Viewing eating as a weekly thing?

Change1992

Hi All,

As we know, MFP monitors food and exercise on a daily basis i.e. you've met your target today or not.

I know others look at their food intake on a weekly basis so if they eat over their calories on one day, they can make up for it on another day so long as their consumed calories at the end of the week are their daily target x 7.

So my question is, how far do you think this can stretch? If you overeat today for example, could you make up for it 20 calories a day for the next two weeks? Surely this wouldn't correlate to a sustained weight loss or would it?

Just looking for people's opinions/experiences

kaystep33

I do try to stay at my daily calorie intake but for me the weekly is what I go by. I'm not sure about two weeks though. Two weeks would probably make it to easy for me to screw up.

Capt_Apollo

if you come in an hour late to work today, your boss might be nice and let you to make it up. you either stay late an hour, or come in an hour early tomorrow. he will not let you come in five minutes early every day for the next twelve days.

my point is, make up that loss as quickly as possible.


but, if you come in really late to work (or go crazy over your calories) don't try and make it up at all.

Kalikel

If I fast today, I won't be able to eat double in February and have it not count. I don't believe in "banking" my calories like that.

I am hungrier some days and less hungry others. I believe that following hunger cues is okay. I like to keep an eye on it over weekly and monthly bases because I'm working on being healthy overall.

The long-term goal is to become a healthy person without requiring an app - to just live my life eating and being healthy without having to work at it very much. So, this "following my hunger" is important to me. I have to learn to do that!

Everyone has their own goals and plans. I'm not suggesting everyone learn to follow their hunger. It's just the path I'm taking.

bennettinfinity

I don't think there's a 'right' answer to your question OP, but I would think attempting to tie your calories back farther than a week would get overly complicated. Keeping it as simple as possible will help to facilitate success.

E.g. - I tend to focus on each day's deficit knowing that I'm not going to win that battle every day. Once it's logged, each day is forgotten whether I went over or whether I came in well under the wire. It all works out in the end and as long as I'm making progress towards my goals, I'm happy.

TLDR; The less I have to think about things, the more I like it

BernadetteChurch

I track my calories, macros and TDEE over a month. I like to just keep an eye on the overall trend and not fret too much about exact numbers. I keep an Excel spreadsheet for this and it doesn't take much extra work to update it.

At the end of the day you just need to find a way to work things so that you can meet your goals so find something that works for you.

ana3067

I agree that multiple weeks is too long, I'd just forget about it.

If I overeat (like yesterday) then I either don't bother adjusting my deficit and just come in over for the week, or I will subtract that amount from the next day or a few days.

E.g. I overate by ~250 or more yesterday. So today I'm eating about 150 below my goal, about 100 below on Friday.

NerdieMcChub

I try to reach my goals daily, just to keep it easier for my brain, but I like how the app lets you look at the weekly. In the past, I've only used the website, but now I use the app too and it's awesome. Obviously if you go over your goal Tuesday by 300, you won't gain weight if you're under Monday and Wednesday, so I don't worry about it.

leggup

The problem with the "cut 20 calories for the next 3 weeks" thing is that the margin of likely error is greater than the value you're changing. The longer you 'bank' your calories for, the more likely you will have already inadvertently eaten those calories back. Better to play it safe and eat them back/work them off within the same few days.

Ultimately, you could theoretically average your calories over the course of an entire year and, if you hit a deficit on average, you will lose weight. It's much harder to track that way and more prone to error.

SueInAz

I think of it as a weekly thing but only in a vague sense. In other words, I don't keep track of how many calories I'm over or under so I know where I stand at the end of the week. I will, however, sometimes eat a little less every day, or work out and not eat back the calories that day, if I know I have a big event coming up on the weekend.

