Does "banking" calories work?

Intentional_Me wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

Intentional_Me wrote: »

I really should start banking too but I'm set to 1200 a day for 10 more pounds so I hate the idea of getting to eat even less some days. Maybe I should just cut 100 6 days a week so I have an extra 600 to play with on Sat or something. Plus I could add more with working out

If you are down to the last 10 lbs, you should have your goal set to 0.5 lb/week rate of loss which would be a deficit of only 250 cals/day from maintenance (excluding exercise if you're using MFP NEAT method). If you aren't already set at these goals, then that might give you some extra calories in your baseline target which makes the ability to bank cals easier when you have higher goal to start with. Going under 1200, even if you plan to eat the cals back later in the week, can be challenging since you really need every one of those calories to fill your day.

I still have 85 or so to lose. Sorry for any confusion. I meant I am still set to 2 pounds a week for about 10 more pounds before I go to 1. 5 a week and so on.

And I'm 5 '3 so I'm thinking my maintenance may be around 1500 if I'm not actively working out. Makes me sad. Lol

Ahh, makes sense. Sounds like you are taking the smart, stepwise approach. Are you eating back exercise calories today? Are you losing at 2 lbs/week currently?

For what it's worth, I'm 5'2, and I have a high TDEE, not because of strenuous exercise but because I've worked to raise my daily activity level in addition to exercise. My maintenance is 2200, and that's mostly from walking (15K steps/day) and some light circuit training. So it's definitely possible to still be able to eat more even when petite!

Intentional_Me wrote: »

WinoGelato wrote: »

Intentional_Me wrote: »

I really should start banking too but I'm set to 1200 a day for 10 more pounds so I hate the idea of getting to eat even less some days. Maybe I should just cut 100 6 days a week so I have an extra 600 to play with on Sat or something. Plus I could add more with working out

If you are down to the last 10 lbs, you should have your goal set to 0.5 lb/week rate of loss which would be a deficit of only 250 cals/day from maintenance (excluding exercise if you're using MFP NEAT method). If you aren't already set at these goals, then that might give you some extra calories in your baseline target which makes the ability to bank cals easier when you have higher goal to start with. Going under 1200, even if you plan to eat the cals back later in the week, can be challenging since you really need every one of those calories to fill your day.

I still have 85 or so to lose. Sorry for any confusion. I meant I am still set to 2 pounds a week for about 10 more pounds before I go to 1. 5 a week and so on.

And I'm 5 '3 so I'm thinking my maintenance may be around 1500 if I'm not actively working out. Makes me sad. Lol

This will be me too, I have one day a week I eat at 1500. I have until next summer to get to goal weight so one day a week for the next 8 months I get to eat what I'm going to be able to eat for the rest of my life. Of course I can up my calories a bit with workouts.

Of course it works. It's all cumulative. Over the period of a year I lost 115 lbs, I can tell you from experience that was not all linear. I gained some, lost some, stayed the same weight at times. Overall, in those 365 days I was successful (very). When holidays or events came up, I would bust my *kitten* a little harder working out and increase my deficit for the days prior to and after those events. The result was no lasting gains. Just don't do it so that you can fit in cheat days on regular basis, that's setting yourself up for failure long term.

In the next year I expect to stop logging all together, so I will know what I can eat and what I shouldn't eat, when I can eat it, and what I probably should do to 'pay' for it if I over indulged. It's a system of checks and balances I'm trying to teach myself now in maintenance. It's not much different than what I did while I was dieting at all, and yes, that meant banking some calories from time to time.

sstini55 wrote: »

Someone said your body doesn't reset at midnight or Monday, but by doing this you are assuming it resets weekly??? That doesn't make sense.

No one is saying that either, but a week is a nice manageable chunk.

Look at it this way, when you could day-to-day and you run into a day where you're way over, you might count that day as a fail.

If you look at it weekly, and you go way over one day, you are able to make it up over the course of the week.

You could even look at it monthly if you wanted, but a lot of people would likely find that too be too long a period to track over.

SusanMFindlay wrote: »

Intentional_Me wrote: »

I'm hoping my energy will keep increasing and it will be much easier to increase my daily activity. I'm a stay at home mom right now so aside from cleaning the house, the occasional walk and working out I'm pretty sedentary.

How old are your kids? While I'm not "working out" when I'm with them, I find my two boys keep me on my feet! So, unless we're talking about an infant who mostly sleeps, feeds and poops, I'd be surprised if a stay at home mom was truly "sedentary".

3 & 1. Maybe not sitting all day but certainly not up moving around a lot either.