Should I make up for yesterdays surplus with a deficit today?

Pollarr

Hello, I'm looking for some advice please.
I went out for dinner last night and one thing led to another and I ended up 600 calories over my goal. I was thinking I should aim to be 600 under today to cancel it out.
Do you think there is any problem with doing this?

yarwell

Running a weekly balance is a technique several people use, fat gain and loss is a cumulative process. The only caveat is how low today would be and whether you can sustain it or will end up eating the fridge tonight.

PAV8888

Risks are as follows:

a) Eat at regularly scheduled deficit: No additional risk compared to any other day. All that happened with your 600Cal overage is that you've delayed ~0.1lbs of weight loss by about a day. Thinking of it another way compared to what you would eat in a year at maintenance you ate an extra 0.07% to 0.08% Calories. In other words about 7 or 8 Ten Thousandth of extra calories.

b) Make up the deficit: risk being extra hungry and binging, thus overeating again. Create an excessive deficit and lose lean mass you wouldn't otherwise lose affecting your caloric burn till you regain this lean mass far in the future.

Answer: Cary on with your regularly scheduled plan ignoring the occasional hick up.

At most enjoy an extra walk to help you digest the extra calories.

Lourdesong

Depending on your goals you may just have eaten at maintenance or still be in a small defecit for the day.

I've made up overages the next day many times, it's really annoying, and has several times ended badly where I had another overage to deal with.
Balancing it out over the week drags it out, and that's pretty annoying too.
The least annoying and painless thing for most is to log it and move on and just accept you'll hit your goal a little bit later rather than a little bit sooner.

You could also incorporate some extra actvity this week if your heart is set on remaining on target but eating a little less proves too difficult.

sbahlezinwe67

PAV8888 wrote: »

Risks are as follows:

a) Eat at regularly scheduled deficit: No additional risk compared to any other day. All that happened with your 600Cal overage is that you've delayed ~0.1lbs of weight loss by about a day. Thinking of it another way compared to what you would eat in a year at maintenance you ate an extra 0.07% to 0.08% Calories. In other words about 7 or 8 Ten Thousandth of extra calories.

b) Make up the deficit: risk being extra hungry and binging, thus overeating again. Create an excessive deficit and lose lean mass you wouldn't otherwise lose affecting your caloric burn till you regain this lean mass far in the future.

Answer: Cary on with your regularly scheduled plan ignoring the occasional hick up.

At most enjoy an extra walk to help you digest the extra calories.

I respect the way you think

feisty_bucket

yarwell wrote: »

Running a weekly balance is a technique several people use,

Yeah. I'm here to track. MFP doesn't make it automatic, so you have to manually carry your balance between days.
It's a must for more advanced techniques like calorie cycling and Intermittent Fasting anyways. Tons of people do this.

snowflake954

600 calories is alot to try and make up in one day, and not healthy to do. Just be alittle more careful over the next week and you'll be fine. This is a long term thing.

Pollarr

Thanks for the responses. I burn 400 calories on my runs which I usually eat back. So I think I'll only eat back half over the next 3 runs and then I'll have made up for my slip up but more gradually.

Yi5hedr3

Yes - known as calorie cycling!