Cheat day during maintenance period?

splashblob

I know when you are in deficit, it's OK to do this once in a while but since I am in my maintenance mode now, if having a cheat day will hurt my attempt trying to maintain my weight?

So far I have seen people trying to lose weight have a cheat day per week, I want to know does anybody who is maintaining their weight do this too or not? If yes, did you just not tracking and eat whatever you like or you are still logging your food anyway? Do we have to bank the calories before or eat less the day after?

The_Enginerd

It can hurt at maintaining your weight if you eat at maintenance the rest of the week and then have a cheat day and go over.

I don't do "cheat" days during the week, but I do vary my calories throughout the week and average over the week. I still log everything.

Robin has an awesome blog entry that cover maintenance issues well.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Robin1117/view/maintenance-is-a-choice-my-2-years-of-maintaining-263772

splashblob

Thanks for your answer. I have one more question though, when you average your calories per week, is it base on what you have burned/ate last week right? Or it is based on the current week that you are average things out? For example, last week I'm a lot less active than the current week, does it means I will have to eat less in the current week first, then perhaps I can eat more in the following week?

capperboy

For me I have to stay within my maintenance calories in the current week. I have found it to difficult to adjust current calorie intake on a previous period.
Managing maintenance retrospectively would make the whole exercise unwieldy, how many weeks to you track back if you have consecutive cheat weeks?

The_Enginerd

I average over the current week. The Android app (think the iPhone does as well) has a weekly breakdown that makes this easy. There is no reason you couldn't average between weeks as well, e.g. if you eat 500 over one week, then eat 500 under the next to make up for it. Agree with the above that it could get to be a bit too much work and thinking about it though.

splashblob

Thanks for clearing it all up. So I suppose to bank up my calories intake so that I could have one free day I can eat without tracking. I will try it out this week from now.

paxbfl

I sort of simplify things and say that my workout and my free day are "givens" in the equation. So my daily calorie deficit on the other 6 days have to be adjusted for that.

For me, my free day puts me about 1,500 calories over my sedentary TDEE of 2,250. (I logged it a few times to get this number - I don't log it every week any longer).

If you divide the 1,500 over 6 days, that's 250 calories per day.

I burn 500 calories a day at the gym the other 6 days, so that makes my TDEE around 2,750. Subtract the 250 from that, and you get 2,500 calories.

I've been doing that the last few weeks and have lost a little weight (just under .5 pound a week) so I think I may bump it up to 2,600 calories and see if that works better for maintenance. It's still a bit of trial and error, but you get the idea.

I realize you said that your exercise varies. I think that would be a lot harder to manage. Maybe log everything for a couple of weeks and then average it out to establish your target calorie number. I still think it's better to have a regular number to shoot for each day rather than constantly adjust it for exercise.

Hope this helps! Good luck!