Can't Get Enough

Calories on Mondays, that is. My goal is to eat 1,950 calories a day, and at least 1,600 after subtracting the calories I burn exercising. That's hard to do on Mondays. I estimate that I burned 172 calories in 45 minutes at Fitness Together in the morning and my heart rate monitor estimates that I burned 747 at spinning class this evening. That means I need to eat 2,519 calories of food to be at a net 1,600 for the day.

I never in my life have had trouble eating the number of calories I need on a diet. It's usually a struggle to stay within my caloric limit. But this is the first time that my focus is on both the quality of the food I'm eating, along with the calorie count. My goal is to eat food that will support my recovery from exercise and building my muscles and bones. So no sugar or alcohol and no processed food. I also try to eat many small meals during the day to keep my metabolism high.

Here's what I ate today to try to meet my caloric need:

Breakfast before exercising: protein shake with whole fat yogurt, protein powder, banana, blueberries, raspberries, and peanut butter--494 calories
Breakfast after exercising: 2 fried eggs on brown rice with steamed kale--301 calories
Lunch: homemade blackbean soup, toast with melted cheese on it--414 calories
After lunch: apple and cheese--224 calories
After, after lunch: almonds--83 calories
Before spinning: protein bar--230 calories
Dinner (I was not hungry at all, but knew I needed to eat, so I didn't eat the chicken dinner I was going to): yogurt with almonds, blueberries, protein powder, raspberries, pumpkin seeds--584 calories

So after all that food, I had eaten 2,330 calories, netting 1,411 after exercising, 439 short of my goal and 189 short of my minimum. I feel stuffed and can't imagine trying to eat anything more.

I remember reading an article about what Michael Phelps ate on a typical day--he had to eat thousands of calories because of the amount of exercise he does each day. I couldn't understand why he ate so much crap. It makes much more sense to me now. It's hard to get enough calories without putting down a pizza or two.

Anyway, it's a great problem to have, and much preferable to the one I normally have when I'm trying to lose weight!