Anyone tried calorie cycling?
I've been reading about calorie cycling - eating higher amounts for 2-3 days in the week, then lower amounts but keeping a total weekly goal. Some research shows that it might help preserve metabolism during weight loss.
I've lost ~80lbs now, but have another 50 that I want to lose (slowly, plan on it taking about 2 yrs all together). I know that much weight loss can cause a slower metabolism, so I'm considering this method. Also, since I've been at this about a year now, changing up my eating habits to allow some 'off' times (don't really know if I can do a 2000 calorie day by now) might also be beneficial.
Want to know if anyone has any thoughts on this concept.
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Why not try it.. My husband has been losing very well.. going off his diet for a 24 hour period every week. It is insane ..but works for him. ( and it is fun…but he doesn't binge. .just eats out two meals a dinner and lunch the next day).
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Depending on what you've already read or not, you might find some useful related content in this thread here if you haven't already run across it:
I don't calorie cycle in any formal way, but I do vary my calories by anywhere from 200-400 or so calories day to day, because I use the MFP method of estimating exercise calories when I work out, adding them, and eating them on the exercise day.
I think fast weight loss has more risk in terms of temporarily or permanently reducing calorie needs, via (loosely) fatigue (temporary) or adaptive thermogenesis (temporary or semi-permanent). There's a good adaptive thermogenesis thread here I can link, too, if you want that and haven't seen it.
I'm in maintenance now (year 9+ of that), lost weight for just under a year, kind of fast by accident briefly - long enough to suddenly feel weak and fatigued, but I corrected quickly.
If I have any metabolic slowing, it's not obvious: The "lost fast by accident" thing was because I need more calories than either MFP or my good brand/model fitness tracker estimate, literally hundreds more daily. That's a rare thing, but it can happen. It remained true all through loss, and the years of maintenance since.
I'm not saying metabolic slowing isn't real . . . adaptive thermogenesis is, and I guess part of that could be considered metabolic slowing. The thread I linked above has some good outlinks to evidence-based information about tactics to avoid things like that, IMO. For me, I think it never happened . . . or if it did, my starting point was even further from average, which seems kind of unlikely. Even this far from average is unlikely.
Best wishes!
P.S. After reading posts here for literally 10 years, I'd strongly advise against aggressively fast weight loss, for multiple reasons. That never seems to end well, but it typically ends quickly. The definition of "aggressively fast" varies, though, with the current body weight and the amount available to lose. For most people, half a percent of current weight per week is reasonably conservative, IMO, and slower is fine when current weight doesn't carry significant health threats. A full percent can be aggressive, unless a person's severely obese. More than that is very aggressive, probably only reasonable if not only severely obese but also under medical monitoring for nutritional deficiencies or health complications. Just my opinions, though.
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Will you share the link? Cause I’ve gotta read this research.
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In a quick bit of googling there seemed to a lot of "could" "potentially" "think" making me doubt it.
But saying that I cant really see the harm.
Previously I would eat less during the week and more on the weekend but overall for the week I maintained my deficit, which seems to be the only thing that matters for weight loss.
If having a 3 days off and 3 days on cycle or a 10 days with large deficit and 2 days with no deficit works for you, keeps you motivated long term, then go for it.
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I've never called it calorie cycling (or anything else), but I eat out at least once a week, drink a couple of glasses of wine at least once a month plus my exercise differs daily and I don't always want to eat all my exercise calories (especially if I've done a long, fast walk as well as a gym session), so I use the weekly view of my diary to ensure I'm on track 'on average'. It's worked for me for the last 5+ years.
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Yeah, I don't calorie count and lost quite a bit of weight (65) by limiting my starchy and sugary carbs and consume mostly animal products so basically lower carb which as indicated supported the hormonal balance that for the vast majority of people that bring our satiety hormones back into balance, basically the hunger is pretty much non existent and where most people lose weight after converting from a mostly standard American diet pretty easily.
Anyway they're have been times, more than once over the course of the last dozen years where I would gain weight and I generally keep my weight around the 180-185. Once during that flu that went around the world I gained about 25 lbs and was pushing 210 and know, just through my general research into nutrition the 5:2 intermittent fasting was something that I thought might work, and it did.
