Cheating helps you lose weight?

wally2wiki

What's up. Quick observation.

I have noticed that increasing your calories dramatically after a very long period of restriction can help you lose weight.

My theory is that your metabolism slows down tremendously to compensate for your deceased calorie consumption....to the point that you won't lose weight at all... Unless you decrease your calories further.
Then it returns to normal when you start eating again.

On my recent rest day( usually my weekly weigh in) I decided to take a break- and eat what ever I wanted-- over exceeding my calorie amount tremendously by about 900.

I found that I lost an entire pound more during the course of one evening​!

I recommend periodically resetting your metabolism- by deliberately over eating once in a while to help you lose weight.

cmriverside

I have at least one day a week where I eat double my calorie goal. I've been doing this for a year and no weight change. Your theory makes sense to me.

...I've been at maintenance weight for years though.

cmriverside

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Rocknut53

My observation is that you lost another pound because you are still in a calorie deficit over a period of time. One day eating 900 over your allotment will not produce one pound of loss. That said, you no doubt feel emotionally better for whatever reason and if it helped you on your journey, that's awesome.

JeromeBarry1

That sort of depends on your particular situation. Was your usual restriction geared to lose 1 lb per week? That's a 1000 kcal deficit to your NEAT. To go over your usual deficit by 900 kcals is still a deficit.

Do you have a stressful job? Personally, I detect a steady weight trend upward during the workweek and often a large decline on weekends. I blame cortisol.

The one thing you have not done is proven that increasing your daily intake by 900 kcals will cause you to lose 1 lb per day. I congratulate you on experiencing the fluctuations of life.

tabletop_joe

Occasionally eating what I want when I want to, rather than planning and weighing and logging ahead of time like I usually do, helps prevent me from throwing this whole "lifestyle change" in the dumpster and therefore helps with weight loss. I don't think it helps in any other sense, though; not for me, anyway.

vismal

wally2wiki wrote: »

What's up. Quick observation.

I have noticed that increasing your calories dramatically after a very long period of restriction can help you lose weight.

My theory is that your metabolism slows down tremendously to compensate for your deceased calorie consumption....to the point that you won't lose weight at all... Unless you decrease your calories further.
Then it returns to normal when you start eating again.

On my recent rest day( usually my weekly weigh in) I decided to take a break- and eat what ever I wanted-- over exceeding my calorie amount tremendously by about 900.

I found that I lost an entire pound more during the course of one evening​!

I recommend periodically resetting your metabolism- by deliberately over eating once in a while to help you lose weight.

Unfortunately, your theory is incorrect. While a metabolic slowdown does occur with a prolonged calorie deficit, it is not a "tremendous" slow down or anything even close. In studies where participants were given "starvation" level calories for a prolonged period metabolic slowdown didn't exceed 15% (from memory so give or take a few). Also, a single overfeeding does not cause the slowdown to reverse. It would require several days of eating at or above maintenance to reverse the effects of prolonged deficits.

So, why did you lose a lb after an overfeeding? There are a number of reasons. First, and most importantly, weight loss is not linear. You can lose weight when in a calorie surplus and gain weight while in a deficit but only in the short term. This is because weight is not the same as fat. Your body weight will increase or decrease based on hydration status, glycogen storage, food in your stomach/digestive tract, and about a million other factors. This is why you can gain fat despite losing weight and gain weight despite losing fat. The second reason is that you were likely still in a deficit for the week. One day of overfeeding 900 calories above maintenance combined with 6 days of a 500 calorie deficit nets a deficit of 2100 calories for the week. So despite the overfeeding, you are still in the negative. Finally, a single overfeeding, while not enough to reverse the mild metabolic slowdown associated with dieting is enough to reduce cortisol (stress) levels, which in turn can cause retained water to be released. This is why many folks tend to weigh in lower in weight after a "cheat" day. Again, none of this has much to do with fat loss which is almost completely based on the deficit. And a 900 calorie overfeeding does nothing more than reduce your total weekly deficit by 900 calories. It does not help. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that you only weigh in once a week. It makes judging actual fat loss versus normal fluctuations very difficult. I prefer to weigh daily but pay no attention to the number. Rather I input the number into a site like trendweight.com and do this for about a month. The site takes a rolling average of weights and gives you a trend line. Following the trend line is much more telling of what your weight is actually doing compared to looking at a single weekly number and comparing it to the previous week.

Now that isn't to say that a cheat or free day is totally without value. If you need one of these days on occasion to remain compliant with a long term deficit then they are in effect "helping you lose fat" but only due to increasing compliance, not because they drastically affect metabolism. So it is fine to have them but just pay close attention to how often you have them and how much over maintenance they take you. A weekly cheat day of 1500 calories above maintenance combined with a 500 calorie deficit a day diet results in almost half of your weekly losses being erased by the cheat day. Compare that to a weekly cheat day of 500 calories over maintenance or a monthly day 1500 calories over maintenance and they are much less impactful on overall weight loss.