Reverse tracking

sweetd6

I answered someone on another thread and shared "reverse tracking" and how this could help people with some different challenges. When I was doing Weight Watchers, some people did what they called "reverse tracking", where, instead of tracking from wake-up to bedtime, they tracked from dinner of one night till just before dinner of the next night. One reason they did this was because they indulged in a lot of after dinner snacking, so, knowing what their dinner and after dinner totals were, they knew what to have for breakfast and lunch to make their calorie/point limit. Another was because they had lots of unplanned dinner invites to impromptu "pizza at neighbor's" for instance or just their S/O wanting to go out to eat on the spur of the moment, and they hadn't "planned" for that. Any meal can be subject to that but dinner is the most common. So by tracking last night's dinner as the first meal of the day, you can better plan your breakfast and lunch to make up for those things. In the long run, your weekly calorie totals will be the same, so tracking this way can help people who have trouble with dinner or after dinner eating. I saw people really succeed with this, although I've never done it.

segacs

I think it's rather moot. If you track everything, it doesn't matter whether your day goes from noon to noon, or midnight to midnight. Calories don't know, or care, what time it is.

Personally I find my best strategy is to pre-log my days a week in advance. I typically sit down on Sundays, look at my calendar to see which meals I'll be eating at home versus out, and plan out my home meals as best as possible. Then I use that plan to go grocery shopping.

Sure, life happens and plans change. But I find it easier to stay on track if I know before heading out to the restaurant that I have room for, say, an entree with fish and veggies, a salad and a glass of wine, but no dessert.

Need2Exerc1se

I think it makes sense. It just seems logical to use the tool to fit your lifestyle rather than making your lifestyle fit the tool. I only log on weekdays because my schedule is very regular on work days. I also purposely set my calories lower than I want the daily average to be. My weekends are hectic and invovle a lot of activity and food and drink. I don't want to be bothered with tracking all that (plus most of the actiivities are not in the MFP database), so I just purposely create a large deficit throughout the week and don't think about it on the weekend.