How do you meet your calorie goal?

gingerjen7

I am REALLY trying to listen to everyone's advice about eating the calorie goal and eating back your workout calories. I've accepted the fact that I don't necessarily need to lose weight (5'5.5" 127lbs) but I do need to get tone and definition if I'm ever going to feel better about my body (and that's a big if). So today I decided to recommit to exercising after four weeks of focusing on diet. Before, I was eating 800 or so calories a day, coming in way under my calorie goal. Despite my best efforts, today I slept in and did not get up to work out. I figured when I got home from work I would probably do what I normally do and just make dinner, watch tv, read and go to bed. But I surprised myself by popping in Jillian Michaels Burn Fat Boost Metabolism and doing 5 of the 7 circuits over 50 minutes. Now even with my dinner it still says I need to eat another 600 calories. I'm at a loss as to what I should do. Today wasn't even a great eating day for me because we celebrated my birthday at work. I had oatmeal and tea for breakfast (with fiber splenda and 1 original coffee mate creamer), 2 oz of turkey and half a bag of raw stir-fry vegetables, a banana, a piece of ice cream cake, halibut and tomatoes. I am trying to avoid eating wheat so it is making my diet hard, and I've been advised that cutting out dairy will help with my constant sinus pain (great job cutting out diary while eating ice cream cake!). For my body type, I should be eating 50% of my calories in protein, 30% in carbs, and 20% in fat. If I'm eating fruit and vegetables, that should get me carbs without eating wheat, right? So where can I get the extra calories. I don't want to do this wrong; I've failed so many times before. And I am NOT trying to get attention by faking concern or bragging about not eating very much. I genuinely want to improve my habits, but I'm not sure I can get in another 600 calories today, as ridiculous as that sounds. I really thought the ice cream cake would doom me; I'm a little flabergasted about that. Any advice is welcome; thank you!

kylTKe

You could make a protein shake with some peanut butter, a banana, and maybe some oats. It will come close to 600 calories.

Pebble321

The first thing that strikes me about your email, is that you really need to take charge of your body and your life, you're a grown up and you get to control when you wake up and whether you exercise or not!
Perhaps making a plan would help. Plan when you want to get up (don't make it a chance), plan when you are going to exercise (don't surprise yourself!) and plan what you want to eat for the day.

Once you have your (planned) food and exercise in your diary ahead of time, it's very easy to see if you are eating enough to sustain your lifestyle and exercise.
I don't think you have to obsess about eating every single calorie - all the numbers we are working with are estimates so being a bit over or under doesn't hurt. But, if you can see that the amount of calories you burn in a day (from just living plus exercising) is WAYYY over the amount of food you are taking in, this isn't a good long term plan, especially when your goal is to get more toned and fit. You have to feed your body if you want it to get healthy and stay healthy.

A couple of suggestions:
- plan ahead so your food and exercise are better balanced. You can balance things out by eating more (see below) or exercising less (ie, less time). Generally, I'd say that eating more would be the better option to fit with your goals.
- eat more calorie dense food (add some olive oil to your salad or your veggies, have avocado in your salad, have some pesto on your fish, nuts or peanut butter or a boiled egg for a snack) to get extra healthy calories into your day.
- don't eat "diet" foods. Eat real foods in moderate quantities. Enjoy treats when they come along.