I have a "strange" goal.......

Well, I wasn't asking for approval, LOL
.

Good, because I wasn't not offering approval. I never offer approval. People post, I give my honest opinion based on my personal experience. I'm not your parent. Do whatever you want to do and it doesn't affect me one whit. The reason I even bother posting in topics like this is because I don't want OTHER people to see your plan and think it's the right course of action.

I'm interested to know how one day of intense excerise per month could cause a plateau?

Ditto !
I'm guessing people haven't read the OP properly.
Otherwise all those people that do a long distance cycle or half marathon are going to be hitting a plateau.....

Yup, pretty sure they quote (in capitals) ONE day a month. Apart from minimal muscle burn and maybe needing more fuel next day this is hardly unsimilar to fasting at a much lower frequency and doing it 12 days a year won't cause any damage unless I am missing something?

Person #1: The problem isn't the intense exercise per se, it's that the OP plans on doing much more exercise than usual (I'm fine with that) and then purposely not eating enough to recover from it (there's your problem)

Person #2: Yep, read it properly. Did you? Are you suggesting that people that run marathons don't try to recover after then finish the marathon? Are you imagining people that do super long distance cycling aren't drained the next few days?

Person #3: Lets say it's similar to fasting (not really). Does fasting break plateaus? If the OP is not going to eat more fuel that day why do you think he's going to eat it the next day? He's clearly not. I agree that it will do minimal harm. But it will do NO good.

The title of the thread is "I have a strange goal". I prefer to have sensible, effective goals.

Well, I wasn't asking for approval, LOL
.

Good, because I wasn't not offering approval. I never offer approval. People post, I give my honest opinion based on my personal experience. I'm not your parent. Do whatever you want to do and it doesn't affect me one whit. The reason I even bother posting in topics like this is because I don't want OTHER people to see your plan and think it's the right course of action.

I'm interested to know how one day of intense excerise per month could cause a plateau?

Ditto !
I'm guessing people haven't read the OP properly.
Otherwise all those people that do a long distance cycle or half marathon are going to be hitting a plateau.....

Yup, pretty sure they quote (in capitals) ONE day a month. Apart from minimal muscle burn and maybe needing more fuel next day this is hardly unsimilar to fasting at a much lower frequency and doing it 12 days a year won't cause any damage unless I am missing something?

Person #1: The problem isn't the intense exercise per se, it's that the OP plans on doing much more exercise than usual (I'm fine with that) and then purposely not eating enough to recover from it (there's your problem)

Person #2: Yep, read it properly. Did you? Are you suggesting that people that run marathons don't try to recover after then finish the marathon? Are you imagining people that do super long distance cycling aren't drained the next few days?

Person #3: Lets say it's similar to fasting (not really). Does fasting break plateaus? If the OP is not going to eat more fuel that day why do you think he's going to eat it the next day? He's clearly not. I agree that it will do minimal harm. But it will do NO good.

The title of the thread is "I have a strange goal". I prefer to have sensible, effective goals.

"Person #4:" IF on a 5:2 ratio can still be fit in with work outs which would leave you burning more cals than you eat on a regualr basis so yeah it is really, and yes it has been shown to break through plateaus consistantly while having minimal negative side effects. While I do not support IF or think it is the healthiest way to lose BF% there are actually lots of benefits shown from it. Would you like me to find multiple studies showing the advantages or can you use google yourself before declaring it's not the same?

My bad. I must have missed the part where he said he was taking this deficit by fasting. I thought he was getting there via an overly long, very intense session of exercise that he would purposely not attempt to recover from.

Maybe i did misread after all

My bad. I must have missed the part where he said he was taking this deficit by fasting. I thought he was getting there via an overly long, very intense session of exercise that he would purposely not attempt to recover from.

Maybe i did misread after all

Ooops. Me too. That's what I based my previous reply on.

Let's do a little math.

Everybody realizes that the OP is talking about a 3000 cal deficit, not 1800, right? We keep throwing the 1800 number around, but since that number reflects a 1000 cal per day deficit already, when he does 3600 cals worth of cardio and only eats half that back, he'll be at 3000 cal deficit for the day. Is anyone thinking a 3000 cal deficit in a single day is a good idea?

