Calorie Shifting - do you? How do you like it?

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jennsteff
jennsteff Posts: 6
in Food and Nutrition
I recently read about calorie shifting. It sounds different than "calorie spiking." The premise is that you take your calories for the week add them up and then redistribute them in varying amounts during the week - so weekly, you are still coming out at an average equal to your baseline daily calorie goal. Something like this:

1200 calorie baseline:

Sunday: 1200
Monday: 900
Tuesday: 1200
Wednesday: 1500
Thursday: 900
Friday: 1200
Saturday: 1500

I think it's a similar concept of the calorie spiking in that it's intended to 'trick' your metabolism, but without the "cheat day" concept per se of double or unlimited calories. I still throw in a 'cheat meal' of some sort once or twice a month outside of this. But since I started it's shocked me how much faster I'm losing. You?

Replies

  • CoderGal
    CoderGal Posts: 6,800 Member
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    I do this naturally because I find that if I have a couple sedentary/I-wasn't-hungry couple of days I'm really hungry the next. I don't find that it's changed my weight loss at all...so technically yeah it does what it says. It seems to slow down my metabolism when I get below 1200 (those are purely I hardly moved days) and speed up when I eat more. When it boils down to it I think my body is smarter then some of the things I read so if I'm hungry, I eat! If I'm not, I don't worry about it.
  • vypeters
    vypeters Posts: 475 Member
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    I don't see why it wouldn't work, your cumulative calories are still the same. I didn't do this because I ate boring - pretty much the same thing day in and day out. I got hugely obese because I invested so much emotion in food...I decided to become an "eat to fuel" person and eating routinely helped that.

    Glad it works for you.
  • skywa
    skywa Posts: 901 Member
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    eat when your hungry, just make healthy choices :D

    i do carb cycling so i kind of do this w/o trying most days. high carb days= high calories. low carb days= low calories
  • thatgirl125
    thatgirl125 Posts: 294 Member
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    I've tried this and for me, it caused me to over eat and get off track.
    I hope it works for you if you try it! It was nice eating more the first couple of days.
  • LaurenAOK
    LaurenAOK Posts: 2,475 Member
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    I do this, just not as organized. Basically I focus on reaching my weekly goal but I don't distinguish how many calories I should eat each day. Some days I go over my 1200, some days I'm under. As long as it evens out for the week, I'm happy. I have been losing consistently this way.

    As an above poster said, I eat when I'm hungry, I don't eat when I'm not.
  • jomiley23
    jomiley23 Posts: 76
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    I haven't done it. I'm intrigued enough, and stuck in one spot for the last two weeks...so I think I will try it this week and see what happens. If I don't lose, I'm not any worse off than I was the last two weeks. If I can remember... : ) I will try to come back and post some results.
  • jomiley23
    jomiley23 Posts: 76
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    I haven't done it. I'm intrigued enough, and stuck in one spot for the last two weeks...so I think I will try it this week and see what happens. If I don't lose, I'm not any worse off than I was the last two weeks. If I can remember... : ) I will try to come back and post some results.

    Well, I tried it. And it was too easy to keep shifting up rather than down. So I'm going to stick to my original plan. I gained a pound over the past ten days. I think that's the danger in this method. I was over for the week because I kept thinking - "I'll shift down tomorrow."

    Tomorrow never came.
  • chaoticxinsane
    chaoticxinsane Posts: 54
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    I don't have any kind of structure to it, but some of my days are much longer than others, and other days are much, much less active than others.

    -Sunday I'm always up from 3am to 11pm or midnight. Sometimes I have trouble eating that early in the morning and stay close to 1500, sometimes I don't and go over.
    -Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are the other days I work, so I usually stay pretty close to my 1500.
    -Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are my days off, and if I don't wiggle a workout into there I rarely go over about 1300 since I become one with the computer and don't bustle enough to really get that hungry now that I've stopped mindlessly grazing.
  • hirensthenameliftinsthegame
    hirensthenameliftinsthegame Posts: 233
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    eat when your hungry, just make healthy choices :D

    i do carb cycling so i kind of do this w/o trying most days. high carb days= high calories. low carb days= low calories

    even my low carb days my deficit only runs about 500 cals or less, eat a ton of buttery foods :D
  • CarrieAnne22
    CarrieAnne22 Posts: 231 Member
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    bump

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