Little slip. HELP !!

You'll probably gain more weight from stressing about eating the chocolate than you will from actually eating the chocolate.

Mmmm, chocolate..... Loooove chocolate

At <1600, you probably still ate at a deficit. If you are quite small, very short, very close to goal weight, etc, it might be a small deficit. But probably still a deficit, meaning, you still ate less than you burned, you will still lose weight.

Even if you ate over, it'd be by, what, 50-100 calories? It takes 3500 over maintenance calories to put on 1 lb of fat. Even if someday you eat enough to put on 1 lb, you can just go back to your usual ways for a week and take the 1 lb back off.

So there's no need to do anything special to "recover" and no, you won't gain weight. Even if you gain weight, weight comes back off, just from hitting your calorie target more regularly. (Water weight aside -- some people do put on WATER weight if they up their calories significantly in a day, but it will drop back off without you needing to do anything special.)

I do think you should run your maintenance number and look at the math behind weight loss though. It's really simple math, and will help prevent fear/panic/worry and thoughts of "recovering" because you ate a chocolate bar. And it may help you realize that, actually, you can totally have things like chocolate bars sometimes, even a big one. You can go over your target sometimes, too, I mean, it slows you down a small amount, but that's it usually. You can set your goal in MFP (temporarily) to Maintenance. The calories it gives you are what you need to maintain your current weight -- more, once you add the walking. You'd have to eat that, plus another 3500 calories, to gain 1 lb. And anything under that is contributing to your loss.

And if you do that and STILL feel afraid, think about it this way: If every time someone ate very tiny, calorie-light meals all day and then caved and had a chocolate bar, they gained 1 lb of fat, we'd all weigh like 1000 lbs. It just isn't how weight works. You have to eat over maintenance consistently over time, just like you have to eat under it over time to lose.

yeahtaylz wrote: »

futuremanda wrote: »

At <1600, you probably still ate at a deficit. If you are quite small, very short, very close to goal weight, etc, it might be a small deficit. But probably still a deficit, meaning, you still ate less than you burned, you will still lose weight.

Even if you ate over, it'd be by, what, 50-100 calories? It takes 3500 over maintenance calories to put on 1 lb of fat. Even if someday you eat enough to put on 1 lb, you can just go back to your usual ways for a week and take the 1 lb back off.

So there's no need to do anything special to "recover" and no, you won't gain weight. Even if you gain weight, weight comes back off, just from hitting your calorie target more regularly. (Water weight aside -- some people do put on WATER weight if they up their calories significantly in a day, but it will drop back off without you needing to do anything special.)

I do think you should run your maintenance number and look at the math behind weight loss though. It's really simple math, and will help prevent fear/panic/worry and thoughts of "recovering" because you ate a chocolate bar. And it may help you realize that, actually, you can totally have things like chocolate bars sometimes, even a big one. You can go over your target sometimes, too, I mean, it slows you down a small amount, but that's it usually. You can set your goal in MFP (temporarily) to Maintenance. The calories it gives you are what you need to maintain your current weight -- more, once you add the walking. You'd have to eat that, plus another 3500 calories, to gain 1 lb. And anything under that is contributing to your loss.

And if you do that and STILL feel afraid, think about it this way: If every time someone ate very tiny, calorie-light meals all day and then caved and had a chocolate bar, they gained 1 lb of fat, we'd all weigh like 1000 lbs. It just isn't how weight works. You have to eat over maintenance consistently over time, just like you have to eat under it over time to lose.

Phew!!! So I don't have to deprive myself the next day in order to 'balance' out my calories? So relieving. Thank you very much. This has helped clear up so much! According to MFP my maintenance number is 1670kcals so yeah I was still under for today anyway.

Nope! You're good. And I'm glad you're feeling better about it!

Another way you can look at it is to average your calories. If I assume you ate 1200 all this week for six days, then 1590, it's the same as eating 1256 on each of those days. I did this with mine after Easter... it can help with perspective!

Even if you had gone over -- lets say 2000. That'd be, averaged, if you ate 1200 the other 6 days, like eating 1314 every day that week. So the day you went over, it does have an impact, but it's just a bit of a slowing.