Should I "even out" my calories for the week?

I tend to look at weekly calories. It means that I am over my daily limit on some days, but have leftover calories on other days.

It's kind of a modified TDEE-20% method.

The smartphone app for MFP has a weekly calorie setting; look under nutrition, at the bottom there is a weekly button @ the bottom left. It will tell you how under or over you are for the week. The default setting is a revolving 7 days (where "today" is always the 7th day of the week), but you can adjust it to whatever you want. I have mine resetting on Monday, so any day during the week I see home many calories I have left until the following Monday. It's like having a money budget, where exercising puts money in the bank and eating takes it out.

My android app just shows weekly from Monday to Sunday. I never thought to change the range. So I strictly go by that

Listen to your body eat what you can and hope you lose weight, if not, adjust as needed :-)


Also thank you, you had me check the settings to see if I can change the week range (i cant) And I found the area where I can edit the recipes I added myself. I'm so excited about this!

If you're trying to lose weight, then no.

If you're trying to gain weight, then yes.

If you feel weak or sick or tired, then yes.

If you feel awesome, then no.

The most popular question on MFP. What are you goals.
The most popular answer. It depends on your goals.

This...I love it. Totally accurate. I try to look at it per day for myself.

I always go by my weekly goal instead of my daily goal. That allows me some cheat days. I'm a nerd though. I have an Excel spreadsheet that calculates my daily calories consumed, my daily calories burned and tells me each day whether I'm over or under for the week. Since I've been tracking this way (I started in January), I have been under my weekly calorie goal for sixteen weeks.

On the day of a particularly intense and/or long workout, I have an abundance of "exercise calories" and sometimes leave a fair number of them on the table. On the day after, I'm often famished.


So I sometimes do what you're suggesting, and it works pretty well. Food is fuel for workouts and for recovery. On a "YMMV" note... I use MFP's NEAT method with my activity level set to Sedentary. It might not work so well for someone who's already using an average daily target based on weekly energy expenditures.

I tend to look at weekly calories. It means that I am over my daily limit on some days, but have leftover calories on other days.

It's kind of a modified TDEE-20% method.

The smartphone app for MFP has a weekly calorie setting; look under nutrition, at the bottom there is a weekly button @ the bottom left. It will tell you how under or over you are for the week. The default setting is a revolving 7 days (where "today" is always the 7th day of the week), but you can adjust it to whatever you want. I have mine resetting on Monday, so any day during the week I see home many calories I have left until the following Monday. It's like having a money budget, where exercising puts money in the bank and eating takes it out.

Hi there!

Can you explain how would this work? I checked on my app, and it says 7,494 net calories under weekly goal; and today is Friday. How would I use those calories as money budget?? Thanks!

On the day of a particularly intense and/or long workout, I have an abundance of "exercise calories" and sometimes leave a fair number of them on the table. On the day after, I'm often famished.


So I sometimes do what you're suggesting, and it works pretty well. Food is fuel for workouts and for recovery. On a "YMMV" note... I use MFP's NEAT method with my activity level set to Sedentary. It might not work so well for someone who's already using an average daily target based on weekly energy expenditures.

With my desk job and using the a Fitbit for tracking walking all day, I have mine set at sedentary too.

But apparently, I'm not getting the famished the next day thing.

Could be an intensity thing. For me at present, a really intense day is two hours of Krav Maga plus something else, like a half hour of hula hoop dancing or 5-10 miles walking. This week I was trying to make up for a major surplus on Sunday, so I didn't take any true rest days... The night I took my KM classes, I slept fitfully and woke up with a headache... I could tell my deficit was the problem, so I dug a spoon into a jar of chocolate hazelnut butter and all was well about an hour later. If you're not feeling hungry or fatigued on your rest days, you may not need to compensate.

Here is basically what I do, and it works for me, hopefully it makes sense and maybe it'll work for you or others.

I work a sedentary desk job, so in order to "lose 2lbs a week" i'm only allowed around 1200 calories a day, which I feel is too low, and i'm always starving. BUT, I also work out consistently (at least three days a week of martial arts classes aka taekwondo). And after all that exercise, I've got a huge surplus of calories that I could "eat back" for that day, but I usually can't eat that much in a day without feeling sick. Especially if the next day i'm going to turn around and eat almost nothing on a day when I don't work out at all. So what i've finally done, is averaged out how many calories I burn in a typical week from that exercise, and then added 80% of those calories back into my calorie goals every day. So I started out getting about 1700 calories a day, and as i've lost weight it's gone down. I do still log if I exercised and how many calories burned in MFP to keep track, but I NEVER eat those "extra calories" it says I have because I've already factored them in for the week. Then, every week, I go back and reassess if i'm making my goals, losing what I want to lose, and if I should exercise more/eat less during the week. So far in the last two months, it's been working, and I never feel excessively hungry. It may sound like it's overly complicated, and I guess I could kick my thing up to lightly or moderately active on MFP instead, but I kinda like being in control of those numbers myself.

If you're trying to lose weight, then no.

If you're trying to gain weight, then yes.

If you feel weak or sick or tired, then yes.

If you feel awesome, then no.

The most popular question on MFP. What are you goals.
The most popular answer. It depends on your goals.

This...I love it. Totally accurate. I try to look at it per day for myself.

Accuracy is in the eye of the beholder. I've lost 13.2 pounds in 3 months, so clearly for me it works. Everyone is different. Some people have to have consistency; I need variety.

When I keep my weekly calories between 13,500 and 14,500, I lose weight.

Hi there!

Can you explain how would this work? I checked on my app, and it says 7,494 net calories under weekly goal; and today is Friday. How would I use those calories as money budget?? Thanks!

It depends on which day "resets" your weekly calories. When I first started looking at it, the end day was always today, and so the weekly budget was different. I found myself getting into trouble, b/c if I had two higher cal days in a row (or two lower cal days, for that matter), it would throw it way off.

I set it for my week to start on Monday. Usually Monday-Thursday are pretty stable for me, as far as calories in. Tuesday is a higher cardio day, but I usually don't eat all those back that day; I save them for the weekend. So right now, looking at my phone, it says I'm 4153 cal under my weekly goal, which includes the rest of today, Saturday, Sunday, but doesn't count any additional exercise I will do this weekend (I usually have a high cardio day on one or both weekend days). If I don't exercise at all this weekend, that still give me 4153/2 = 2072 calories each day; my daily net is 1750.

To the OP: if you can't change that setting on the Android app, you could just go back at the end of the week and see how much over or under you are, and then you will have some extra to play with for the weekend. Let's say Monday you are 76 cal under goal; Tuesday 112; Wednesday 82, and so on. You COULD add all that up and go over your calories that much later in the week. I generally try to leave about 300-500 total weekly calories as a cushion at the end of the week, to account for any errors in calculating exercise calories, errors in food measuring (esp if I've gone out to eat).

Feel free to message w/ any questions; I'm not always on the forums.