Eating for Your Activity Level When Sick With a Cold

MandaLeigh123

I'm not worried that I'll gain weight, but I'm just trying to figure out how to eat for my activity level when I'm just laying on the couch. It's 3pm and my fit bit says I've walked about 431 steps. I don't think I've actually walked this much, but I have gotten off the couch to refill my water bottle, get kleenex, go to the bathroom, etc.

I lifted two days ago. Yesterday, completed a 40 minute jog without stopping for the first time in forever, so my muscles are achy. I know that means feed the muscles! I am guessing though that the next few days I'm not going to be hitting it hard like I usually do. I'll be taking it easy. I've needed to take a few days of exercise rest anyway

In nursing school, we talk a lot about hydration and of course protein, but not so much the total amount of calories. I think this is because a lot of hospitalized patients just won't really eat much. I'm going to try and find some nursing related articles to it, just because that's my field but I am really curious about this. It's amazing to me how quickly my patients begin to suffer muscle wasting, muscle atrophy and general malaise when they become bedridden. Granted, their conditions are much more serious than mine but still, it can happen pretty quickly when you can't get out of bed at all. I know @heybales has said eating at BMR is basically what you would need to eat if you are in a coma, but some of my patients at the hospital don't get out of bed all day. We try to re-position them every two hours to prevent bedsores, but often they are too weak to even help roll onto their sides for a bed change. They get baths in bed and use the toilet in bed. I had a women Tuesday who's had a rolled off to the side a little bit and she didn't have the muscle strength to straighten it back out. She couldn't lift her arm for me to take her blood pressure. To maintain, not gain, would these people be eating at BMR? This is just out of curiosity, because most of the patients in the hospital are rapidly losing weight, not gaining it.

When I am sick, I let myself eat whatever I want because the last thing I need to be worried about is eating too much when my head is about to explode and my nose is about to fall off.

Sorry, this is all over the place. I blame the cold medicine.
I guess I'm just confused on how you adjust your calorie levels down, when you exercise less. Lets say I skip 1 session of intense cardio for the week, which was 50 minutes and where I burned approximatley 450 calories. How would that change my TDEE?
Another example... summer job is coming and maybe I won't take the bus so much, so that will eliminate 2.5 hours of walking at 3/4mph from my schedule? How would that change my TDEE? (who knows what my job will be this summer so the walking might be replaced with energy expended at work)

heybales

Well, the weekly average TDEE deficit method is never about attempting to do your TDEE each day.
That would actually be the MFP method.

So for this method to skip a workout, you'd take whatever the calorie burn was going to be divided by 7 and take that much off the next 7 days for eating goal.
So 450 / 7 = 64 taken off whatever the TDEE would have been with it included, so about 2800 you found.

Hardly worth the effort since inaccuracies are more than that.
I just suggest take 100 off the day you miss it, if you make it up, 100 more that day.

But, for being sick, first day of being sick and you know exercise level has just nose-dived and will be at nothing for several days, refigure TDEE for the likely sedentary it is now. Same as work or life schedule massively changed and no planned exercise is forseeable.
Eat that with no deficit even if in a diet normally. Since resetting currently, obviously no deficit.

If you have the energy to do some level of exercise but you aren't sure when or how much, just log it and eat it back when it really happens.

When well enough to start normal routine back again, back to prior TDEE level. And if normally in a deficit, can start it then.

That's how you apply the life lesson - always eat correctly for your level of activity. And if it a diet, a tad less.

BMR is the basic metabolic functions, so indeed sleeping deep. Actually, normal sleep for average person isn't even down at BMR level the whole time, dreaming is higher, and repair is higher if anything to repair.

So indeed a changing schedule will require changes to eating level.
Since you left the TDEE chart awhile back with activity level, you could try to hit a new level by indeed doing the math with whatever was left out, or added in, and adjust from there.

So a simple calc of 2.5 hrs @ 3.5 mph at your weight will give calories burned weekly. Divide by 7, remove that from estimated TDEE for new TDEE.
Do the math from that, eat whatever new goal is, and after a month, check if results match the math.
If not, math on results tells you new TDEE.

MandaLeigh123

thx much for taking the time to spell that all out. really helps!