Jennloella

I don't really count anymore so not sure I'm the right person to even offer an opinion here - but the way I see it is - if I went over today, I'd either have to reel it in tomorrow, or workout more today or tomorrow. I don't believe breaking it down into making up 30 a day or whatever for the next few days would
- a) help or
- b) be worth the math....I'd either recover the mistake within a day or cut my losses.

feisty_bucket

I use the banking method, for sure. If I eat too much on one day, and go "aw, screw it, it's just one day"... pretty soon it's not just one day and I'm blowing it.

I have a pretty crazy schedule and am often awake through the night. So if I eat a bunch late in the day it doesn't make much sense to just log it there anyways, since it's more relevant in the context of the next day. So I'll fill my TDEE goals and then manually carry over the remainder to the next day in its own category ("Caloric Balance/Banking").

I've always come in at or below my actual goal over a period of two days; I wouldn't be dragging it out like your "20 calories a day" example. It's just a very useful way to look at your numbers, IMO.

SingRunTing

I wouldn't go more than a week. A week is a manageable amount of time to track and make sure that you won't either run out of calories and have to survive on 200 calories one day, or not eat enough and need to eat 10,000 calories one day. Obviously an exaggeration, but I think if you tried to do longer periods of time, you would end up with some really messed up counts.

Change1992

Yeah I agree with everyone. I like to think of my calories almost as money to spend and I do tend to look at it on a weekly basis using a spreadsheet like someone mentioned. I think it works around when/if you weigh or measure. I weigh once a week so keeping any 'banked' calories for longer than that would totally screw that up I think.

On the other hand, I suppose if you don't weigh/measure or do it monthly and can handle the maths, I don't think it would necessarily slow weight loss down?

earlnabby

I try to eat my day's calories just in that day. When I have a day that I overate, I usually look back at my 7 day report and if my net is under for the seven days, including the over day, I just forget it. If I am over for the week (which has only happened once) I commit myself to eating each day's target without going over for a week. I don't bank calories and I don't try to make up for an over day. I feel it has the potential to lead me into a bad cycle.

ETA: I think keeping a rolling seven days target is not a bad idea if you want to cycle low and high calorie days, rather than having a calendar seven days.

TimothyFish

I suppose, if you wanted, you could overeat today and make up for it a hundred years from now, but that defeats the purpose. The longer you put it off, the greater the chance you won't actually make up for it. I prefer tracking it by day because I can forget about past mistakes and move on.

sheepotato

You could try to stretch if for longer, but a week works pretty well. Someone shared a spreadsheet where you could track your calories for the month. (I can look for it to see if I still have the link if you'd like.) For me, when I was restricting I would only log what I weighed once a week and consider the week over, there was a minor discrepancy between the calories I logged, burned and the weight I lost but it was pretty close.

*edit* This may be it, it's been a while since I used it. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/heybales/view/weight-loss-spreadsheet-for-bmr-tdee-deficit-calculations-426221

Going by the week worked the best for me because I tend to eat less on weekdays when I am always pressed for time and rarely feel like eating much after going to the gym during the evenings. On the weekends I have a larger calorie bank for going out and socializing without worrying how I am going to fit it into my goals.

tomatoey

earlnabby wrote: »

I try to eat my day's calories just in that day. When I have a day that I overate, I usually look back at my 7 day report and if my net is under for the seven days, including the over day, I just forget it. If I am over for the week (which has only happened once) I commit myself to eating each day's target without going over for a week. I don't bank calories and I don't try to make up for an over day. I feel it has the potential to lead me into a bad cycle.

Yeah this is how I've thought of it - maybe a little grace for an over day, so I don't see it as the worst thing in the world, but taking each day as a single unit is less slippery for me.

MargaretSobers

NO, I don't think it should be stretched. I am always being with my daily calorie intake, but if I skip then I recover it another day, one week is fine, but I don't think it would be better to skip this for more days.

BernadetteChurch

herrspoons wrote: »

Sometimes I eat a bit more. Sometimes I eat a bit less. If it balances out over the week it's all good.

