Daily,Weekly,Monthly calories

tec9goo
tec9goo Posts: 119 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
So for the past months I think I have under eaten with regards to my tdee.

I know weekly calories are a big trend nowadays but if that proves to be valid, where does this concept end?
I dont see people using monthly or yearly calories?

Could someone explain how this monthly calorie would work?
Is it the same thing as weekly?

For example if someones tdee was 3500 everyday but only ate like 3000 daily then by the end of the month he or she would have 15,500 extra calories to use!!

Does that mean he or she would have the ability to do a cheat day(15,500 cals) and gain 0 fat?
Or does it work a different way?

Replies

  • elainemariebenes
    elainemariebenes Posts: 16 Member
    edited July 2019
    i’ve often wondered the same thing. if a person had been overeating for their body, say having 3000 calories a day and gaining, for a couple months, and then spent the next couple months eating 1000 calories a day (which i am NOT endorsing), their average over those 4 months would be 2000 which is perfectly acceptable. i don’t recommend this strategy but i don’t really understand where the averaging of calories should end.
  • lorrpb
    lorrpb Posts: 11,463 Member
    If someone underate that much for that long, they would lose weight. In the case of eating 3000 rather than 3500 for a month, they would lose about 4.3 lb. If they averaged out by eating an extra 10,000 cals on the last day or two, they would lose less weight.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,204 Member
    Historically, I enjoyed decade-ly calorie balancing. I was at a healthy BMI in my 20s, ate enough to be overweight in my 30s, obese in my 40s/50s, then healthy BMI in my 60s.

    Does that make sense? IMO, no.

    A shorter and smaller cycle makes more sense, healthwise.

    How short, if one must cycle? IMO, stay in the healthy weight range. Narrower might be better, but I'd guess it's not a big deal, in the healthy/normal BMI range, as long as an adequate amount of healthful exercise and adequate nutrition is in the picture.

    Don't undereat for a long time (weeks). It stresses your body. Don't overeat for a long time. Fatness stresses your body.

    Moderation. Balance.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,281 Member
    I think monthly could work - if you had a special event monthly that you wanted to save calories for and ate proportionately less for rest of month - but for most people I think the larger numbers and longer time frame would make it harder to keep track.

    I look at my weekly calories - but the app still breaks the week down into days - so I see each day's intake and my aim is to have them even out by end of week so that my weekly total is around the mark.
  • Rammer123
    Rammer123 Posts: 679 Member
    elainemariebenes wrote: »
    i’ve often wondered the same thing. if a person had been overeating for their body, say having 3000 calories a day and gaining, for a couple months, and then spent the next couple months eating 1000 calories a day (which i am NOT endorsing), their average over those 4 months would be 2000 which is perfectly acceptable. i don’t recommend this strategy but i don’t really understand where the averaging of calories should end.

    Assuming their maintenance calories was 2,000 calories. In the real world, they would likely put on some fat during the overeating period. Just making up numbers to make sense of it. Lets say they went for 2 months (60 days) at a 1000 calorie surplus. That would in a perfectly efficient world add just over 17 pounds of fat. With likely additional energy and additional thermic effect of food due to extra calories. Lets say they really only ended up putting on an additional 12 pounds of fat (70% of the initial number). Now they go on a 1,000 calorie deficit. Assuming the same numbers, in a perfectly efficient world, they would lose the exact same 17 pounds of fat. They would end up in the exact same position that they started in. Realistically, they would lose something more like80-90% fat and the remaining would likely come from muscle loss due to a relatively aggressive diet. The end result would be losing 14.5 pounds of fat and losing about 1.5 pounds of muscle.

    The net effect of my completely made up example to show how the process would likely work for someone doing something similar:

    Net gain of 1.5 pounds of fat and net loss of 1.5 pounds of muscle.

    Obviously the values i have created have no real value themselves because they are completely made up. But trying to show the likely result of a diet like this.

    A monthly calorie tracking may work..... Probably not very well.... A weekly calorie tracking and eating will work better than monthly. Daily tracking will work bettter than weekly. Beyond that, unless you are truly trying to get to crazy levels there would be no real reason to go beyond that. But tracking to the 12 hour, or 6 hour, or 1 hour, would give more accurate numbers.

    99.9% of people would get to their perfect body by tracking calories daily. Some may be able to track weekly and monthly and are stable enough in their eating to not create massive surpluses or deficits. Some people never need to track.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,204 Member
    Rammer123 wrote: »
    elainemariebenes wrote: »
    i’ve often wondered the same thing. if a person had been overeating for their body, say having 3000 calories a day and gaining, for a couple months, and then spent the next couple months eating 1000 calories a day (which i am NOT endorsing), their average over those 4 months would be 2000 which is perfectly acceptable. i don’t recommend this strategy but i don’t really understand where the averaging of calories should end.

    Assuming their maintenance calories was 2,000 calories. In the real world, they would likely put on some fat during the overeating period. Just making up numbers to make sense of it. Lets say they went for 2 months (60 days) at a 1000 calorie surplus. That would in a perfectly efficient world add just over 17 pounds of fat. With likely additional energy and additional thermic effect of food due to extra calories. Lets say they really only ended up putting on an additional 12 pounds of fat (70% of the initial number). Now they go on a 1,000 calorie deficit. Assuming the same numbers, in a perfectly efficient world, they would lose the exact same 17 pounds of fat. They would end up in the exact same position that they started in. Realistically, they would lose something more like80-90% fat and the remaining would likely come from muscle loss due to a relatively aggressive diet. The end result would be losing 14.5 pounds of fat and losing about 1.5 pounds of muscle.

