Using exercise calories for weekend cheat meal (s)
katebeermann
Posts: 6 Member
Hi everyone,
So I recently switched from Weight Watchers. We could use extra calories from exercise for a cheat meal (s) or snacks as long as you don’t go over your points/calories each week.
Is this something you all do as well?
So I recently switched from Weight Watchers. We could use extra calories from exercise for a cheat meal (s) or snacks as long as you don’t go over your points/calories each week.
Is this something you all do as well?
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Replies
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Following just because I would like to know the answer as well. As far as i knew each day was a new start and you couldnt carry over but that might not be the case at all.1
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Yes, there are people here who manage their calories on a weekly basis and will "save" calories for the weekend or a day when they plan to eat more.8
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Yes. MFP doesn't give you weekly points (and exercise calories are added to the day you burn them) but you can certainly save calories on some days and then use them on others. As long as you maintain your overall desired deficit over the course of the week you will be fine.5
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short answer? yes
long answer? yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss16 -
Yep, agreeing with others. I follow a weekly calorie goal. Occasionally, I bank for the weekend (many people do successfully), but usually I just have some higher days and some lower and let it balance out over the week. No issues with losing or maintenance.4
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I am in maintenance, but I do this. If you look at your diary and scroll down to the bottom, there's a "nutrition" button. You can see a week view of your past 7 days of calories. My myfitnesspal app is synced to my fitbit, so my exercise calories are automatically removed from the daily totals. I will cheat on weekends as long as my average daily intake is close to my goal (maintenance) for the week. If I'm too far over, I'll cut back over the next week. I always go with the weekly average.2
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Yep. I go on a weekly calorie average instead of a daily. it makes living and weight loss much easier and less stressful
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Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy13
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Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
Not likely - you discovered the fact of water weight fluctuations. Just a bigger effect of it.
Called bridesmaid syndrome - bridal party basically starves themselves for a week to fit into their gowns and look the way they want - and then eat 1 piece of cake at reception - and gain 5 lbs the next day.
Never mind the weight of all the food eaten didn't weigh 5lbs that night - they all think it's fat.
Extra exercise pulling out stored muscle glucose, not eating enough to replenish through the week.
Obviously burned some extra fat too with extra calorie deficit.
Weekend likely ate many more carbs than normal and refilled all those stores, which has attached water to each glucose.
Just now have slowly come down to that same reduced level.
Extra sodium far and above what was being eaten that week likely contributed to the effect too - you had artificially low weight reading basically with less than normal water, and then went well above with artificially more than normal.
Fat is not fast lost or gained.17 -
Yes, it’s St. Patty’s this weekend in Chicago. Stocking up the cals this week for a fun weekend!2
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I often bank my calories during the week for more indulgent weekends. I don’t call it cheating. That’s just the typical pattern of my social life and my eating habits to have higher calorie days on the weekends.
I find this works best when you are not working with an exceptionally low target during the week, when you aren’t banking more than a couple hundred cals per day so that your difference is maybe 500-1000 on the weekend. If you go more extreme one way or another it begins to look more like a binge restrict cycle and is harder to recover from.
@angelsja I believe that’s likely what the issue was with your birthday celebration.
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Thank you everyone, very helpful!1
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Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
Your weight going up for two weeks isn’t an indication that you gained fat through your birthday meal. I was just looking at my trends and I go through a 12-14 day stretch every single month where my weight goes above my lowest recorded weight before I starts dropping to new lows. When I start dropping again, sometimes it will be a full pound or more a day, sometimes two or three days in a row, followed by losing a fraction of a pound for many more days in a row. It all evens out. Those two weeks of “gains” were not gains at all.4 -
Yes. MFP doesn't give you weekly points (and exercise calories are added to the day you burn them) but you can certainly save calories on some days and then use them on others. As long as you maintain your overall desired deficit over the course of the week you will be fine.
you can look at your weekly goal on the app though.0 -
Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
And, as we've discussed many times before, that's part of why you need to get yourself away from this restrict-overexercise-overeat cycle that you're in.
