Weight loss help.

soon2beeskinny

Hello everyone
I'm going to reword this in hopes to get some different opinions and advice. What do you do when you need an entire week of calorie deficit eating to lose a pound and half way through something comes up and you have to eat more that day during the week you are trying to lose. Do you just continue on the next day or start your week all over again?

DebLaBounty

Log it, then continue on. Sometimes things come up (birthday parties, restaurant food, etc) that will get you off track. Just recommit, maybe eat a little less for the next day or two, and carry on.

laurabadams

Eat a little less, exercise a little more, and/or just track it & move on. I was overweight or obese for nearly 20 years. One week is nothing in the grand scheme of "lifestyle change."

jdog022

I'm curious to understand how something "comes up" that requires you to eat more then you planned. "have to eat more"?

I get mistakes and cravings and all that but you make it sound like your being forced to eat.

weekly deficit is more critical vs daily just don't go to low to make up for whatever this was

Kim_S_G

Your question is worded awkwardly. But, if I understand your question correctly, I still don't understand why you would have to eat more than your planned goal.

I also don't understand what you mean by starting the week over. But, I think you are asking if the one day of not meeting your goal wipes out all the progress you made from the first part of the week. The answer is: it depends. You could:

• go a little over your goal but still be one track for losing 0.5 pounds that week

• go over your goal to your maintenance calories

• go way over and wipe out all the progress from the first few days of the week

soon2beeskinny

For example, my husband comes home on the weekends. I can be perfect Monday through Friday. But Saturday and Sunday when he is home 1350 is hard to stick too. He likes to cook and I don't like to complain about anything he does for me. Sometimes I may be at 1600 instead of 1350 when he is gone. It's hard because I need one FULL week of 1350 to lose a pound. So weekends mess up my deficit

AnvilHead

Weight loss doesn't happen on a daily or weekly schedule. It's an ongoing, perpetual thing. There's no particular point at which your body pauses, tallies up the calories and decides to gain or lose a certain amount of weight. If you go over one day, you just go back to your normal deficit the next day and keep plugging along. Some weeks you'll lose no weight despite doing everything right, other weeks you'll lose more than what your deficit would work out to on paper; sometimes you'll unexpectedly gain, for various reasons.

Don't think of it in discrete time periods, because that's not how it works. The weight loss occurs over time with a persistent, ongoing caloric deficit - not day by day or week by week. It may sound like kind of an abstract concept, but our bodies are in a continual state of flux - even when you're in a deficit, you go through periods of fat storage (lipogenesis) and fat loss (lipolysis) every day. It's just that in the end, there is no NET fat gain while you're in a deficit and no NET loss when you're in a surplus.

Meelisv

soon2beeskinny wrote: »

...Do you just continue on the next day or start your week all over again?

Time machines do not exist. You can't start a week all over again. Weight loss is a long term process, setting weekly goals seems very counterproductive. So what if you lose half a pound in a week, or zero pounds, or if life happens, gain a pound? You don't just "reset" your life or give up. Just continue on and try to be consistently as close to your goal as humanly possible. Just don't worry about it too much.

I also agree with @jdog022 something doesn't "just come up" that makes you "need to eat more" than your goal. There can be occasions than you might want to, but you don't " need" to eat more. Those occasions are perfectly fine, as long as they don't happen too often.

AnvilHead

Think of it this way (it's a gross oversimplification, but it works well enough as an example in this context) - You have a gallon bucket of water with a hole drilled in the bottom of it. The hole is the perfect size to drain exactly one pint a day of water out of the bucket. So after 4 days you've lost half the contents of the bucket, but somebody comes along and pours a quart of water back into the bucket.

Did it ruin the whole process? Do you give up, fill the bucket back up to a full gallon and start all over again? No. Adding that extra quart of water means you've lost a bit of progress and it's going to take an additional two days to drain the bucket, as long as you leave it alone and don't add any more water to it. It'll take a little longer than you had initially figured, but eventually it will still be emptied.

Alatariel75

Sorry my answer in your other thread didn't seem to appeal. It seems like calorie cycling might be of assistance *shrug*

seska422

Another thing: even if you do have 7 days in a row of your desired deficit, that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll lose your one pound. Weight loss isn't linear. You can follow your plan perfectly and lose or still be the same weight or even gain a bit by the end of the week. Look at what your weight does over months rather than day-to-day or even week-to-week. A consistent deficit over time will result in weight loss over time. You don't need to be perfect (no one is) but you do need to get right back on that wagon if you fall off.

As an example, here's my weight trend over 3 months where I was at or under my calorie goal every day:

soon2beeskinny

Thank you so much to everyone who answered my questions. Awesome examples were so appreciated.

jdog022

Double check my math but 1350*7 gives you ~9500 calories a week. What if you eat 1200 M-F (6000) and the final 3500 (1750) Sat and Sunday? Or 1200-Sunday thru Friday and an even bigger chunk on Saturday. Get your husband on board. He doesn't have to eat less or go on this journey with you but he can weigh measure and macro out your food for you so that you can plan the day. I annoyed the hell out of all my family for a while. They're used to it now.

And as others have said, 1 pound or half pound or .25 pounds per week. Long as your losing it doesn't matter. do not be so focused on 1 pound = 3500 calories. It doesn't quite all work like that anyways.