Weekly calorie intake v daily calorie intake

kelsully

I go for weekly. I wish MFP would show a weekly net calorie goal summary the way it does for exercise. It would make things easier to track!

on the apps in the iPhone and the android app you can see that but not on the website. If you are on the app homepage there is a tab that says summary, daily, weekly...if you hit weekly it will show you a bar graph of each day and at then a bar with the average on it. I use this to keep me on track

kelsully

I don't know which is supposed to be better, but I've just been focusing on daily intake and I've been losing steadily.

This works too as each day becomes part of your weekly average anyway. Using the weekly average is helpful if you have a varied workout schedule...for instance someone who walks three days a week but then does intense CrossFit 3 days. That would be a huge variation in calories burn and calorie needs for the day. People training for endurance events have long days where they burn twice their daily calorie goals in one workout. If I run 20 miles in one day I cannot eat all those calories unless I eat all junk, ice cream and booze. Therefore I can spread out my cals a little bit through the rest of the week. When I am just exercising for health and fitness and not training for something daily goals work fine. When I am training the weekly goals are practical.

IronPlayground

Hello there,

I am Alastair, i weight 223 lbs, used to be in great shape 10 years ago with rugby etc etc. I now need to lose 20lbs....

I have cut my calories down from around 3000 a day to 1200 net...correct times of the day, 30 mins of cardio and weight training to build lean muscle, been going for ONE WEEK and lost 0.6 of one pound...

Am i doing something wrong?

What can i do better?

Thankyou!

You won't be building any muscle at 1200 net. Muscle is already lean. You just need to burn the fat covering it. You can't do both, build muscle and burn fat. You need to pick one. If fat burning is your goal, then you need to determine a reasonable deficit. You are eating too little. I'd recommend a combo of heavy lifting and very little cardio.

gespo89

It doesn't matter if you track that over days, weeks, or months. Think of it like a savings account. If you make a deposit one day, and a withdrawal the next, or do them both on the same day, the amount in the account will still be effected the same. All that matters if if your total deposits(food) or total withdrawals(exercise) are bigger over the life of the account(your body).

crazihel

Thanks for all your replies - very helpful. I generally meet my daily goals apart from heavy gym days when I tend to be several hundred under, however I'm expecting weekend treats/social occasions to bump my overall weekly number up to goal!