Basically you eat as normal 5 days and then for 2 days you reduce calories to around 500 and with lean proteins and lots of veg which helped keeping me feeling full and satisfied, which is also advised, so yeah 500 calories of pastries and processed foods will not work as well. Also the 2 days shouldn't be consecutive, for obvious reasons and I made mine around busy week days and not weekends when I have more time on my hands, just thought I'd mention that.
If for those five days your consuming a diet that's pretty much a standard American diet it's going to be harder on you for those 2 days but anyway what happens on those 2 days eating this way with mostly protein and veg, insulin levels drop considerably which also translates into steady blood sugar levels with very little up and down and it increases HGH (human growth hormone) that is protective for lean muscle along with increases in adrenaline when consuming those few calories actually increases our metabolism which is basically the natural response to perceived energy scarcity.
I've now done the 5:2 on 3 separate occasions but that first one was basically the data I needed to keep it in the rotation. It took me about 4 weeks to lose that 25 lbs and then I just go back to my normal low carb diet, probably 5 to 7 lbs was water weight. Works for me, maybe try that but so some research because it will explain a lot of question you probably might have.
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What exactly do you mean by, "eating your [my] exercise calories?"
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What exactly do you mean by, "eating your [my] exercise calories?"
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Calorie counting is about math and when a person does an activity outside of their daily norm and their allotment of acceptable calories they've used up more calorie energy so on that particular occasion they get to eat more calories, basically exercise allows for more calorie consumption if a person has not factored it into the math, work more eat more, goes back a few million years.
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I do it unintentionally, and have since reaching goal several years ago. Some days I’m very far below, and some days grossly over. Yet the weekly average tends to stay very steady.
So, if anything, it just kind of averages out.
I don’t think it does anything different than being exacto mundo on the dotsy dot every single day.
That’s my experience FWIW. 🤷🏻♀️
I don’t think there’s any mystique or “tricking your body into releasing weight/fat”. If there was, I’d be scrambling to keep up.
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Neanderthin answered the question re exercise calories, but I want to expand on it.
MFP is designed such that you're expected to eat your exercise calories. My Activity Level in the Guided Set Up is set to Sedentary, which is accurate - but I track & log all deliberate exercise such as hikes and gym sessions.
A practical example is my diary for today. My base calories are 1200, which is the lowest that MFP will allocate. I have no trouble eating 1200 cals a day. However, today I did a 7.5 mile walk, some of it up hills, at a reasonable pace - and my tracker says I burned 564 calories. If I didn't eat those calories on top of my 1200 for the day, my day's net intake would be under 650 calories and that really wouldn't be good if I was doing that on a regular basis. It's my NET intake that needs to be 1200 cals.
Some people think exercise calories tend to get over-estimated and suggest eating 75% but, after so long on MFP, I'm comfortable with the figures I use.
However, I didn't eat all 564 extra calories today - but I over ate yesterday and did no exercise at all; by looking at my diary's weekly net average, I know that I'm fine.
(Before anyone questions it - I think my maintenance calories are around 1380 as I'm not tall and am at my original target weight, but I want to lose another couple of kg for health reasons. I'm set to lose 0.25kg a week but if MFP deducted 250 cals from 1380 I'd be below 1200, hence I'm allocated 1200)
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This is essentially (I guess/think?) what I do…I eat back my exercise calories, almost 100% all the time. So on days I'm more active I eat more, on days I'm not active (work and just sit at home) I eat less.
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I've posted a lot about this. I've been calorie counting for a long time (since my 40s), and, until recently, I used to be able to follow the guidance of eating base + exercise calories. In my last cut (Jan - June, 2025), this broke down, and I found that, if I ate all the recommended calories (provided by my Garmin watch), I wouldn't lose weight. This became particularly noticeable in the middle of the cut (March) where I'd already lost about 12 lbs, and my body was conspiring to stop me from losing more. It doesn't help that I'm hypothyroid, although I'm medicated for it.
What was happening was metabolic adaptation to my reduced calorie intake. My body would shut down while I sat at my desk: I'd get lethargic and my hands would go cold. I'd go exercise in the afternoon, and feel fine. But, even if I went running in the heat, back at home I'd cool off and be freezing unless I put on a sweater.
Now that I'm on maintenance (for three whole months), I feel better overall. I'm peppier at work. I hope never to need to lose 20lbs again!
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I do calorie cycling. I have a weekly allotment of 9100 calories (1300 per day).
