Calorie Cycling

Eve53

So, I was on a plateau for a while and it sucked. Because of the plateau there were some days where I was just like, meh screw it I'll eat what I want, it doesn't matter since I'm not losing anyways. I didn't go too out of control or anything, but I did eat over my calories. Well much to my surprise I started losing again. Then I heard something about calorie "zig-zagging" here on the forums, and decided to look into it. I guess that inadvertently I've been doing that just because of the few days here and there where I just don't give a damn, and then I feel guilty and go back to eating what MFP says I should for a few days.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone else does calorie cycling or zig-zagging. What are your experiences? Are there any disadvantages? How do you do it using MFP? What's your cycle like? How did you determine your cycle? Any advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated, cause I'd love to do this.

RainbowPearl

Bump

alabughosh

I sort of have the same question and I'm trying to figure it out myself. This was my experience recently: I was on 1200 calories and not counting my exercise calories (my trainer told me not to for a while). My weight loss slowly started to plateau. I ate kind of out of sloppy for a week....there was one day that I didn't count but I didn't go crazy on that day. I basically just ate a few hundred calories more each day...and I lost 3 pounds! I decided that I'm going to eat back most of my exercise calories from now on. That is how I will "zig zag" my calories. Because some days I won't want to exercise at all....therefore I can only eat 1200. Other days I will exercise a lot and be able to have a burrito if I want to. So for me, its more about zig-zagging my exercise rather than my calories. :-)

Eve53

Hmm that's interesting. I don't work out as much as I should. That's mostly because my life is a mess right now and I can't pin down a schedule. But that's a whole other topic.

Slove009

I do this every now and then too! I do my best to eat well and work out during the week, then I spoil myself for a day. Nothing crazy, but I do go over my calories intentionally. I've woken up weighing 1-2 pounds less the next morning doing this. It wakes up your metabolism. Kinda like spalshing ice cold water in it's face. It works great for me!

Eve53

I'm bumping this again. I really want to see someones cycling schedule, if there is anyone who has one. And I hope there is someone.

MJ7910

i do it when i get in a plateau. i take what mfp recommends which is 1400... then i go 1200/1600/1200/1600 for about 4-6 days and then back to 1400 again. it has worked great for me. if you google it you will find all kinds of examples. i wouldn't ever go below 1200 though. that's just me personally.

chickybuns

I've started doing it, but I zigzag my net calories. I don't necessarily plan it out, but I make sure each day it varies 150-200 calories. My goal is 1770, so if I net 1800, the next day I would go 2000 or 1600, but still stay within my weekly allowance. I also find it helpful once a week or so to go over, like one day last week I netted 2300, and it seemed to help me lose more. Good luck

tyrtill

My girlfriend zig zags from 1300 to 1700 every other day and it seems to do a good job at busting through plateaus. She's lost almost 60 lbs now so it seems to be working. (Currently she weighs in the high 170s)

secrets_out

Bump

neurochamp

I've done zig-zagging bot with planning my calorie cycling and just kind of going with my normal variations in exercise and hunger level, etc (I absolutely cannot fall asleep if I'm hungry, so if a piece of toast with nutella before bed pushes me over my calories that's much better than not sleeping ). I haven't been tracking as religiously lately, but I do think zig-zagging has helped me get off of plateaus and also to find a healthier overall calorie goal for myself - MFP was insisting on 1200 cal/day for me, but I actually lost more when I zig-zagged with an average around 1300-1310 cal/day through the week. Here's a sample of what my week would look like:

Mon: 1200
Tues: 1400
Wed: 1200
Thurs: 1300
Fri: 1200
Sat: 1500
Sun: 1350

Average: 1307/day

Keep in mind this is NET calories, so as long as I was working out, I was actually eating closer to 1600-1800 cal/day. Overall, I was less hungry doing this, and I could easily change up my weekly schedule if, say, I knew I was going out on Friday night (so I'd swap Fri and Sat here so Friday was my "high" day).

You can use http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm to enter your own height, weight, gender, and activity level (I used "desk job/little to no exercise" because I was entering my exercise calories in MFP), then clicked the "7-day calorie cycle" button and used the middle column (fat-loss, NOT extreme fat-loss) to set my goals. I kept the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet week-to-week so I wouldn't have to keep coming back to figure out what I needed to enter in MFP as my daily calorie goal. To do this effectively, you do need to reset your calorie goal every day, but (at least on my phone app, where I usually track stuff), this was really not that big of a deal for me.

misskerouac

I've been thinking of doing this so after reading this thread I AM going to do it. I'm swtiching my goal to 1 lb a week (1430 cal a day) and am going to flip between that and my 1.5 lb goal I've been going by (1210 calories). And am probably still going to eat most of my exercise calories. I've been at the same weight for 3 weeks and it's making me angry.

