of the calories).

Bring your focus back to protein, especially dense protein (which will keep you feeling full longer), and eliminate some of the fruit and all of the bagels.  Get yourself back on track.  If you continue eating 1800 calories on a consistent basis, your weight loss is going to stop entirely, and within a year you will likely find yourself regaining.

Lora