Calorie Carry Over??

patcasullo1

Hello everyone.....question for you. My calorie goal is 2,380 daily. I do a lot of cardio daily too so there are 2-3 days a week when I can't eat my daily calories. Can I carry over some calories to the next day?

smokinbluegrass

It's all about net calories at the end of the week or whenever you measure or weigh. Net deficit equals loss. Net surplus equals gain. Net zero equals maintenance, plus or minus some water, etc.

rdmartin677

I think you'd be better off just letting those calories go. Calories burned doing cardio is not in the slightest accurate. Your better off eating a little under than trying to pretend every number in its self is accurate. Calories can vary on different foods. Treat all of this like a generality.

Wynterbourne

I average my calories weekly versus daily and I've lost over 130lbs. Your body doesn't have a 24 hour timer. Carry over is perfectly acceptable. It's how I can “splurge” at parties, holidays, get togethers, etc.

JeromeBarry1

Some people call it "banking" their calories. For instance, I've got 350,000 calories in the bank if I count from the time I started using MFP 18 months ago, but I don't. I've only got the calories banked that I'm able to clothe in the sizes I haven't yet discarded, possibly as many as 35,000. That doesn't motivate me to deplete my account. Rather, "If I built it this big", I wonder, "how much bigger can I build it?"

RodaRose

patcasullo1 wrote: »

Hello everyone.....question for you. My calorie goal is 2,380 daily. I do a lot of cardio daily too so there are 2-3 days a week when I can't eat my daily calories. Can I carry over some calories to the next day?

YES. Some people look at their weekly calories.

GottaBurnEmAll

Yes. It's fine to look at your calories like a bank balance. As another poster referred upstream, a lot of people purposely "bank" their calories. They do this by eating lower calorie during the week to indulge on the weekends when they're attending social functions.

The only reason not to do this or to scale back on doing this would be if the scale isn't performing as expected.

When I first started losing, I used to bank calories for big splurges that wouldn't fit into my small calorie goal. It was a way to avoid deprivation on a diet, and it worked great.