Daily, weekly or monthly?

HannahLDT

Does anyone log their calorie intake over the month or week instead of doing it daily? I've been doing it weekly which worked pretty well but recently I've thought about monthly. For example if I was to go on holiday for two weeks instead of eating so much and feeling bad I could just have two really good weeks and 'save my calories up' for the two weeks I'm away. Thoughts?

hlltwin

I'm new here, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt. I've been looking at this like I look at my word count goals (I'm a writer). If I looked at my word count goals on a monthly basis and had a few really good days where my writing was well over my usual daily goal, I'd think I was in good shape. That doesn't build good habits though. My goal is to write every day, looking at it on a weekly basis and especially on a monthly basis, it's very easy to not keep that good habit.

Eating right and getting an appropriate amount of exercise is the same, if you don't build good habits, which tracking daily does, you think you're seeing benefits where there aren't really... just a few really good days hiding a bunch of bad ones... and the bad days, they add up.

JeffreyBurkhalter

I think you have to do daily. It doesn't mean you can't have bad days, but if you want to progress you have to see where you end up every day.

camoballerina91

I don't do it personally, but I have seen a few people who prep their meals a week ahead of time and then go ahead and log the meals for those days. I don't see any harm in it as long as you stick to the the meals you have planned and don't deviate. I'm not sure about pre logging for a month, but I guess it could still work the same way.

McBourbons

I'm new to this but from the time I have been using the app i would be worried about how much you could over shoot on your targets. It's so easy to go blasting past your goals. Especially on holiday with all that tasty food and desert lol.
From reading some of the professional blogs I think managing it daily is better. You can allow yourself treat days and get in some exercise while on holiday to boost up your calorie allowance.
Also (this just popped into my head while tapping away) wouldn't it be potentially bad to create a big calorie deficit then go on holiday and make up for it? Depends on how much you plan to cut back before holiday then indulge on holiday but if you cut too much isn't your body likely to go into a semi starvation mode then when you feed it store a chunk of the food as body fat in anticipation of another calorie shortage?

SueInAz

While calorie burning doesn't reset at midnight I think a monthly basis is just too long, especially if you're trying to establish good habits. I personally have a tendency to look at it on a weekly basis while still trying to meet my goal daily. As an example, if I know I'm going to go out on Friday night and have a few drinks, I might save 50-100 calories each day over the Monday-Thursday before by eating a little less or burning a little more. I never have a day where I go over and then try to eat less in the days after, though, because I can't count on sticking to it afterward.