Riverofbeauty

I'm on maintenance now, but I (unintentionally) calorie cycle. Some days I'm much hungrier than others, and it's more important to listen to that than a certain number.

I worked out how many net calories I need a week, and as long as I reach that total by the end, I have completely different daily totals. Some might be 1400 (net) some might be 1750. I don't tend to do huge differences, but enough.

I can't say if it helps with weight loss from my experience, but I know it does help a lot of people because it's changing your body up and it's working harder with different amounts of food - same goes with eating a different variety of food.

misskerouac

You can use http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm to enter your own height, weight, gender, and activity level (I used "desk job/little to no exercise" because I was entering my exercise calories in MFP), then clicked the "7-day calorie cycle" button and used the middle column (fat-loss, NOT extreme fat-loss) to set my goals. I kept the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet week-to-week so I wouldn't have to keep coming back to figure out what I needed to enter in MFP as my daily calorie goal. To do this effectively, you do need to reset your calorie goal every day, but (at least on my phone app, where I usually track stuff), this was really not that big of a deal for me.

That's crazy, I input all my info on that site and even "extreme weight loss" was 200 more per day calories than my 1.5lb a week goal on here.

liz3marie

Freedieting.com, calorie needs caculator, youll put in height and current weight, and age. Then at the bottom of that youll see zig zag calories.....click on that and it will tell you based on your hieght, age, and weight what your calorie needs are. Ive seen several friends use this along with me. So I hope this helps! Good luck! I zig zag my callries every week, and I have had pretty steady losses ...it even has what youll need for maintence calories also for those who are doing that

Eve53

Why do all of the other calorie calculators on the web say I need to eat more than what MFP is telling me? Even my Wii games tell me more. Could this be why it's been so hard to lose weight lately?

calana

Why do all of the other calorie calculators on the web say I need to eat more than what MFP is telling me? Even my Wii games tell me more. Could this be why it's been so hard to lose weight lately?

With the Wii, it's probably assuming you will be using the game as exercise, helping create more of a deficit.

MFP calculates your calories based on what deficit you need to achieve the goal you selected. Say you chose 2lbs per week, that means you need a deficit of 7,000 calories a week. If you told MFP you lead a sedentary lifestyle, it's going to assume then that the entire deficit needs to come from cutting calories food wise.

If you need to eat 12,355 calories a week for example to maintain your weight, or 1,765 a day, then cutting those calories is going to put you at only 765. MFP automatically rounds you up to 1,200 because you should never dip below that number.

If you're exercising on the other hand, the whole formula changes because some of your deficit can come from calories burned.

Eve53

These other calculators aren't assuming I'm exercising though because they ask.

misskerouac

Freedieting.com, calorie needs caculator, youll put in height and current weight, and age. Then at the bottom of that youll see zig zag calories.....click on that and it will tell you based on your hieght, age, and weight what your calorie needs are. Ive seen several friends use this along with me. So I hope this helps! Good luck! I zig zag my callries every week, and I have had pretty steady losses ...it even has what youll need for maintence calories also for those who are doing that

Did you use MFP or FreeDieting for your daily calorie goals?

mizzcase

Look up the Johnson Up Day Down Day Diet.. JUDDD.. works for me.

chickybuns

I think it's good to go over at least once a week. My body was stubborn, I netted about 300 over maintenance, and lost again. So I think I'm going to have a little over maintenance day once or twice a week, but still stay within my weekly goals.

Savyna

I think I unintentionally did a zig zag. For a week now I've been eating around 1250-1290 calories with a net of 800 or w.e and sunday I made a bigger meal that got me to 1690 calories. I thought I would gain weight because it was higher than I have been going but I woke up and found out I lost about 1.1 pounds. This zig zagging thing sounds interesting and I think it will definitely help me with my weight loss.

sugarmonster80

bump

graphxgrl

Wanted to refresh this thread. Is anyone doing this right now? I have in the past and and 3 days into it again. It's also called zig-zagging. Just looking some general accountability and support if anyone else is currently cycling.