And why you need to start understanding scale fluctuations.8 -
My Bday party. Will eat all kinds....Expecting massive water weight. Its fine, my cat peed on my scale and fried it. so, ignorance is bliss....thank you Rocky, rest in peace old man!4
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I always use my exercise calories for food, weekend or not, "cheat" or not, it's what you're supposed to do with exercise calories. I don't really make distinctions by the type of food I'm eating, so I don't really have cheat meals - everything is fair game and can be part of my diet. I do, however, sort my foods into "can afford" and "can't afford". If I can't afford and I really want the food, yes, I save my exercise calories for a few days.5
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Yes I'm burning an extra 50-100 calories a day on top of my usual deficit this week so I can have a drink or 2 and a small desert with my salad when I go out for dinner with friends on Friday. I burn between 2000-2300 calories a day so I can afford to have a big deficit but this will go down once I switch to a 250 cal deficit. You don't want to create too big a deficit either, make sure not to go under 1200 net calories.
It's worked in the past and I plan on keeping this same strategy in maintenance. Of course you have to be ok with your weight going up from water retention/more food in your system for a few days afterwards.0 -
collectingblues wrote: »Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
And, as we've discussed many times before, that's part of why you need to get yourself away from this restrict-overexercise-overeat cycle that you're in.
And why you need to start understanding scale fluctuations.
I do understand scale fluctuations and my weight trended upwards for a few days then dropped back down but took 2 full weeks to go back to pre birthday weight where I was steadily losing previous to that on 1500 cals per day2 -
collectingblues wrote: »Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
And, as we've discussed many times before, that's part of why you need to get yourself away from this restrict-overexercise-overeat cycle that you're in.
And why you need to start understanding scale fluctuations.
I do understand scale fluctuations and my weight trended upwards for a few days then dropped back down but took 2 full weeks to go back to pre birthday weight where I was steadily losing previous to that on 1500 cals per day
That doesn't mean it wasn't water weight that caused the scales to go up. It was.5 -
collectingblues wrote: »Well it didn't work for me I had my birthday coming up so did extra exercise (alot) didn't eat them went out for my birthday scale obviously went up but then took 2 full weeks to come back down to pre birthday weight -_- so all that extra exercise was a big waste if time/energy
And, as we've discussed many times before, that's part of why you need to get yourself away from this restrict-overexercise-overeat cycle that you're in.
And why you need to start understanding scale fluctuations.
I do understand scale fluctuations and my weight trended upwards for a few days then dropped back down but took 2 full weeks to go back to pre birthday weight where I was steadily losing previous to that on 1500 cals per day
You have to look at what else you did.
You exercised like crazy=damage and water retention. Birthday dinner=replenishment of glycogen and sodium.
Weight trend delay: your weight trend is meant to change more slowly than your deficit.
Your change of behavior will not reflect immediately, though the inflection points will be captured quite correctly after the fact when you look at your graph a few months down the road.
Look at your calorie totals over rolling 6 week periods and the weight trend differences. Are they matching closely? Based on other posts of yours they do quite nicely.
So relax.
You know this works. You just need consistency and the application of a small deficit over a longer period of time
Your over restrictions and search for quicker validation at times are what is causing rebound problems!
Look back to your data and start being easier on yourself.
Frankly, once you have verified that your counting seems to be working close enough you don't even need to verify the weight trend other than as an occasional check.
And if your "diet"/way of eating/way of moving is sustainable and something that you will keep to for the foreseeable future... , what does it really matter if you made a bigger or smaller stride forward and hit exactly half a pound or 1 pound or half a pound or a quarter pound as long as you continue to *not regress*?
You hyper-focus tells me that you're still pushing yourself harder than might perhaps be optimal.
As always: take care of yourself!5
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