Advice? Opinions?

tegalicious

Hey everyone! I am now at a point where I am ready to start eating at maintenance. I have a fitbit and for the sake of simplicity let's say it is completely accurate in its estimate of my TDEE.

I need some advice and opinions on how I should structure my calories for the week or day. I have a very active job and am also training for a half marathon in addition to strength training. I have one rest day a week and I try to stay as inactive as I can. My calorie burns for each day are pretty consistent during the work week and then much lower on the weekends. I am currently still working up to eating at maintenance by just adding 100 calories a day each week. But as I get closer to eating at maintenance level it is going to be more difficult for me to gauge what my average should be because the rest day throws it off.

So finally! My question! Should I just continue to work up to my daily average and spread that out over the week like I have been doing, making sure to check in with fitbit at the end of the week and eat more to compensate for any deficit that may be remaining or should I eat differently each day based on what I burned the previous day?

My week typically looks like this:

Monday-Friday 2900-3200 calories burned
Saturday 2000-2500 calories burned
Sunday 1700-2100 calories burned

For option 1, I would eat in the current week what fitbit says my average for the previous week was.

For option 2, I would eat on Tuesday what I burned on Monday and always have a changing number.

Which method would you choose and why? Which of these seems more sustainable in the long term or are they basically the same thing and I have gone insane? Thanks in advance!!

MapleFlavouredMaiden

That all sounds quite time consuming. If it were me, I would wear my fitbit for a week or month and take my TDEE from that and eat that every week. I'd probably go back and recheck the data every few weeks/months. Right now, I use a Body Media Fit, and although I'm still cutting, I use my average weekly caloric burn, minus 15% for my cut. I do calorie cycling and spread that weekly number up differently depending on the day. You could implement that so that you can eat more on heavy training days and eat less on less active days. But that's as complicated as I would get with it if it were me!

WestCoastJo82

I'd go with option one because that seems way easier - basically just figure out your TDEE. I wouldn't be too worried about being perfectly on track every week - maintance isn't static, you're going to have some ups and downs weight wise.

FrustratedYoYoer

I would keep adding 50-100 each week or every few weeks until you find the point at which your weight is pretty stable. for me that is a net of 1850-1900 x

MelissaPhippsFeagins

option one. And congrats on maintenance.