Calculating Calories for Alternate Day Diet/Fasting

mcallisterbagco

I want to try the Alternate Day Fasting Diet/JUDDD (Up-Day-Down-Day Diet) but I'm not sure how to calculate the calories for it. I want to be sure I'm getting enough calories & not averaging below my BMR for the week.

My BMR is 1370 & my maintenance calories are about 1650.

Am I supposed to calculate calories for the week & split them up over the 7 days, OR since they are alternating days could I calculate calories for just 2 days? Like if I want to average out to 1370 calories per day (my BMR) could I eat 500 calories on a Down Day & 2240 ((1370*2)-500) on an Up Day? If I calculate for 7 days, I get a different number for Up Days: 1370*7=9590 calories for the week; subtract 3 Down Days @ 500 cals/each so 9590-1500= 8090; 8090 divided by 4 Up Days = 2023 cals per Up Day. So do I eat 2240 or 2023 calories on Up Days?

Also do I need to be concerned about how many calories I'm burning through cardio? I usually do about an hour or more of cardio & burn up to 700 or so calories. Is this safe to do on a fasting day if I'm not consuming that many? Do I need to watch the number to make sure I'm not going over a 1000 calorie deficit on an Up Day?

Does it even matter what day I'm doing cardio, or does that all average out over the week as well? I'm used to eating around 1370/day & then exercising off the rest of the calorie deficit, counting for that day only, so I'm not sure how to count my exercise calories on this diet.

acidosaur

I do 5:2, and I calculate my total calories week by week rather than day by day.

I worked out my daily TDEE, using the average of several online calculators, then extrapolated it to one week's worth of maintenance calories (i.e. daily figure x 7)

I aim to have my total calories per week be 4,000 calories lower than this figure, for a loss of about 1lb per week (ideally!). Having two fast days simply makes it easier to keep a weekly deficit this way.

SJVZEE

Go to Dr. Johnson's website-there's a calculator there that you can input your info and get your numbers

heybales

As commented, since the down day takes care of the deficit, you want to go by real TDEE, not MFP maintenance which includes no exercise in that total.

If your daily life without exercise truly is sedentary 40 hr desk job with 1-2 hr commute daily, and sitting in evenings and weekends with just grocery shopping, then use that, set the weight loss goal to maintain.

So if no exercise, maintenance sounds like 1650 if truly sedentary. But that is low estimate of sedentary. You are probably doing this to try to keep metabolism up, don't go shooting it down by doing this wrong, trying to play it safe.

Then log exercise and eat it back totally on the up days.

On the down days, create a food item for yourself called Down Day adjustment or whatever, make the fat, carbs, protein whatever you want to take the normal goal down by.

Now prelog that food item on your down days. And eat actual food to goal then.

Basically eat at TDEE, create a 1000 cal deficit the next day.

Like that 5:2 method which is similar, eating at TDEE for 5 days, and 2 days 25% of TDEE, causes an average deficit of 21% already. No need to take further deficit off of that even if you want to truly fuel any good workouts.

mcallisterbagco

Thanks for the replies! :-)

I checked his website & it said "Normal" calories are about 1650, which is my TDEE. I burn a different number of calories every time I'm at the gym so I just add those on after.
My concern is that eating 1650 on Up Days & 500 on Down Days puts me at an average of less than 1200 a day.

heybales

Thanks for the replies! :-)

I checked his website & it said "Normal" calories are about 1650, which is my TDEE. I burn a different number of calories every time I'm at the gym so I just add those on after.
My concern is that eating 1650 on Up Days & 500 on Down Days puts me at an average of less than 1200 a day.

You are doing it wrong.

TDEE should normally include your estimate of exercise planned.

But you keep picking Sedentary for some reason, when you know you exercise and are not sedentary. Those calculators are not the same as MFP uses, which expects NO exercise to be included, but added later.

If you want the calculator to work right, figure out what the TDEE is with exercise in there.

If you want to take a weeks worth of non-exercise TDEE and then add up all the exercise and divide by 7 to get avg real TDEE, then do that and then pick an activity level that ends up close to that value.

Then follow the math.

mcallisterbagco

I was using sedentary basically to mean 'before exercise' since I count the number of calories I burn at the gym & add those to the 1650 to get my actual TDEE for the day.

Thank you for explaining, it makes more sense now!

SEAFOODMAN

I was using sedentary basically to mean 'before exercise' since I count the number of calories I burn at the gym & add those to the 1650 to get my actual TDEE for the day.

Thank you for explaining, it makes more sense now!

You want to use sedentary, you really have to workout everyday. not like you're working out hard 7 days a week. most people mess up by picking light or moderate.