Negative calories

Honest answer? Those are the days that I renew my personal relationship with God - I say a prayer and then go to bed early.

If I can get a walk in or better still a trip to the gym, I can get more calories in the budget, but that isn't always an option.

ftsolk wrote: »

Suppose you go out for brunch and get carried away. Next thing you know, it's a little after noon, and you have no calories left. In fact, you've gone over your goal. You're also in a position where you're not likely to be able to excercise that day.

How do you figure out dinner, etc if you have no calories left? I'm used to planning based on what I have left, and when I have nothing left to spend on a meal, I almost always just continue to go overboard.

Dr. Judith Beck covers fixing the "I already blew it, why get back on track now" thinking in this book on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for overeating, which was available in my library system, so perhaps yours as well.

The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person

Can thinking and eating like a thin person be learned, similar to learning to drive or use a computer? Beck (Cognitive Therapy for Challenging Problems) contends so, based on decades of work with patients who have lost pounds and maintained weight through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Beck's six-week program adapts CBT, a therapeutic system developed by Beck's father, Aaron, in the 1960s, to specific challenges faced by yo-yo dieters, including negative thinking, bargaining, emotional eating, bingeing, and eating out. Beck counsels readers day-by-day, introducing new elements (creating advantage response cards, choosing a diet, enlisting a diet coach, making a weight-loss graph) progressively and offering tools to help readers stay focused (writing exercises, to-do lists, ways to counter negative thoughts). There are no eating plans, calorie counts, recipes or exercises; according to Beck, any healthy diet will work if readers learn to think differently about eating and food. Beck's book is like an extended therapy session with a diet coach. (Apr.)

Yup. One bad day doesn't have to derail anything. Eat a lighter dinner, go for a walk if you can, if not, log it, and move on. A slightly smaller loss that week (or even a gain) is not the end of the world.

I focus on calories for the week, not the day, so I'd factor it into my week. If I didn't--and assuming I was trying to keep a deficit--I'd eat a light/low cal dinner that would leave overall calories below maintenance.

I'd also definitely not beat myself up over it, but I would review the reasons why it happened, so it would be less likely to happen again.

Eat low cal dinner then I subtract that from the next few days calories so my weekly deficit remains.

Go to bed

It happens occasionally, as people have said, just have a fairly low cal dinner and start afresh tomorrow

solieco1 wrote: »

I like the weekly calorie report. Seems to keep me level headed if one day is up.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I focus on calories for the week, not the day, so I'd factor it into my week. If I didn't--and assuming I was trying to keep a deficit--I'd eat a light/low cal dinner that would leave overall calories below maintenance.

No affiliation or anything, but I found an app called Poundaweek the other day. It calculates your calorie needs for a week based on height, current weight, etc., and then divides them by seven to give you a daily limit. If you go over, it adjusts the other days downward. If you log under, it adjusts them upward. (It also tracks macros.) I've found the results pretty interesting!

(What I do is use the "quick add" function at the end of each day to just plug in the calories and macros I get from my MyFitnessPal log. I could see its usefulness in helping people over "oops, I slipped up and overate" bumps, though!)