What to do when you are burning more calories than you really want to eat. Yeah, I know... 1st world problems.

Hey guys!  I have had a few people remark about having problems getting enough calories down as they have increased their activity levels over the last few weeks.
Disclaimer for those of you that don't know me personally: I have some clients who have bumped workouts up by double with the addition of new classes to our schedule or drastically changed up their daily activity in the last few weeks.

Short and sweet: In the past you may have done a 30 to 50 minute workout. You logged your calories according to body weight and intensity and off you went with your day. Woohoo! A few hundred more calories to fuel your body with and you needed them. Those are the days when you want to eat within a close margin of your base and exercise calories back to strengthen your metabolism and fuel that awesome machine that carries you through every day.

Long and laborous: Now that you have multiple trainers and 23 classes on the PURENERGY schedule its like a calorie burning buffet every day. 30 minutes turns to 120 minutes or more. Suddenly you have a giant pile of calories and you aren't sure what to do with them.

There is a lot going on right now and benefits to both short and long workouts.
You need to keep a close grip on your GOALS. Are you training for a race, aiming to gain lean muscle or just enjoying powering through two solid hours of our crazy trainers pumping you up into an endorphin producing fat slaying frenzy?


This is the time when you have to pay close attention to your body, not the computer. There is something weird about endurance training that makes the normal calculations for food logging go all wacky. Our bodies become more efficient during the workouts and the physics of calories in, calories out becomes even more blurred.
I suggest self checking energy levels, sleep levels, hunger levels and what the scale is saying. Sometimes its hard to hear the cues from our body even when they are loud and clear.
Listen closely and learn what those cues mean. 
~Some elite athletes have been known to closely monitor resting heart rate and basal body temperature as a way to monitor their bodies during training. These subtle changes can alert athletes and trainers to overtraining, undereating, or impending illness.

When all else fails, your body is the only one that needs to be right: 
It doesn't matter what your food logging software tells you, sometimes you need those calories and sometimes you don't. If you are new to food logging, try to be as accurate as possible with your measurements and tweak your food in small increments to try to find what works best for your hunger, your energy, and your weight goals.
If you are a pro at food logging as many of you have become in the past few years, you may have graduated! Trust me, I am not saying give up the logging, its a valuable tool that will always have its place when needed. BUT...
You and your body are officially on the same team!
So start listening and see what happens, remember the three most important factors...
Your Energy
Your Hunger
Your Scale
If these are behaving favorably than you have it figured out. Your body is telling you what it needs and what it doesn't need and you should listen to it.
This may last a few days, a few weeks, a few months.... the trick is to keep the lines of communication open and don't let problems sneak up on you.

Make sure your goals are realistic and healthy and don't settle for thinking you aren't worthy. Your body isn't broken, if you aren't seeing results its probably because you haven't figured out what your body needs to see those results. Listen and learn and you WILL Improve!
                                                                          ~ ~ ~
 Have questions on how to log your food and learn what your body needs? Ask  a trainer about it at the gym!