My schedule is:
Mon 1100, Tue 1200, Wed 1400, Thur 1100, Fri 1300, Sat 1200, Sun 1800
I love that I don't need to worry about going a bit over/under each day, I can always adjust the next day. My weekly calories are always within 50 calories. I have been losing 2 lbs. per week. For reference, I am 5'3 and weigh 165 lbs.
Hope this helps!
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This has been my approach - allotment over a week. I have more calories on leg days and less on upper body, but it equals to the same overall allotment each week. I also do this with my macros (carbs/fats) - protein stays consistent.
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@pandoragreen21 : I wish MFP would give "net deficit for past N days." It's set up for "one day at a time," but that's not how many of us live our lives.
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It seems like that's kind of what the weekly net calories display does in the phone/tablet app? I grant that's for a 7-day period, not for an N-day period. The user gets to choose the starting point for those 7 days, depending on where they started in day view. But maybe it just shows up this way in premium, dunno. (Yes, I was in a calorie surplus for the week shown. 😆)
Tongue slightly in cheek, I have to admit that I care more - especially now in maintenance - about how my weight trending app (Libra, in my case) sees my average calorie deficit for various time periods. 😉
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@AnnPT77 : That's very helpful! I used the nutrition tab to study my macros, but I didn't notice this feature! Hey, does it include exercise calories? It doesn't look like it does!
(And this is all academic at the moment. I'm in maintenance, not tracking, and doing fine. I'm sure I'll need a correction at some point. I always do!)
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you can do two versions of the 7-day calorie view.
Net:
or “total”:
I find both views helpful, but especially Net. I have my settings set on “last seven”’days or something like that so I can check the prior 7 at any point.
I find that especially helpful if I’ve had a particularly heavy calorie day. I can see the average drop daily, and that helps alleviate any self critiquing or other craziness.
Hey, any mind game it takes to keep on keepin’ on, is my philosophy.
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Implicitly, it does include exercise calories.
Looking at the same week, I can switch from net calories, shown in my previous screen grab above, to total calories as shown below:
Here, you can see that my daily calorie goal (before exercise) is 1850 calories. My daily average calories eaten is 2060. The "calories under weekly goal" here is the difference between those two (subject to rounding error), which is ((2060 minus 1850) times 7 days in the week).
Going back to that previous screen grab, which I'll repeat here:
It shows my net average daily calories as 1904. The difference between 2060 and 1904 is 156, the average daily exercise calories. (Pretty light that week! Seven days are 268 + 0 + 300 + 314 + 212 + 0 + 0 = 1094, divide by 7 days and that's 156.)
On the net calories weekly view page immediately above, it's essentially telling me how many calories I ate above or below the sum of my base goal of 1850 plus my average daily exercise calories of 156 (i.e. average total daily goal of 2006). In other words, compared to my base goal of 1850, I overate on average by 1904 - 1850 = 54, multiply that by 7 days and get 378 which is approximately equal to what is shown as net calories under weekly goal (again, a rounding error because of all the averaging and de-averaging in these comparisons 😆).
I hope that makes sense. If not, ask a question!
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I’m using the iOS app, much better layout than what you’re looking at, imho.
The “total” view doesn’t take into account exercise calories. It’s solely based on “goal” and calories recorded.
The “net” view does take exercise calories into account, and I can base it on any seven day period I want, by simply going to the food diary for the last day of any day I want, and choosing the 7-day view. I can also page back and forward in 7-day increments.
It’s calculating it for me, in a very neatly laid out format. Even the graph is simple and effective. Easy peasy.
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As far as I can see, the Android pages I posted are identical to the Apple pages you posted, except for the formatting error in text on the section with percent of calories from each meal that's on the total calories view (which may have something to do with font settings on my phone rather than MFP anyway). I cropped off irrelevant parts of the screen grab, but the rest of the screen (the part I cut off) looks the same as the Apple version you posted. I don't see how Apple is a better layout. They're the same layout.
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I guess I’m so used to the iOS app format that the other looks cluttered and confusing.
Our brain becomes accustomed to familiarity. 🤷🏻♀️
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Got it, thanks. I was confused because I’m not logging and I’m in maintenance. The graph just shows my exercise calories as net negative. I wish for more charting capability here, with the ability to look at exercise cals, eaten cals, and trendlines. I feel even more strongly about the weight chart. Why they don't show a moving average is puzzling. If I really felt like it, I’d export the whole thing and analyze it myself, but that sounds too much like work!
