Alternate weeks?

RoyBeck

Is there anything wrong with alternating weeks of weight loss with maintenance? So for one week eating 1900 which is MFPs allowance to lose 1.5lb per week then the next eating at 2400 which is maintenance. No other reason than I want to try something different and am in absolutely no rush to lose the weight.

SW 270
CW 239
GW 190

Thank you.

NovusDies

On paper there is nothing wrong with it. In practice you will only know if you try it. I would imagine if you are going to run into any problems it may be that you are hungrier when you come off of maintenance or you may be resistant to returning to deficit. I would not let that stop you from trying it though because you are just as likely to be perfectly fine.

One thing is you need to be sure of these numbers. If your maintenance figure is high you could experience a gain and it will be much harder to diagnose the problem going back and forth. You might want to consider a consistent approach initially until you can confirm. Either eat at maintenance or eat at a deficit long enough to establish a trend. Either way you may get some lose some water weight the first couple of weeks which might throw things off.

Just out of curiosity what made you think of going this route? Are you doing something work related on the maintenance weeks that will make it easier to go this route or this there another reason? No judgement. Really just curious.

NovusDies

I butchered the last sentence of the second paragraph but you should be able to figure out what I meant.

kimny72

There's nothing wrong with it at face value, I'd bet a lot of people do that accidentally anyway .

Other than what @NovusDies mentioned, it will require understanding that the calorie differences, especially if you naturally cut back on carbs to save calories while in a deficit, may cause more water weight swings. There may be more "noise" in your scale results in the short term. So you may need to wait longer to be sure your long term results are confirming your calorie numbers are correct.

I know several people who eat at a larger deficit during the week so they can eat at maintenance on the weekend and still be at a weekly deficit. And then what I did was settle for a consistent 250 cal deficit and super slow losses because I was miserable when I put even just 2-3 days of a 500 cal deficit together. You just need to find what works with your appetite and your brain!

RoyBeck

Just because I've been eating at 1750-1880 every day since June 1st when I started this journey for the final time. I've had no cheat days and gone over on my calories 2 days out of about 100 since then. However, I wasn't losing for 4 weeks so since approx the start of August I've stayed at 238. I know what some will say because I say it too lol but all my foods are predominantly packaged so following the calories on the pack are easy so I know I can't be overeating.

I'm a 238lb man for christ sake i shouldn't be plateauing yet! I've lost 26lbs since 1.6.18 so I'm happy just feel I need to change things up.

collectingblues

RoyBeck wrote: »

Just because I've been eating at 1750-1880 every day since June 1st when I started this journey for the final time. I've had no cheat days and gone over on my calories 2 days out of about 100 since then. However, I wasn't losing for 4 weeks so since approx the start of August I've stayed at 238. I know what some will say because I say it too lol but all my foods are predominantly packaged so following the calories on the pack are easy so I know I can't be overeating.

I'm a 238lb man for christ sake i shouldn't be plateauing yet! I've lost 26lbs since 1.6.18 so I'm happy just feel I need to change things up.

Package weights can differ from actual weights.

Try weighing *everything* that you eat and drink. Make sure that you're also including any beverages, liquids, cooking oils, etc. Make sure that you're picking accurate entries in the database.

NovusDies

I would definitely take a 2 week diet break in your case.

As far as your new plan As @kimny72 mentioned cycling on and off may really make water retention a roller coaster of results on the scale. As you probably know eating at maintenance every other week won't change anything with regard to your stall and you may not even be stalled.

On your packaged food though you need to be sure you weigh it to make sure it matches the box. Often it doesn't.

Evelyn_Gorfram

RoyBeck wrote: »

Is there anything wrong with alternating weeks of weight loss with maintenance? So for one week eating 1900 which is MFPs allowance to lose 1.5lb per week then the next eating at 2400 which is maintenance. No other reason than I want to try something different and am in absolutely no rush to lose the weight.

SW 270
CW 239
GW 190

Thank you.

Um, why wouldn't you just do both weeks at 2150 Cal/day?

jemhh

No, there's nothing wrong with it. I'd probably weigh once per week and note whether it was a maintenance or diet week. Sounds intriguing to me.

lynn_glenmont

RoyBeck wrote: »

Is there anything wrong with alternating weeks of weight loss with maintenance? So for one week eating 1900 which is MFPs allowance to lose 1.5lb per week then the next eating at 2400 which is maintenance. No other reason than I want to try something different and am in absolutely no rush to lose the weight.

SW 270
CW 239
GW 190

Thank you.

If you lose 1.5 lbs per week at 1900 calories, your maintenance is 2650 cals/day. If your maintenance is 2400 cals, then you can only eat 1650 cals/day if you want to lose 1.5 lbs a week.

Other than that, there's nothing wrong with doing that if you're in no rush. I can imagine it might, psychologically, make the weeks that you're in a deficit easier to adhere to, if you know the following week you're going to be able to eat at maintenance.

middlehaitch

If you decide to do it, nothing wrong with it, make sure you are using a weight trending app. I think you may have a roller coaster of numbers coming off the scale and true fat loss may be hard to see.

You won't know if it will work until you try it.
If you do try it, please revive the thread after a month and update.

Cheers, h.