The Little Details

jenlaura

Okay so I'm having great success thanks to you guys helping little old me out but I have a few small questions if you wouldn't mind adding your input through your experiences.

1. If you guys go on holiday do you eat at maintenance and enjoy yourselves or would you alter your calorie counts to something more suitable for your slightly different activity level?

2. If you overeat on one day, would you eat less the next even if it went below your bmr just for a day or 2? Or would you just write it off as a bad day and move onto the next.

3. Do you still have foods you have to completely cut out because you can't control your portions even with the higher calorie intake? (HELLO, doritos/pringles)

4. If you have a decent amount of weight to lose (30+ lbs) would you consider doing 20% deficit? and would it be THAT bad if you did providing you hit your macros and ate whole foods?

I know your answers might be different and these questions may seem dumb and they might have obvious answers when following the plan to a tee, but I was wondering what others here do in said situations.

Thanks for your input!

mymodernbabylon

1. I don't even worry about it at all. My holidays tend to be active with walking a lot, or swimming or other things. I don't go on MFP and I don't measure a thing. I do keep an eye on portion size and I won't have 3 courses every meal plus drinks, but I enjoy myself. I then come back and start anew - usually I've kept the same weight or even lost weight.

2. If it's one day then I typically don't worry about it. But if I know I'm going to have another big day that week or the next, then I will slightly under eat my goal calories by 100 calories for a few days.

3. Not really. I don't keep doritos/crisps in the house because I do love them (as does my husband) and I'd rather not use those calories up, but if they are available, then I measure out my serving and put them away. It's been a good learning experience.

4. I'm in the midst of a 30lb weight loss (hopefully). I wouldn't go below a 15% deficit at any point as it's just not worth it for me. I want to keep as much muscle as possible and 15% seems to work well for keeping that muscle. At a higher weight, 15% will mean a pretty big deficit. As you get closer to your goal weight, it will mean a small deficit. I'm in my last 10-14 lb and I'm at a 10% deficit. Slower is better (plus I love my food and want to eat it all).

Jennbecca33

These are great questions! Everyone's answers will be different based on their own history/struggles with food. You know you best and how your body reacts! Here goes.

1. Eat at maintenance or above! Enjoy the vacation! Since you're not eating low cal with EM2WL, even if you do overeat, you're not going to gain large amounts like you would coming from low cal. Just get right back on track when you return.

2. This one is tricky. If you undereat by 100 or so to make up for or save calories for another day, that's no biggie. But going under your BMR is probably going to make you really hungry the next day and can set you up for a binge. If you come from a binging background like I do (undereat/overeat), this is slippery ground. I have learned for me that I can't cut cals too much to make up for another day because I just get hungry and when I get too hungry....I binge. For some people, a binging episode can turn into a week of overeating. So be careful there. I wouldn't ever eat under BMR.

3. If you truly have "trigger" foods - meaning, you just can't eat them in moderation and they could possibly even set you up for a binge, maybe it's best to keep them out of the house. Again, this kind of depends on your background struggles with food. There are a couple of foods that I really do need to stay away from bc they cause huge struggles for me, even just one. However, I do not think it's best to completely cut out certain groups of foods like carbs, sugars..etc.. I eat chocolate every day and plenty of carbs, ice cream, whatever I want, just in moderation.

4. I would stay with just 15% deficit. I know when you have more to lose it's tempting to go with a 20% deficit, but it really is too much of a deficit no matter how much you have to lose. Your body will react negatively with too steep of a deficit at some point. I've lost 40 and was tempted many times to go with a steeper deficit and I did try a few times and wish I would not have. Just set me up for binging, again because of my history.

heybales

1 - Maintenance - time to destress the body and allow max recovery. If more eating out is done, won't even pretend that the calorie counts are anywhere near accurate enough to worry about, and just use portion control as mentioned above. I shudder to think of the potential stress sitting there trying to figure out which food items matches what you ate, and how much was it.

2 - More 1 day if it went over maintenance? then yes to 100 less the next day. If over eating goal but still under maintenance, not going to worry about it. And usually when you take off that 100, you aren't really going under BMR for any 24 hr period, but then again the body doesn't restart at midnight anyway when our diaries happen to.

3 - Sometimes, depends on time of year and cravings if not frequently eaten but thoroughly enjoyed when they are. Summer with 3000-6000 TDEE on an individual day, those can be satisfied. During the winter - not so much.

4 - Over 60 lbs, 20% might be reasonable down to 60 lbs. But you would have had to started with a full burning body, not already slowed down from prior diet attempts in prior 6-12 months. And take diet breaks every 6 weeks to eat at maintenance. And be doing some full body resistance training. And no other medical issues the body is stressed out over beyond being overweight. Same parameters research studies demand of participants to be included.