Calorie savings account; Good idea or hair-brained scheme?

missblondi2u

So, I've started to think about my calories as a sort of allowance. Like I have 1400 "bucks" I'm allowed to spend on food each day, so I ask myself if I really want to spend half of that on two slices of pizza and a beer, or would I rather spend a quarter of that on a well-balanced meal. Basically it's like my calorie checking account.

I've read where a lot of people bank calories for use later, like on the weekends or for an upcoming event. I like this idea since I tend to munch more on the weekends than during the week. I think of this like a calorie savings account, or "piggy bank" if you will

I came up with an idea of creating a food item called "calorie savings" for like 100 calories and logging that Monday-Friday, and then on Saturday logging an exercise called "calorie spending" so that I don't have to actually see those dreaded red numbers when I go over my allowance. It's like a debit/credit system, which appeals to my accounting and finance background.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this method? Is there some reason not to do something like this that I'm not seeing? I realize that my daily totals won't be completely accurate, but my overall numbers shouldn't be affected. Also, if I don't "spend" the saved calories within a certain amount of time, should I just consider them "expired," and if so, how long? One week? Am I overthinking this??

Thanks in advance for your input!

SueInAz

Sounds like a good plan to me! I think of my calories more on a weekly basis than daily and I've done something similar to what you're planning to do it. As long as you are ensuring that you're getting proper nutrition on the days that you cut calories it should work well.

afatpersonwholikesfood

As long as your calories average out to 1,400 (or whatever your target is) a day over the course of the week, it's fine to eat less on some days in order to eat more on others. I wouldn't bank them longer than one week, and if you have a particular weigh in day, keep in mind that cashing in your calories the night before weighing in can make the scale swing up temporarily.

vgnfarmer

I like your idea. I don't log it that way but I can see how it could work well. Are you meeting (or concerned about) any specific nutritional goals like protein, fiber, sodium etc? Maybe only log the "saving" as long as you meet your other goals that day?
Personally I go to net week calories page a lot to make sure my calories for the week are around the average I want.

vgnfarmer

arditarose this might be up your alley?

BarbieAS

afatpersonwholikesfood wrote: »

As long as your calories average out to 1,400 (or whatever your target is) a day over the course of the week, it's fine to eat less on some days in order to eat more on others. I wouldn't bank them longer than one week, and if you have a particular weigh in day, keep in mind that cashing in your calories the night before weighing in can make the scale swing up temporarily.

Agree with all of ^^this.

charliejenny

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's how the point system works at weight watchers and that seems to get great results

cwolfman13

the biggest possible issue I would have personally is that I'm very active and many of my workouts can be fairly intense either in duration or actual level of work effort or both, and when I cut I can already feel the impact on my performance and recovery...so I probably couldn't do this effectively...but otherwise I wouldn't see any issue with it provided you're getting adequate nutrition on your bigger cut days.

BarbieAS

charliejenny wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's how the point system works at weight watchers and that seems to get great results

More or less. On WW, you're given a daily allowance and then a weekly allowance on top of that that you can use at your discretion - you can use a little every day or you can use it all on one way. You can't, however, choose to eat less than your daily allowance on one day and then move those points to another day (I mean, I guess you can do anything you want, but that's not how the plan works). But all of the points (daily plus weekly) are worked into a weekly deficit - I ballparked it once, and (depending on a lot of factors) if you eat 0 weekly points it comes out to about a 1.5lb/week deficit, and if you eat all of them it takes you down to about a pound per week, give or take a few hundred calories (ETA disclaimer - that's for my personal current stats, of course. YMMV, though I'd have to imagine that it's somewhat similar for others). The daily allowance is a little on the low side by design to allow you to use those weeklies and still lose - no different from shaving a little off M-F and using them on weekends on MFP, as long as we're not talking about eating 600 calories per day M-F and then 3400 or so per day on weekends - that just doesn't seem smart, IMHO.

IdLikeToLoseItLoseIt

Piggy Bank - LOL

SLLRunner

missblondi2u wrote: »

So, I've started to think about my calories as a sort of allowance. Like I have 1400 "bucks" I'm allowed to spend on food each day, so I ask myself if I really want to spend half of that on two slices of pizza and a beer, or would I rather spend a quarter of that on a well-balanced meal. Basically it's like my calorie checking account.

I've read where a lot of people bank calories for use later, like on the weekends or for an upcoming event. I like this idea since I tend to munch more on the weekends than during the week. I think of this like a calorie savings account, or "piggy bank" if you will

I came up with an idea of creating a food item called "calorie savings" for like 100 calories and logging that Monday-Friday, and then on Saturday logging an exercise called "calorie spending" so that I don't have to actually see those dreaded red numbers when I go over my allowance. It's like a debit/credit system, which appeals to my accounting and finance background.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this method? Is there some reason not to do something like this that I'm not seeing? I realize that my daily totals won't be completely accurate, but my overall numbers shouldn't be affected. Also, if I don't "spend" the saved calories within a certain amount of time, should I just consider them "expired," and if so, how long? One week? Am I overthinking this??