More math. The day before Magic Day he will have been in a 1000 cal deficit. The day after he'll be in a 1000 cal deficit. And all the days before and after he's going to have this deficit. This is not similar to IF 5:2 dieting plan. In that plan, he'd eat 2800 cals 5 days per week and 600-800 2 days per week. That's 15,400 per week [(2800*5)+(700*2)]. With the OP's strategy he's going to eat 10,800 total for the week [(1800*6)+(1*0)]. That's 4600 less net calories than the 5:2 IF plan. While doing intense exercise. For non-elite athlete. That's 100lbs away from GW.

For the person that's comparing this Magic Day to a marathon runner or endurance cyclist, no, you did not mention recovery. Neither did the OP. That is why I mentioned it. Somebody has to. Because the marathon runner and cyclist certainly include it in their plans. In many cases, they prepare for big event by eating more in the days prior, in addition to eating more to recover after. While I don't think he's going to hurt himself on Magic Day, he's definitely going put himself in position to be miserable for several days after, and when the scale doesn't move like he wants, he may get frustrated and quit altogether.

The OP has 100lbs to lose to get to goal, so if he's not going to not going to burn out 80lbs away from goal, he may wish to look at a long term plan that includes recovery. And if he doesn't, and wants to find "what works for him", that's fine too. This post is meant to be the guy standing in front of the bridge, waving flares at oncoming traffic, trying to warn them of danger ahead. The OP can do whatever he wants. I'm hoping no one else blindly follows him into the abyss.

********* Used some assumptions because I don't know the OP's stats. Since MFP is giving him 1800 cals per day and I'm betting that he set it to 2lbs a week that means his maintenance is around 2800 cals. His goal is to lose 100 lbs so I'm guessing he's somewhere in the 260-280 range. I get to that number because when I started on MFP i was 276 and was given 1880 cals per day to lose 2lbs per week. I suck at math but I should be in the ballpark.********

OK

I'm a 5'5, 145lb, 34-year-old woman, and it takes me running a half marathon (13.1 miles) to burn about 1,500 calories, give or take a few. You don't have a profile pic, but even if we assume you're a 6'5 300-lb man who burns a lot more calories than I do, you're still talking about far more exercise than most human beings, even Olympians, could actually perform on a daily basis.

But let's pretend the goal was actually achievable. You're talking about a deficit of about 1,840 plus the deficit MFP already creates, which is 500 calories, give or take a few, so let's call it 2,350. Do you have any idea how dangerous it would be for your body to have a weekly deficit over over 15,000 calories? What that would do to your muscles, metabolism, and heart? So much for your marathon-a-day plans, because your body will get sick faster than you can lace your sneakers.

You have to be reasonable here. You didn't get to where you are now overnight, and you won't lose all the weight overnight, either. Like most people here, I have changed my life through diet and exercise, and for the first time in my adult life I am very happy with my appearance, health, and fitness. But it took 10 months to lose 60 pounds, not 10 weeks.

**** And I just read in your responses where you clarified that this was only for one day a month, not EVERY day. Huge difference, but still not a great idea. It'll make your metabolism slow to a crawl, for one, though it won't be nearly as damaging as I originally thought!

I would think this is totally doable. When I was running regularly and training for half-marathon I would have one long run a week that really upped my calories burned. Seems like this would be similar but on a once a month basis.

Let's do a little math.

Everybody realizes that the OP is talking about a 3000 cal deficit, not 1800, right?

Wrong.

I will eat my 1800 plus calories, and burn 3600..... so that is an 1800 calorie deficit at the end one one day each month.

no. it's more than that because you arent taking into account the amount of calories you already burn by being alive, right? the 1800 is a already set up as a deficit unless it's your maintenance. so if your goal is set up to eat 500 calories a day less than you need then we're talking 2300 calorie deficit.


with that said, i'd say try it. as long as you are healthy the worse that can happen is that you find the next day you are hungry as heel or tired as hell.

also as an FYI i think you would have received different responses to this thread had you said you were going to have 1 marathon workout session for the sake of fitness rather than saying it's for the sake of weight loss.