Maintaining on Weekly Calorie Goal vs. Daily?

JessicaMcB

Background: I have been struggling to maintain since I hit 130 (5'9") around September 1. As of yesterday I dropped as far as 123.5 which is obviously a problem. The issue is that I'm eating 2800ish a day and still losing because I find my burns as a runner and mom of three under four incalculable even with the fitbit (18-28k steps before running sort of business). Yesterday and today I've eaten upwards of my calories by a LOT, mostly because I freaked out over yesterdays' loss. I know that I couldn't possibly eat this much on the daily because (a) weight gain and (b) I feel sickish already. I intend to go back to eating my normal maintenance projection tomorrow and see if maybe varying my calories this way will help over the seven day spread.

Has anyone had any luck with this method who had trouble nailing down burns? TIA from a stressed out broad

mommarnurse

How many miles a week are you running ?

lorrpb

Congrats on hitting maintenance. Are you still weighing your food? Maybe you're not eating as much as you think you are? 130 is at the very bottom of a healthy weight for a very small framed woman of your height. I know runners like to be as light as possible!
Try eating more calorie dense foods so you can get the cals you need without feeling overstuffed. Add olive oil and butter to cooked foods. Nuts, avocado, etc are more calorie dense without stuffing you.

JessicaMcB

mommarnurse wrote: »

How many miles a week are you running ?

60k+ a week round about

lorrpb wrote: »

Congrats on hitting maintenance. Are you still weighing your food? Maybe you're not eating as much as you think you are? 130 is at the very bottom of a healthy weight for a very small framed woman of your height. I know runners like to be as light as possible!
Try eating more calorie dense foods so you can get the cals you need without feeling overstuffed. Add olive oil and butter to cooked foods. Nuts, avocado, etc are more calorie dense without stuffing you.

I am weighing and tracking very rigidly so it is very puzzling. I am honestly pretty embarassed I've failed so hard at maintaining so far, makes me feel so dumb. Thanks for your suggestions- I am pro more nuts haha

Dofflin

Sounds to me like you thought you were on track then suddenly you were shocked to find you were wrong.
No drama, don't be scared, you have your whole life to find a good balance. Don't overeat to get your weight up quickly or you will likely gain fat in random places. Increase by only 200 cal/ week type of thing. If the scale still went down again after 1 or 2 weeks, add another 200cal/day and repeat until it stabilises. Same thing if it starts going up again out of your comfort zone, don't take off more than this at once. Results are slow in either direction, so it does require a lot of patience.
Don't get into a habit of binging, stay calm and set your goal 200 higher than before, and keep going and don't feel bad about one high intake day.

Personally, because my activity levels can vary daily throughout the week, I prefer to go by weekly averages and that method has worked better for me, because there is less thinking involved.

How to monitor weekly averages:
On the phone app, click "diary", then click on the bar which has the calorie "goal - food + exercise = remaining", then where it says "day view", drop down the menu and hit "week view". Tap the column graph and the daily numbers should come up and the last bar should say how many you've had on average.
Once this is habit, it makes things very very easy especially if you're busy and on-the-go. FYI, to set up the week view to start from 7 days ago, go to "... more" (bottom-right hand corner), then "settings", "weekly nutrition settings" and week starts "7 days ago".
Of course, you can also do it on the computer in "reports" with excel or a calculator.

Please don't stress. 123.5lb is low, but you will get back to your happy weight in due time. Use the same approach that has always worked for you, slow gradual changes.
You've got this x

sijomial

Maybe switch your running to cycling then you can eat while you exercise.

More seriously, are you still low carbing even with running that running volume?
Personally I would really struggle to hit my very high calorie days without lots of complex/starchy carbs.

Drinking calories can also be very effective if you are struggling with the necessary volume of food.

PS - daily v. weekly.
Weekly for sure for me, I hate to feel restricted and having to think about a daily calorie goal would make me feel like I was on a permanent diet (verb).
I also have a huge variation is calorie needs from day to day and don't want to feel compelled to track and eat on the day. For me it's part of trying to get better at intuitive eating rather than regimented eating.

Francl27

No help about the still losing part, but I go by weekly as well. Some days I'm not very hungry and have no appetite, so I keep a deficit instead of eating junk to meet my goal... then some days I want a treat or I'm hungrier and it all averages out in the end.

My diary's closed for that reason though, got tired of people thinking that I was not serious and going over all the time (my goal is low on purpose, so I end up going over a lot.. but it's easier for me to make better choices with a low goal).

JessicaMcB

Thank you @Dofflin your post made me feel a lot better. Back to the regular swing of things now that my thinking brain has chilled my "OHMAGAWD WE ARE GONNA DIIIIIIE!" brain out. I've been trying the incremental increases this whole time and have still managed to lose 7lbs but I'll keep at it.

sijomial wrote: »

Maybe switch your running to cycling then you can eat while you exercise.

More seriously, are you still low carbing even with running that running volume?
Personally I would really struggle to hit my very high calorie days without lots of complex/starchy carbs.

Drinking calories can also be very effective if you are struggling with the necessary volume of food.

PS - daily v. weekly.
Weekly for sure for me, I hate to feel restricted and having to think about a daily calorie goal would make me feel like I was on a permanent diet (verb).
I also have a huge variation is calorie needs from day to day and don't want to feel compelled to track and eat on the day. For me it's part of trying to get better at intuitive eating rather than regimented eating.

Carbs from anything but vegetables make me feel like I want to die now, so low carb for life

sijomial

Sorry to hear that.
I would really struggle on my long rides without my big bowls of breakfast cereals / oats etc.
Respect to you.

girlgroves

I haven't ever had to worry about going under my goal weight too much OP, but you've had some sound advice here.

Sorry to sidetrack, but I have a question:

Dofflin wrote: »

How to monitor weekly averages:
On the phone app, click "diary", then click on the bar which has the calorie "goal - food + exercise = remaining", then where it says "day view", drop down the menu and hit "week view". Tap the column graph and the daily numbers should come up and the last bar should say how many you've had on average.
Once this is habit, it makes things very very easy especially if you're busy and on-the-go. FYI, to set up the week view to start from 7 days ago, go to "... more" (bottom-right hand corner), then "settings", "weekly nutrition settings" and week starts "7 days ago".
Of course, you can also do it on the computer in "reports" with excel or a calculator.

I would love to monitor my calories on a weekly basis as opposed to daily - but when I've tried to follow your instructions for setting up weekly view above, I don't get a drop down menu option - just 'default'. Is that because I'm not a premium MFP user? Or is it because I'm using Android? Thanks

Christine_72

@girlgroves I use Android and I'm not a premium member.

I can't do it like described in the quote either. I click on 'nutrition' then click on 'day view', a drop down menu will appear , click on 'week'

girlgroves

@Christine_72 That works - thank you!

nxd10

Are you eating towards a NET maintenance goal with all that running? And measuring your running well? When I was younger, 5'9", and dancing 6 days a week, my teachers told me I was too thin at 128. You have a lot of muscle too, I'm sure. So I do think you're right to be concerned. I use an apple watch to measure my activity. Before that I use a fitbit zip ($39 on ebay) and before that a pedometer ($5). It's invaluable to me because my exercise calories are almost always 300-500 more than my baseline - and that's just normal walking. I would be hungry and way too thin if I didn't measure and log activity and add that to my baseline maintenance calories.

To your question, I always set weekly goals and meet those. I also often use my log to note that I should eat when I feel hungry and have the calories to do it. The phone app is much better than the computer for monitoring weekly goals. I hit 'nutrition' and ask for my net calories for the week.

Good luck!