Floating Calories per week?

Look at it as "average" daily calories: 1900 calories/day = 13,300 calories/week. As long as you don't go over that amount in the week, it doesn't matter when you eat (drink) them.
If you plan on drinking 2 beer over the weekend, subtract those calories from your goal of 13300 and plan the rest of the week around the remaining calories.

When I want to 'bank' calories, I don't eat back any of my exercise calories that week. But with MFP, you can basically do whatever you want. You can just eat less during the week every day and save a some extra for the weekend. Of course with drinking, less than wise food choices are often made, so you need to factor that in also.

I usually balance out a weeks worth of cals rather then a day.....so if I know I want to have a few beers while the Packers play, I will build up extra cals for the week and then go over cals on sunday......or if I went over on monday night football, I work the remainder of the week to balance it back out. Some people will bank their exercise cals that they earn for special events also. Though if using MFP's exercise cals I would probably only take about 3/4 of the cals it offers as it tends to estimate a little high! Good Luck!

Hey all,

My wife started WW about 5-6months ago and has had great success with it and has been pushing me to join as well. I can't really justify paying for a subscription of that as MFP does basically the same thing. (She can keep her sub... if it works, it's priceless).

One of the features of that app that I really like and I'm mostly questioning is the "floating points" that they have to spend in a week and if someone knows some general guidelines to follow in that regards.

Basically, lets just say she's allowed 20pts/day and has a weekly bank of 40pts that she can use at any time throughout the week. My limit on here is ~1900Cal/day and I'm wondering if there would be some sort of equivalent "bank" that I could kind of set up for myself as well.

I mean, lets just be honest... I live in Wisconsin, and I like to drink on the weekends. :laugh:

I actually log my exercise for the week on the weekend instead, that way I "bank" those calories so that I don't go over.
I'd rather eat back my exercise calories on the days I tend to go over.
It has really helped me stay on track.

What they said. You dont need any subscription and you dont need any special ww fancy language. If you want just view your calories over the week. As long as you are still at an average or overall deficit, then you should be on track.

I dont really eat back, but if I had to its not going to make me lose sleep. You have scope to save a few hundred a day or do more exercise to cater for your beer at the weekend.

Sure, eat maybe 200-300 less a day during the week and save them up for your beer drinking day

This,

The other option is to find out what your maintenance calorie goal is and just make sure you're still under that at the end of the day.

Uhhh.. 20 points a day? 26 is the minimum for the PointsPlus system. Did they change it again? Otherwise that'll only be around 850 calories a day.

I was on Weight Watchers and 26 points a day usually got me to around 1100 calories (2 servings of fruit only). So the extra 49 per week brings it up to a healthier level. But it allows for the flexibility to eat more or less on some days and still essentially get all the appropriate calories in over the entirety of the week. So she should definitely be eating those extra flex points.

So if you were to compare it to MFP... say it says you need to eat 1900 cals a day to lose weight. To go with a similar weight watchers style flexibility, you might actually eat 1700 cals a day with 200 x 7 = 1400 calories to allocate how you wish through the week - either 200 extra a day, all at once, or any combo thereof.

Edit: Also wanted to add I found determining alcohol points very difficult while I was on WW. So MFP might be a better pick for you since you want to include them. Both systems work. You could also just share her subscription (I shared one with a friend). The exercise points would be conservative for you assuming she is smaller than you.

Check out this site if you're interested in just sharing her subscription (since then when she cooks and says something is 11 points, you don't have to try to figure out exactly what she put in the recipe and how many calories it is). You can get your daily points goal from the site below. That's how I did it. That, plus an Excel spreadsheet I kept on my phone instead of tracking online. It did the same thing.

http://www.exercise4weightloss.com/weight-watchers.html