NEED HELP AVOIDING TRASH WEEKENDS

elisa123gal

exercise extra and eat a bit under the days prior or after...just make up for it. Also..try to only go off for a meal..but i you go off for two days.. that is hard to compensate.

777Gemma888

HurricanForce1 ... Took the liberty of entering your shared numbers into a Lean body mass calculator to help you visualise the variations in TDEE estimations, daily caloric requirements et al, some members on the thread are sharing with you.

To lose weight, you may choose to eat 500 calories less than your TDEE.



ETA: exchange verbiage & attached pic

WinoGelato

HurricaneForce1 wrote: »

And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?

Did you put your stats in? What rate of loss did you select? Did you enter exercise? Did you read the threads I linked above?

CattOfTheGarage

HurricaneForce1 wrote: »

CattOfTheGarage wrote: »

I find it works fine for weight loss, I lose weight as predicted by mfp. The only effect I'm seeing is a lot of weight fluctuation - variations in how much carbs I'm taking in lead to variations in water retention. It's no biggie. Water is not fat and I fluctuate a lot whatever I do, so it's a price I'm more than willing to pay.

I don't have a definitive answer for the metabolism question, but my hunch is that the metabolism is not going to react to short-term reductions in calories (a few days) and that eating close to or over maintenance for a couple of days a week might make metabolic adaptation actually less likely than if you have a deficit every single day. But that is just a hunch, I have zero science to back it up.

The idea is that you stick with the same deficit you would otherwise have, but you look for that deficit as a weekly average, not a daily thing. I don't know your numbers, but I'll explain mine to you. My maintenance is about 2000 net, and I am aiming to lose 1lb per week, so my overall goal is 1500 net. Instead of setting my goal to 1500, I set it to 1200, and I try to stick to that Mon-Thurs. Then on the weekend, I stop looking at my daily goal and start looking at the average (in the Android app it's under Nutrition on the left-hand menu). I want that average to stay under 1500 - I can eat quite a lot without pushing it over that. The ideal is to hit 1500 average on Sunday night, then I can go back to 1200 on Monday and the process starts all over again. Remember all these numbers are net, so if I exercise more, I eat more.

That's if I'm having a very regular, consistent week, which I often don't. In actual fact I'll often go over the 1200 a few times during the week and I don't worry too much as long as the average is still looking healthy; I just know that if I eat more during the week I'll have to eat less (or do more exercise) at the weekend. It's flexible, which is what I like about it, and the fact I can eat over maintenance every now and then makes a huge difference and stops me feeling deprived. And if people bring doughnuts into the office, I don't have to be sad about it.

So what can I do to keep my water intake up but not retain the weight?

You misunderstand - water retention is not a bad thing and you can't avoid it or control it. It just happens. You need to ignore it and look at the overall trend, not the day to day numbers, which can vary by several pounds for all sorts of reasons. You are trying to lose fat, not water.

HurricaneForce1

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

HurricaneForce1 wrote: »

And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?

Because you're tall, have a high lean body mass (and possibly are young). I'd be shocked if your TDEE was less than 3000 calories/day if you get any activity at all. So, if you set a reasonable weightloss goal of 0.5 pounds/week, MFP is going to give you a fairly high calorie intake.

I used a calculator and set my goal to 1lb/week and it gave a TDEE of 2,486/day. I manually entered this value into MFP and am now doing weekly calorie averages over daily ones.

HurricaneForce1

777Gemma888 wrote: »

HurricanForce1 ... Took the liberty of entering your shared numbers into a Lean body mass calculator to help you visualise the variations in TDEE estimations, daily caloric requirements et al, some members on the thread are sharing with you.

To lose weight, you may choose to eat 500 calories less than your TDEE.



ETA: exchange verbiage & attached pic

So I should be basing my intake deficit on TDEE? Or the basal metabolic rate? I feel like I might be losing muscle too even though I keep my protein up. I have drop 4lbs in two weeks - surely this isn't just fat?

BusyRaeNOTBusty

HurricaneForce1 wrote: »

And my MFP daily goal is 2,700 calories?! Why?

Because you are a large young male?

777Gemma888

You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Your BMR is what your body needs to survive. Eating below your TDEE@maximum less 500 calories is what I would suggest. Never a deficit above 500. Tweak the numbers (less TDEE) to place yourself within a comfortable deficit where you aren't starving after your workouts.

JeromeBarry1

To avoid excessive weekends, I eat breakfast. About 4 hours after that I eat lunch. Then about 5 hours after that I eat dinner.

It sounds simple, but if I did not have breakfast, I'd start snacking and could not stop.

JaydedMiss

Keep self busy. If you can stick to it through the week i imagine its because your busy and on weekends your just sitting around? i dunno i havent read all the posts....I just find keeping self busy helps. Obvious answer im sure has already been said

trigden1991

777Gemma888 wrote: »

You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Your BMR is what your body needs to survive. Eating below your TDEE@maximum less 500 calories is what I would suggest. Never a deficit above 500. Tweak the numbers (less TDEE) to place yourself within a comfortable deficit where you aren't starving after your workouts.

You can eat below BMR without negative effects. A deficit over 500 cals is fine for some people. Some people are always hungry after a workout no matter what their intake.

777Gemma888

trigden1991 wrote: »

777Gemma888 wrote: »

You should NEVER eat below your BMR. Your BMR is what your body needs to survive. Eating below your TDEE@maximum less 500 calories is what I would suggest. Never a deficit above 500. Tweak the numbers (less TDEE) to place yourself within a comfortable deficit where you aren't starving after your workouts.

You can eat below BMR without negative effects. A deficit over 500 cals is fine for some people. Some people are always hungry after a workout no matter what their intake.

Good points. I just wouldn't.

Cheers!

HurricaneForce1

So I used the scooby TDEE calculator and this is what I get. Do these numbers look good to go off of?

777Gemma888

Many on here use Scooby and swear by it. I don't see why not. Good luck!

PAV8888

It all depends on whether the activity level you picked is correct.

Did i see you mention 4lbs lost in 2 weeks? And you're not obese. And you're complaining about overeating on the weekend?

You are not obese. You are young. Frankly a good rate of weight loss will have you losing weight so slowly you ought to be here complaining that you're not seeing the scale move (yet by plugging your numbers in a trending weight app or web site you would see a downward direction).

To me it sounds like you're cutting too much.

Scooby, mfp, most sites use the same formulas. Only you and your body know if you're entering the correct activity levels.