What do you do when it’s bust…

KimiAR

You over eat or don’t stay on game. Do you just “full stop-that’s all I was allowed today” or do you moderate intake, throw it all out the window?
Basically I’m looking for helpful strategy (I seem to do this 2-3 times a week) BUT I get some of us are still working on that 😂

LiveOnceBeHappy

Dinner becomes a salad with a little bit of chicken. So I guess I moderate the rest of the day.

Are you planning well enough so these episodes don't happen as often? For me, if I don't have a plan for lunch, I'll go overboard. If I don't have planned snacks for when I get hungry, I'm going to go off the rails. I'm not fanatical, but I always have a can of soup I can eat for lunch at work. I always have some chicken and veggies and rice at home I can throw together for dinner if nothing else. I'm not a meal-prepper really, but I do have foods handy I can eat without going over very often.

sandielewis2001

I have calculated my approximate maintenance calories at goal weight. Most days I will try to moderate to stick to my deficit goal. Some days I allow myself to eat up to maintenance calories. Very occasionally (special events) I allow myself to eat over maintenance but still try for moderation. It's all about balance.

cwolfman13

KimiAR wrote: »

You over eat or don’t stay on game. Do you just “full stop-that’s all I was allowed today” or do you moderate intake, throw it all out the window?
Basically I’m looking for helpful strategy (I seem to do this 2-3 times a week) BUT I get some of us are still working on that 😂

Overeat by how much? If I have a 500 calorie deficit built in and I overeat by 200 calories I'm still in a deficit, just a smaller one. If I overeat by 500 calories I'm just at maintenance for that day. If you have a large deficit...like you're trying to lose 2 Lbs per week, you would have to overeat by 1000 calories over your target to hit maintenance and anything less would still be some manner of a deficit.

As has been mentioned, having a plan is helpful. Failure to plan is a plan to fail. I pretty much know what I'm going to be having for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner most days and don't veer too far off from that most of the time. If I do go over on a day, I just move onto the next. I treat occasions like birthdays and holidays as just that...occasions that are overall immaterial to everything else I'm doing.

AnnPT77

Honestly, if it were happening to me 2-3 times a week, I'd be thinking about whether there was something that could be improved in my basic plan:

* Have I cut calories been too low (slow, reliable loss can be faster than "fast" but unreliable theoretical loss rate)?
* Have I put foods important to my happiness totally off limits, in cases where I could moderate them and fit some in?
* Have I experimenting with food choices to feel more full, more often?
* Am I over-exercising?
* Am I letting habits of snacking stay habits, at times/places I'm used to snacking, even if I could swap those habits for something that supports my goals better?
* Am I "medicating" stress or other mental-health issues with food?
* Am I bored-eating, when I could use other things to distract myself?
* Is poor sleep quality/quantity causing fatigue, so increasing food (energy) cravings?

And so forth.

On the occasional day I do eat over goal, I think about a few things: 1.) How much over? 2.) Why? 3.) Was it worth the probable delay in reaching goal weight?

1.) How much over: If I'm set up to lose a pound a week, that implies I'm aiming for about 500 calories daily below what it would take for me to maintain current weight. If I go 100 over my goal, it's trivial. I'm still losing fat, just a tiny bit slower.

2.) Why: That's about the asterisked list above. If I'm eating for reasons other than hunger or nutrition, there may be a better solution than food.

3.) Was it worth it: If I have an opportunity to eat something really special, or a truly special occasion to celebrate, sometimes I make the choice to go over goal calories (even sometimes over weight-maintenance calories). If that's fairly rare, it really has very little impact. It's the majority of days that have the majority of impact on body weight and health, not something I do once every couple of months, say.

Regardless, I can look at the arithmetic, and decide whether some specific case was worthwhile subjectively. (Usually that happens in the cold light of the day after, honestly.) It takes roughly 3500 calories to make a pound of fat. If I eat (say) twice my maintenance calories - all at once, or spread over time - I could theoretically gain up to about 2/3 of a pound of fat. Was the food or the event/reason worth doing that (in a context where I know what it takes to lose it)? If it was, all is well. If it wasn't, I should make a different plan for how to handle similar circumstances in future. Rinse and repeat, until the plan is overall solid.

Usually, if I had a planned special event while losing weight that would result in high calories, I'd "bank" 100-200 calories on each of a few days beforehand to "spend" at the event, eat lightly on the day of the event, maybe fit in an extra (not too intense/fatiguing) workout. Even now (in year 6+ of maintaining a healthy weight), I bank a few calories most days, to eat a bit indulgently sometimes. Bodies don't reset at midnight.

What I would not do is create some personal drama around "making up for it". That's the "sin and expiation" model of weight loss, to me: Not very productive, feels yucky. (guilt is optional). I hate drama, by personality, though.

A good plan, a workable plan, creating new habits that can persist almost on autopilot when life gets busy/complicated: I like that, personally.

KimiAR

All of these had helpful thoughts! Thanks guys

Kiwi2mfp

It's my son's birthday today so I overindulged also. I knew we would have a larger dinner but I had to skip breakfast to get to an early eye appointment this morning so when I got home....I ate a large salad with meat, cheese and a few Ritz crackers on the side. I watched what I ate a bit for dinner but allowed myself to go over close to 500 calories. These days happen. All I'm going to do is move on and believe this one day will actually work in my benefit, not for bad.

Sinisterbarbie1

To all this I would only add that you should still record it and evaluate it. For a variety of reasons. 1) You can reduce a little for the remaining days in the week if you feel you really need to adjust. 2) Sometimes it isn’t as bad as you thought it would be, and it is good to know that too, because when you think you have screwed up progress towards a goal, sometimes you are inclined to give up. 3) It gives you data for the future to do all the things Ann suggests thinking about and adjusting.

KimiAR

Trying to remember all the things that worked prior to my last two pregnancies is harder than I expected. All of these comments reminded me of different things that worked for me in the past. Thanks guys!