Doing it over a month is dumb though because, let's be honest, you'll just find yourself on day 29 with 5,000 Kcal to make up.

Please don't call people and their methods dumb because you've decided that their method can only end badly.

marniesworld

Something to also think about is that your calorie goals change as you lose weight, so it could even get more confusing if you're trying to make up any overages too far into the future.

fearlessleader104

OP, that's exactly what I have done. I ate more than my maintenance calories for the past few years, and now I am eating less to make up for it. It's not over until you are dead.

SnuggleSmacks

I definitely eat more than once a week. Usually more than once a day!

ErinMcMom

I often eat over calories on the weekend and work off the overages on my Monday workout (Mondays I have longer to workout while my husband watches the kids). Usually I have a snack to replenish the calories I burned off during my workout, but on Monday nights I don't and I use those extra calories to cover my weekend overages. I move foods over to Monday from in my tracker so all the days will be in the green. If I REALLY go crazy on the weekend it's not always possible to get everything back in the green, but I usually can. If I can't, I call it a wash and move on with life.

Sued0nim

I would never make up for overeating food the next day - If I haven't already got the spare calories from the previous 7 days under calories I don't eat it

I don't have the confidence that I would actually make it up

Oh and the defecit has to be within the last 7 days too...

Pootler74

I often carry over food items to the next day, just so that I can stay under the red line. I wouldn't carry over for longer than two days though, as I know I'll get myself into calorie arrears.

BernadetteChurch

herrspoons wrote: »

BernadetteChurch wrote: »

herrspoons wrote: »

Sometimes I eat a bit more. Sometimes I eat a bit less. If it balances out over the week it's all good.

Doing it over a month is dumb though because, let's be honest, you'll just find yourself on day 29 with 5,000 Kcal to make up.

Please don't call people and their methods dumb because you've decided that their method can only end badly.

Which it generally will, because most people who try and balance things out over a month will end up with thousands of net calories and very few days in which to discount them.

So, yeah. Dumb as a sack of rocks.

I'm dumb as a sack of rocks then. Thanks for your invaluable input. Do stop generalising, though. I've never found myself with a 5,000 calorie deficit on day 29 of the month, and actually find tracking calories in this way to be very beneficial.

OP asked for people's opinions/experiences and I gave mine. I didn't recommend it for everyone or anyone. And I certainly didn't ask for anyone else's opinion.

maxit

Maintaining homeostasis is something we are programmed for. Animals (which we are) are wired to manage being over-fed one day, under-fed the next. My own experience is that when I am eating very few processed foods (that is, food that I eat is close to its natural state except for being cooked), I wake up quite hungry on the day after I may have left too many calories unconsumed, and not hungry (more like - I could eat now, or I could take the dog out for a couple of miles before breakfast) on the day after I have eaten closer to (or above) "maintenance."

higgins8283801

I count daily. But on weigh in day, I add up what my weekly calorie intake and subtract weekly BMR and calories burned. I then divide by 3500 to see if it's close to what I weighed in. It's usually pretty accurate.

Change1992

Well, it sounds like most people do it over a weekly basis but I see no problem doing it longer. I also understand people that just say, 'If you go over, you should acknowledge it and move on' because it can turn into a cycle I imagine!

Like I said previously, if you can do the maths, and are fine with the scales then I really don't see it being an issue either way. Some really interesting points about carrying calories over though.

Thanks for all the opinions/experiences guys

abatonfan

I understand doing it as a weekly thing, but I cannot personally see myself reducing my kcals by 20 over the next month to make up for a 600kcal surplus.

Most of the time, I look at it from a weekly perspective whenever I eat below 1200 net for the week and need to go over my kcal goal in order to be at 1200 net (I might have to do it this week due to finals -I am never hungry when I am stressed) or if I know I want to eat so many kcals above my goal for one day (such as Thanksgiving dinner) and need to eat 100-200kcals below my goal for five days in order to eat an additional 500-1000kcals that day.