Eating calories the next day

pinkgurl456

Saw a video of someone talking about eating their overall burned calories for the day the next day to maintain . My Fitbit is pretty accurate on my workouts . I however sometimes workout at night and that ups my overall burned calories and by then I’m already ready for bed. I was wondering if anyone tried this and is successful in maintaining.

heybales

Sure.

Weekly balance is fine.

Depending on workout (like weight lifting), the recovery and repair might be in the next 24-48 hrs anyway.

Now - a lot of repair does happen while sleeping for that type of workout too - some protein could be useful if dinner was a tad light on it.

AnnPT77

I under-eat maintenance calories most days (by a little) in order to indulge on other random days, in some *rare* instances indulging a lot, like up to 2 X maintenance calories or more. I'm in year 5 of maintaining a healthy weight, after previous decades of obesity.

The scale can be a bit of a roller-coaster in the short run (water weight, mostly) with my approach, but the long run weight maintenance is fine, as long as things balance over time.

Body doesn't reset at midnight. Or on Tuesday, or whatever.

Mr. heybales is giving responsible adult advice about making sure to get proper calories and nutrients around workouts, for good performance and best gains. That's good advice. (I don't ignore that.)

I'm just saying that balancing calories over longer time periods will be fine, for weight management. Overnight is no big deal, as long as your appetite behaves in accommodating ways, and you consider the factors heybales mentioned.

sijomial

Avoiding the unecessary restriction of trying to "balance the books" daily helps my long term maintenance far more enjoyable and natural feeling.

FitAgainBy55

Just average it out over the week -- I've always used a weekly budget and never got too fixated on any particular day. It makes it a lot easier to manage ... I maintained my weight for 5+ years this way.

rosiekin

I'm another weekly balance person and have been maintaining my weight more than 6 years. During this lockdown, I seem to have got into a pattern of eating 300 less on Monday, 200 less Tuesday, 100 less Wednesday, maintenance calories Thursday and Friday and 300 extra Saturday and Sunday. I'm only able to be quite regimented due to UK lockdown as I'm going nowhere! When normal life resumes, I'll have to be more flexible as I will start to eat out more and that could be any day of the week. The latter is actually worrying me a bit as I wasn't quie as strict before lockdown but I am liking being in control of everything I eat and not having to be flexible.

mtaratoot

I'll jump on the "it averages out" bandwagon. Because... it all averages out if you're paying attention.

I'm in a group on here that has some regular challenges and usually a weekly challenge. I made up a weekly challenge to "hit your target." There already was a "calorie" challenge where people tried to get under their calorie goal. When I was in maintenance, I didn't always want to be under. I wanted to be, on average, ON TARGET.

So this challenge gave a point if you were within 10% of your goal. For people still actively losing, they could be a fair bit above their target and still be in deficit, so it works for loss mode as well. Then, at the end of the week, bonus points if you were within 10%. 7% or 5% of the weekly goal. It was a big hit, so it became one of our ongoing challenges. It takes the long view.

On the other side of this dilemma, I had something happen the other day when I had a BIG snack late in the evening. I decided to log it as the next day since the clock was going to be switching to a new day soon. I wasn't as hungry the next day because I had eaten enough that day, so it all worked out. Was that cheating? Nope. It all averaged out.

cwolfman13

pinkgurl456 wrote: »

Saw a video of someone talking about eating their overall burned calories for the day the next day to maintain . My Fitbit is pretty accurate on my workouts . I however sometimes workout at night and that ups my overall burned calories and by then I’m already ready for bed. I was wondering if anyone tried this and is successful in maintaining.

Energy balance happens on a continuum. There is no "reset" button at midnight or some 24 hour period. Time is a human construct.

paperpudding

you can set the app to record weekly calories too which is quite helpful if you want to use this approach.

mel941980

I'm a weekly balance person like some others here. I typically 'save' 200-250 calories Monday-Friday so I can indulge on the weekends. I've lost 75lbs in 13 months, so it's worked well for me.