Can someone explain ZigZagging to me?

Bump. I'm a little sad today... seems I've reached a small plateau.

It is when you eat a different amount of calories different days. (1200 Monday 1500 Tuesday 1700 Wednesday 1200 Thursday....) It helps you get off a plateau faster by tricking your body. For 2 weeks I didn't lose or gain anything. Easter weekend I started zigzagging and lost 2 lbs when I got on the scale Thursday. AggieCass09 is also zigzagging and a great motivator.

Bump

It is when you eat a different amount of calories different days. (1200 Monday 1500 Tuesday 1700 Wednesday 1200 Thursday....) It helps you get off a plateau faster by tricking your body. For 2 weeks I didn't lose or gain anything. Easter weekend I started zigzagging and lost 2 lbs when I got on the scale Thursday. AggieCass09 is also zigzagging and a great motivator.

Thanks!

Calorie cycling or zig-zagging is where you look at your calorie intake over a week and mix up the amounts each day so that your body doesn't get used to consuming a certain amount of calories each day. I also unintentionally started calorie zig-zagging over Easter weekend due to chaotic events (moving, half marathon, easter dinner carb-fest...etc) anyways I'm down 4 lbs since last week which is HUGE because since January i've lost 4 lbs TOTAL. I set up my calorie zig-zagging numbers from www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm. I work out 5 days a week and included that in the set up.

This has really seemed to get me off the plateau I've been on for months. The scale has gone down several ounces each day this week!

Message me if you have more questions.

i started yesterday with a plan to do it for 2 weeks...the idea behind it is to "jump" start your metabolism....in theory your body gets used to the same number of calories in and calories burned with the same daily goal and daily burn from exercise....zig zagging your calories thru out the week makes your body keep guessing what is going on...below is my blog about my plan to zig zag.....
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/bluiz13

essentially you take your daily calorie goal and times it by 7 for the week....then adjust each day accordingly so you have 2 high calorie days, 1 medium calorie day and 4 low calorie days using the total weekly calories.....

here's my plan....i'm currently at 1370 calories a day (1lb a week based on 183ish lbs) to start before i workout so 1370*7=9590 calories to spread out over the week....
my weigh in is thurs so i started on thurs with my first high calorie day....the key is to net the number you have designated for that day...which means you need to eat your exercise calories too.....so some days could be very high and it might be alarming to eat ALL those calories but if you make good food choices and not just eat junk on those days you will be fine.....thurs is my chinese takeout night and i have a huge burn day so yesterday i ended up eating 2643 calories yesterday but i also burned 958 calories with my workouts for a total net of 1685 where my goal was 1650...i was a bit over but i think it will all wash out by the end of the week....i'm going to try to blog about this process every few days if not every day so before you decide to do this please check it out if you want....i have lost 70+ lbs over the last 3+ years with 40lbs in just the last year....

i feel like this process of getting healthy and changing my life by making better choices over the LONG haul has made it possible for my overall goal loss of 108.8 lbs, when i reach my goal of 145ish, all the more possible.....but i do feel like sometimes you do need to do things to change it up a bit.....your body gets used to certain foods, certain exercises, certain ways and needs to be "woken" up....so i'm gonna try this and hope it gives me a boost on the loss chart and then i will proceed with regularly scheduled programming...and if i have to try this again later i will......i'm not in it for the quick fix or the super fast loss (i'm aiming for 1lb a week) so dont come looking to me for get skinny fast ideas....

good luck with your journey and i hope if you try the zig zag method you will keep everyone interested posted on how it went for you....

Your welcome Aggie!