for all who zigzag!

I don't do zig zagging on purpose, but often on weekends or at picnics, eat more than I should so try to stay at least a couple hundred calories under my goal at least 2 or 3 other days of the week. I've continued to lose weight that way.

I'll preface this with the fact that I'm 5' 4.5" with initially 25 - 30 lbs to lose.

What made you start, and continue with, zigzagging?

After losing about 2.5 lbs a week for my initial weeks on MFP, I was approaching a milestone on the scale that i was not able to break for the past year and I had a week when I lost only .5 lb and I wasn't hungry enough to eat all of my MFP calories. I felt I needed to mix it up. I tried a one day "cheat day", but my stomach had shrunk and I wasn't able to eat that much more on my "cheat day". I didn't want that big of a swing in my calories and I didn't want my stomach to be big enough to enable binging. i research zig zagging (aka calorie cylcing) on the web and on MFP boards. I used a free calculator at www.freedieting.com and I was off and running.

What does your average week intake allowance look like?

(before exercise calories, which I mostly eat back as often as i can):

Sunday 1283
Monday 1283
Tuesday 1200
Wednesday 1535
Thursday 1283
Friday 1200
Saturday 1409


Since starting zigzagging what weight loss have you had?

I broke through my plateau weight and have steadily lost about 1.5 lbs a week and I feel this schedule is much easier to maintain for me. I enjoy it and will continue.

So... if you decide to do it, the next question is how to set your calorie goals in MFP?

Here's how I do it:

I set my MFP daily goal to be my lowest calorie target of the week (e.g., 1200).

I then set up a custom cardio exercise for each day of the week: (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.).

Each custom exercise has the number of calories above 1200 that are my target for that day. I put them in as X calories burned in 1 minute. For the couple of days that my calorie target is 1200, I set that custom exercise to be 1 calorie burned for 1 minute of Tuesday exercise, for example, since MFP doesn't allow 0 calories burned for a custom exercise.

Then, each day, I add that day's cardio custom exercise as a tracked exercise and the extra calories get added to my MFP total. This works for me, since I'm used to eating back exercise calories, anyway.

You can message me directly if you have any trouble setting this up or have further questions I may be able to help you with.

Here are my custom exercises to include my zig zag calories (based on a 1200 MFP daily target), based on a schedule from a free calculator at www. freedieting.com:

Sun 1 minute 83 calories
Mon 1 minute 83 calories
Tue 1 minute 1 calorie
Wed 1 minute 335 calories
Thur 1 minute 83 calories
Fri 1 minute 1 calorie
Sat 1 minute 209 calories

Good luck!

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Found this on-line... Most people just think about rule #4 and forget the others. :-)

Rule One: Always eat at least 5 meals a day (preferably 6 or 7). Two or three meals simply isn't often enough. Your blood sugar levels will be controlled (and thus your cravings), you'll get protein in small amounts throughout the day to support growth and recovery, and (most important) the enzymes that store fat will be produced in far smaller amounts, making your body far less capable of storing fat! Simply, by providing your body with a consistent and frequent supply of calories -- life-giving energy -- its need to store fat is significantly reduced. Conversely, when you eat infrequently, your body recognizes a "famine" situation, and the enzymes are produced in large quantities to "swoop down" on every calorie you consume in order to store it as fat in preparation for the "famine" to come.

Rule Two: Remember the 1-2-3 rule. In each of your 5 meals, approximately 1 part of the calories should come from fats, 2 parts from protein and 3 parts from carbohydrates. This is a guideline, not a hard-and-fast law. Just keep the fat intake down to a low level (do not eliminate fat, as some fat is essential for maintaining good health), consume enough protein to support growth and recovery, and carbohydrates commensurable to your energy output (carbos are your body’s preferred energy fuel source).

Rule Three: When you sit down to eat, ask yourself, "What am I going to be doing for the next three hours of my life?" Then, if you're taking a nap, eat less than the average amount of carbos; if you're planning on being active, eat more than the average amount of carbos. For average between-meal activities, eat an average sized meal. Always keeep your protein intake up to an appropriate level. This simple system ensures that you'll never put fat on from eating excess calories, or cannibalize your muscles from eating too little.

Rule Four: Another thing to remember whether you're trying to lose fat or adding lean muscle is to "zigzag" your caloric intake. For example, if you want to lose fat, reduce your calories during the week, but "pig out" on Friday night and Saturday. This will 1) readjust your BMR upwards, 2) support lean tissue building, and 3) give you a psychological "lift." Remember, in Rule One you learned that your fat storing enzymes were no longer a threat, so you CAN pig out once in awhile! In fact, if you want to put on lean muscle, you MUST! There is no way you can maximize lean muscle mass while on a calorie-restricted diet.

Rule Five: Your reduced intake of cazlories makes it almost impossible to get all of the nutrients your body needs to remain healthy and active. So, it's important to supplement your diet with vitamins, minerals and other carefully selected substances to ensure maximum progress toward your fitness, health and fat loss goals.

Not to be contrarian, but I don't follow the five "rules" above, and I don't necessarily even agree with some of them.

My philosophy is that "pigging out" should not be part of our mind set if we want to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. I think "pigging out" two days a week can definity undue much of the positive things you do during the week, and can easily turn in to three days or four days of pigging out. Also, on my higher calorie days, I strive to not eat unhealthy things. I simply have larger portions of healthy meals, or add some higher calorie dishes such as brown rice pasta, etc. "Bad" foods are only an occasional item (2 - 3 times/month, max)

I also don't agree with rule number 5. The lower the calories you eat, it does become harder to get your vitamins and minerals, etc. which is why it increasingly becomes important to eat more nutritionally dense foods (you got it... fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, etc.). Your body does not process vitamin pills the way it absorbs nutrients from the foods you eat, and we should not become overly reliant on popping a pill as a solution, so it's best not to rely on them (except perhaps Vitamin D, B12, etc.) unless you are under a doctor's supervision and have tests that show you are low in some areas.

As you can see... I'm pretty passionate about nutrition...

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Bump - my first week of zig-zagging this week. Hope it will get me off this plateau. My calories look like this:

Monday 1649
Tuesday 1520
Wednesday 1979
Thursday 1649
Friday 1520
Saturday 1814
Sunday 1649

FYI - I used a free calculator at www.freedieting.com too.

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also i did try and space out the numbers and stuff but it didnt work when i pressed enter so the first column is the extreme, second the normal fat loss, and last the maintain

(in the above post)

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