Shock treatment?

edavis27

So I've heard somewhere along the lines of that once one's body is accustomed to a smaller calorie goal, you can have a binge day once a week to sort of shock the brain into burning that many calories normally again. Is this true? Because I have grown to become accustomed to my calorie goal of 1550 a day when my BMR + daily burning of a sedentary school life = around 2250. If I was to eat my calorie goal everyday and then my maintenance calorie amount 1-2 days a week, would that be more helpful than just sticking to 1550 all week?

LabRat529

For me, personally, I think there is an advantage to an occasional binge- but it's all psychological. Dieting is way hard. Being good all the time is hard. So I let myself be 'bad' sometimes and it makes it easy to be good the rest.

I don't know whether there is any proof that it can 'shock the brain into burning' more calories though. It's not really relevant to me. I care about having the will-power to stick to a prolonged calorie restriction for the next year that it's going to take to lose the weight I want to lose.

CMmrsfloyd

Some people like to zig-zag their calories (going over some days and under some days) and some do a program called Spike where they do a high calorie day (not sure of the timeframe), I don't know a lot about it but I have seen people rave about the plans. Definitely worth looking into to decide if it's something you'd like to try out.