Thanks in advance for your input!

I'm all for saving those calories for another day. Look at my diary: some days are over, some days are under, but 99 percent of the time I am within my maintenance calorie goals by the end of the week.

Do you use the MFP app on your phone or tablet? If so, while in the app, you can go to your drop down menu and go to nutrition and choose calories for the week. You can see how many calories you are under or over for the week thus far, net average, and goal. So, today I am under for my week by 298 calories because I ate less on some days. I'm saving those for tomorrow because I'm going to a street festival and will eat lunch there.

PaulaWallaDingDong

Calorie savings is a great idea. However, sometimes I get into a rut where I'm taking out credit from days ahead. It sort of works the same way, but let me tell you, it's a slippery slope. It hasn't screwed me thus far, but I wouldn't recommend it.

minties82

That is a very cool idea :-)

Protranser

SLLRunner wrote: »

missblondi2u wrote: »

So, I've started to think about my calories as a sort of allowance. Like I have 1400 "bucks" I'm allowed to spend on food each day, so I ask myself if I really want to spend half of that on two slices of pizza and a beer, or would I rather spend a quarter of that on a well-balanced meal. Basically it's like my calorie checking account.

I've read where a lot of people bank calories for use later, like on the weekends or for an upcoming event. I like this idea since I tend to munch more on the weekends than during the week. I think of this like a calorie savings account, or "piggy bank" if you will

I came up with an idea of creating a food item called "calorie savings" for like 100 calories and logging that Monday-Friday, and then on Saturday logging an exercise called "calorie spending" so that I don't have to actually see those dreaded red numbers when I go over my allowance. It's like a debit/credit system, which appeals to my accounting and finance background.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this method? Is there some reason not to do something like this that I'm not seeing? I realize that my daily totals won't be completely accurate, but my overall numbers shouldn't be affected. Also, if I don't "spend" the saved calories within a certain amount of time, should I just consider them "expired," and if so, how long? One week? Am I overthinking this??

Thanks in advance for your input!

I'm all for saving those calories for another day. Look at my diary: some days are over, some days are under, but 99 percent of the time I am within my maintenance calorie goals by the end of the week.

Do you use the MFP app on your phone or tablet? If so, while in the app, you can go to your drop down menu andcgo to nutrition and choose calories for the week. You can see how many calories you are under or over for the week thus far, net average, and goal. So, today I am under for my week by 298 calories because I ate less on some days. I'm saving those for tomorrow because I'm going to a street festival and will eat lunch there.

This makes piggybank checkbook balancing soooo much more simple!

lorrpb

I do think of it like a budget but I don't carry it as far as you have. But I think it's great to come up with a tweak that works for you and motivates you. You just don't want to go crazy low like under 1000 on any day. Your bod still needs energy to function properly.

missblondi2u

catscats222 wrote: »

no help here - but i'm stealing that fantastic idea to do myself.
the idea needs a name.
(one week at a time)

Thanks! Maybe we call it the piggy bank method.

missblondi2u

afatpersonwholikesfood wrote: »

As long as your calories average out to 1,400 (or whatever your target is) a day over the course of the week, it's fine to eat less on some days in order to eat more on others. I wouldn't bank them longer than one week, and if you have a particular weigh in day, keep in mind that cashing in your calories the night before weighing in can make the scale swing up temporarily.

Good point.

missblondi2u

vgnfarmer wrote: »

I like your idea. I don't log it that way but I can see how it could work well. Are you meeting (or concerned about) any specific nutritional goals like protein, fiber, sodium etc? Maybe only log the "saving" as long as you meet your other goals that day?
Personally I go to net week calories page a lot to make sure my calories for the week are around the average I want.

Right now, I'm just focused on staying under calories and not going crazy with saturated fat and cholesterol. I had some kinda high cholesterol numbers recently, but I think they were affected by my weight loss so my doc said not to worry too much but to try and add in whole grain when I can. I was doing semi-low carb and had not been eating any grains, so that may have messed with my numbers too.

missblondi2u

cwolfman13 wrote: »

the biggest possible issue I would have personally is that I'm very active and many of my workouts can be fairly intense either in duration or actual level of work effort or both, and when I cut I can already feel the impact on my performance and recovery...so I probably couldn't do this effectively...but otherwise I wouldn't see any issue with it provided you're getting adequate nutrition on your bigger cut days.

Good point. I'm just walking for exercise right now, so 100 calories wouldn't really make a big difference. I don't think I'd piggy bank more than that though.

Lorleee

I do this, loosely. There will be weekdays where I'll be 100 or 200 calories short and I'm not really hungry anymore. But Saturday nights I always have a fabulous "cheat" dinner with dessert and/or wine so it all balances out.