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