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Hmm. And it inserted my image as a link. I see I hit the link option instead of the picture. That's new!
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If you don't use a weight trending app now, maybe consider that? I find it useful in maintenance, and definitely did during loss. I started using it part way through loss, having started - well before weight loss, actually - putting a dot on graph paper for every daily weigh in. X-axis, date; Y-axis weight - taped on the inside of a closet door near my scale, with a pencil also stored there. 😆 The trends were visually evident even that way.
What I did when I started with the app was input one weight per week for the most recent few months to get a rough trend line, then started logging the daily weights after that. I don't bother telling MFP my current weight anymore, because I have to set my calories manually rather than letting MFP estimate, because I'm a statistical weirdo calorie-wise.
Since this is a general thread, and we've digressed it somewhat: For general info, some of the most used weight trending apps are Happy Scale for Apple/iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight (requires a free Fitbit account, I believe, but not a device), Weightgrapher. I'm sure there are others.
Some bluetooth scales have their own app that does this type of thing, too, automagically, or the user can link them to one of the other apps that does a trending function. After the setup, there's pretty much zero effort required.
What these do is use statistical techniques, usually some kind of weighted average function, to try to see whether body weight is trending up, down, or even - trying to sort out that trend from the normal day to day scale ups and downs. They aren't perfect, they're not a magic crystal ball that knows "The Truth", but they can be a helpful tool.
I posted one of Libra's summary data pages up-thread, but this is how the basic graph display looks. The connected horizontal-ish up and down line is the trend line. The daily weights are dots rconnected to the trend line by vertical lines. I'm in maintenance, not always eating the same every day either, so it jumps around a lot, but you can see that the dailies jump around much more than the trend. Yeah, I'm on an ultra-slow down-ish trend by intention. As long as the jeans still fit comfortably, I'm calling it all maintenance. 😉
During weight loss, a roughly similar time period yielded the graph below. This is as I was getting toward the end of loss, starting to jimmy calorie intake to get into maintenance range. In both screen grabs, I left in the whole page, including the ads. I use the free (ad supported) version - those bands are the only ads there are, not intrusive. Once in a while, it gives me a screen reminding me that I could support the developer voluntarily, but that's not frequent. (Maybe I should support the developer. I like the app!)
Actual body weight results over a multi-week period (4+ weeks, whole menstrual cycles if that applies) tell a much truer story about actual calorie deficit than any calorie calculator or fitness tracker tells.
And yes, I'm a data geek . . . not just about weight and nutrition, but about other parts of life as well. I have kind of a science nerd bent in the first place, then spent much of my career in a field that involved data management, so it comes naturally. 😆
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@AnnPT77 - Thanks! I just looked at the weekly view, it's very nice to see.
I've liked the idea of calorie cycling, although I've kind of morphed it into looking at weekly calories. That way if I'm a little over on my 'low' day, I don't feel as bad about it - just take it off the high day. The weekly goal charting is great for this.
I have to look at the total calories, however. The exercise in MFP is a mess! It has been doubling or tripling what Samsung Health has been sending to MFP! And, I don't have anything else connected (like Health Connect) at the moment. I find MFP a very poor tracker of exercise, so have turned off all exercise features for it.
As far as the weight graphing, I actually just use MFP for that. I look at the weight trend in the 3 and 6 month charts. I don't feel like I need another app for that.
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I bought the Garmin scale because I didn't want to reveal personal info to yet another company. It cost way more than many others, but Garmin and MFP already know my weight for many years, and I felt like that was enough (not that they aren't exploiting our data for their own gain all the time).
But: Garmin does not offer any trend analytics on their page, which is cheapo. Also, they give all those bogus metrics based on impedance, including body fat, skeletal muscle, bone mass, and body water. And, they only measure impedance across your feet.
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Some of the trending apps will enable a data import from another source, potentially a generic CSV file in the right format. That'd still be sharing data with another company, though.
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yet another unrelated aside, one of the regular losers here said something recently about posture affect the various body impedance scale readings.
I’ve been making an effort to stand up straight. I’m so blind without my glasses (after all, one must take one’s glasses off to weigh oneself, right?) that I have to hunker over at almost a 90 degree angle to see if the scale is done reading.
It hasn’t affected anything. All the “trends” are just as sawtooth as ever.
I’m kind of disappointed, truth to tell. It would have been awesome to suddenly have body fat or muscle mass suddenly change for the better. 😂
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