Quest529

I didn't intend to do it, but it appears that's what happened this week. Friday, the husband and I went out for lunch (Japanese ). Where I know my serving should have been about 1/2 of the plate, I ate 3/4. Then that eventing, I finished up the rest after a run. Then yesterday, I ate 3/4 of a Red Baron Pizza. I know it wasn't the best choice, but it sounded good. I ended up going about 500 over yesterday. I was expecting all of that to show up this morning when I weighed. I actually lost a pound since Friday morning. Interesting...

camperchick64

I use the freedieting website and calculate my zig zag calories. I am doing the 5:2 fast and in order to make sure I eat enough and not too much I use the amount I need weekly from the freedieting and that's what I try to hit weekly. Has been working for me - a consistent loss each week. Not a huge amount of loss but that's ok - just going down consistently is making me happy!

sijomial

I'm bumping this again. I really want to see someones cycling schedule, if there is anyone who has one. And I hope there is someone.

I follow the 5:2 way of eating, 2 (non-consecutive) days at a large deficit and 5 days at a small surplus - I'm maintaining not losing weight by the way although I did follow this when I was reducing my weight as well.

To lose weight on this protocol you would have 2 days at a large deficit and 5 days at TDEE.
http://thefastdiet.co.uk/ for more info if you are interested - there are also a couple of forums on here.

graphxgrl2

So glad this subject is somewhat active. Think it was a big thing around 2006 and slowly tapered off. I have calorie cycled before and lost well. I lost 80lbs using the hCG Diet but don't want to keep doing that a couple times a year, so I tried my hand at intuitive eating and packed on about 15 lbs in a month and a half. I think that only works if your body just wants healthy food, not junk like mine does from years of deprivation.
So, I am staying off the scale like I was with the intuitive eating, but calorie counting and cycling. May be a bit easier for me if I'm not looking for that number reward on the scale. Maybe in a month I'll hop on LOL
Just some stats cause I would like to communicate with those of you currently on this plan:
Female, 44 years, 5'7", between 145 and 150lbs. I exercise heavily...strength and medium cardio.
Even though I should be able to lose with a 1500/day calorie average, I'm doing 1200 for a couple weeks. Here is my plan this week:
Mon 1400
Tues 1000
Wed 1200
Thurs 1400
Fri 1200
Sat 1800
Sun 1000

Did the 1000 yesterday and it was TOUGH since I've been eating what I want for the past seven weeks. Not planning on keeping the 1000 calorie days past the initial 2 weeks but wanted a little jolt to start. I'm so bad at focusing only on healthy foods because I LOVE sweets. I get a good balanced diet, but I can't go a day without a treat....or 5.

janetteluparia

5:2 has really helped me to break through the plateau. It took however, me reducing my calories to 7000 a week! (Net). Not kidding. At 8500 I was stuck and anything over that I gained back and forth so the "youre not eating enough" rationale is out the window. If I go over in wine on a saturday or Friday night I dont sweat it. I have been using MFP for a long time. Low Carb....worked for a while. Lost about 15 in 6 months and then....nothing. Now it would seem that I am losing a pound a week ( we shall see on Friday when I weigh). Its crazy that I HAVE to eat so little to lose. I eat plenty of protein so I wont lose muscle mass and I resistance train when I can. I have to drive alot for work so my activity level is low. I know I am pushing 50 but this goes against all conventional wisdom and I am en educated nutritionist!!

This is exactly why people give up and I wont! I have another 17 to go to be really happy. If it means learning to eat 7000 calories a week....then that's what I have to do. 5:2 has taught me how to do that.
Monday 500
Tuesday 1000ish
Wednesday 500
Thursday 1000ish
Friday 1200
Saturday 1400
Sunday 1200

linalovekitty

I know this isnt exactly calorie cycling in its conventional sense. But it wasnt until I started re incorporating "cheat" days, aka pig out days that I started losing weight FINALLY. I hadnt cheated in over a year, or over eaten by one bite and I was not losing. Now I cheat 3 days/week and diet 4. MY sister does the same thing. She always says it like this
"If Ive been dieting hardcore for a while, and finally have a pig out day or two, Im always a few pounds thinner if I follow it with diet days than I was before I had the pig out" It triggers your metabolism

kirkor

It'd be nice to have a cycling feature, both for calories and for macros --- i.e. higher cal, high carb, low fat on workout days ... lower cal, low carb, higher fat on rest days ...