If you’ve just become injured, chances are you’re feeling a mix of emotions.  Frustration, anger, sadness, and worry or anxiety may be just a few that you are currently dealing with.

For those who were on a weight loss program, anxiety over the risk of weight gain is likely on your mind and something that you need to be working hard to combat.

While there is that risk of weight gain now that you aren’t burning up calories in your workout sessions, if you’re smart and make a few adjustments, this doesn’t have to happen.

Let’s go over what you should remember.

Omit Pre And Post Workout Meals

First, the most obvious thing that you need to be doing is leaving out your pre and post workout meals now. Since you won’t be doing the workout sessions, you clearly won’t need to have these in place so you can do without.

This will save you at least a few hundred calories right there.

Still add smart snacks throughout the day, but you won’t need as many calories with these as you did during these two meals.

Reduce Carbs Moderately

Second, you’ll want to reduce your carbohydrate moderately. Now, you need to fight the urge to avoid all carbs in your diet plan. This is what many people often do but it tends to be a mistake.

First, that will cause your metabolism to slow down significantly if you’re off for more than a week as certain hormones (Leptin being the big one) will adjust in the body and cause the metabolic rate to become sluggish.

But more importantly, this could hamper recovery from that injury. Your body does need energy to complete the repair and recovery process and with no carbs and a very low calorie diet, it just doesn’t have it.

So try and add some wholesome carbs, but keep them to a more moderate amount.

Increase Protein

In addition to lowering your carbs, also consider increasing protein slightly. Doing so is going to help to calm hunger pains more and make it easier to control your calorie intake.

Eating more protein will also help you maintain a faster metabolism as well due to the thermic effect of food, so that is something else to keep in mind.

Choose lean sources of protein for best results with this.

Track Calories

Finally, make sure that you are tracking your calories. As long as you track your calories and eat at a maintenance level for a sedentary activity level, you won’t start to gain weight.

This can really go a long way towards helping put your mind at ease and to make sure that you are feeling your best as you go about the recovery process.

Feeling great anxiety is stressful, so by tracking your calories, you can put these worries to rest.

So there you have the quick points to remember about avoiding weight gain while injured. Keep these in mind and you should have no problem maintaining your body weight.