    The net effect of my completely made up example to show how the process would likely work for someone doing something similar:

    Net gain of 1.5 pounds of fat and net loss of 1.5 pounds of muscle.

    Obviously the values i have created have no real value themselves because they are completely made up. But trying to show the likely result of a diet like this.

    A monthly calorie tracking may work..... Probably not very well.... A weekly calorie tracking and eating will work better than monthly. Daily tracking will work bettter than weekly. Beyond that, unless you are truly trying to get to crazy levels there would be no real reason to go beyond that. But tracking to the 12 hour, or 6 hour, or 1 hour, would give more accurate numbers.

    99.9% of people would get to their perfect body by tracking calories daily. Some may be able to track weekly and monthly and are stable enough in their eating to not create massive surpluses or deficits. Some people never need to track.

    Based on reading posts here for several years, I think there are quite a few people here calorie counting and thinking in terms of weekly numbers, either during the loss process or in maintenance. There are also people who calorie cycle successfully; or do 5:2 IF to lose weight; and do fine. Those net out to similar situations as weekly balancing. Also, a lot of people eat to TDEE rather than NEAT+ exercise, which shifts CI away from CO on the time scale, and effectively becomes a form of multi-day balancing.

    Possibly we just cross-day balancers have more relaxed standards about "our perfect body", though? ;)

    Because the bodyweight fluctuations on the weekly-balancing routines are so small (and delayed somewhat after eating by the process of metabolizing the food, which can extend over a couple of days), especially if none of the days are crazy-high or crazy-low, I don't think there's a very meaningful practical difference between daily balancing and weekly balancing, at least for metabolically normal people.

    Balancing to hours (less than a day, maybe even less than a week) would be pretending that we have more precision in the process than any of us really do.

    There are inevitable and unmeasurable differences day to day in any practical home calorie-counting regimen. One apple is sweeter than the next. Home food scales are not super precise/accurate (just close enough, in a way that balances out the high/low over time). Some days, we window shop for longer, or do more yard work, or mislead our heart rate monitor by watching a scary movie or getting relatively dehydrated during exercise, so CO is mis-estimated. We estimate restaurant calories or dinners at friends' homes. And, as I mentioned previously, utilizing calories and nutrients from our intake is a dragged out process, certainly taking hours, possibly up to days (keep in mind that those low-GI microbiota are likely still munching down on things and releasing human-usable chemicals until close to elimination of whatever's left over).

    I'd be surprised if the daily imprecision/error is less than 10% (as an absolute number, since the pluses and -minuses do cancel out), but we're saved by the law of semi-large numbers. ;) There's no need to over-think the time horizon to smaller than daily increments in the face of those imprecisions. Suggesting tracking to a one-hour increment is only feeding pseudoscience to people inclined to obsession.
  • Rammer123
    Rammer123 Posts: 679 Member
    I should have made it more clear that I would not expect, advise, encourage or praise someone for tracking in less than daily intervals.
  • MercuryForce
    MercuryForce Posts: 103 Member
    edited July 2019
    paperpudding wrote: »
    I look at my weekly calories - but the app still breaks the week down into days - so I see each day's intake and my aim is to have them even out by end of week so that my weekly total is around the mark.

    That's what I do. I try not to have any massive fluxes. But, my goal is 1500 a day, so I'm not going to stress too much about a 1700 Saturday, I just try to have a 1300 Monday.

    I do still track daily though, so I don't get into the "I'll balance it out tomorrow" mindset, and then never have that balancing day. And, it helps me see if there is one day that is consistently high and see if I can adjust it or just accept it. (for me, Tuesdays are bar trivia night, and so about 75% of the time they will just up being high days. But, high Sundays are a sign I just need to watch what I'm doing on the weekends and out of my routine)

    But, I am pretty new to this, and as time goes on, I might end up changing that...depending on what my nutritionist has to say about me and my progress.
  • panda4153
    panda4153 Posts: 418 Member
    I track monthly, MFP does not have a setting for this, but I keep a spreadsheet with my daily totals, CI and CO. Then on the days I know may be outside of the norm, such as date nights, family gatherings, holidays birthdays I automatically start with assuming a certain overage. On a "free day" I an easily eat 4k calories, I know this because I log everything by weight even when I over indulge. Then on the rest of the days I pre log CI of 1800 and CO of 2300. This is about my average. That gives me a rough estimate at the beginning of them month of how much I can expect to lose if I follow that pattern. Then as the month goes I log my actual numbers based on MFP diary and my apple watch calories burned (Total Calories not just active so TDEE) and see how my total loss estimate fluctuates. And then where I end up at the end of the month....this post probably sounds like a lot of work, but its really not maybe about 30 seconds a day to track. I started doing it because I was curious about how accurate my logging and watch was. As it turns out for, its' pretty darn accurate. I lose...or gain...very close to what the math says I should based on my entries. I have found that I can easily have 2 -3 overindulge days in a month and still be on track to lose about 2 lbs a month given I stick close to my 1800 calories in the rest of the time.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,242 Member
    edited July 2019
    Our body stores and uses fat (and lots of other resources) 24/7/365.

    Persistent imbalances of energy will be reflected on our weight trend. Short term weight changes mostly reflect water weight variation which is a bit hard to fully track and much easier to accept as something both normal and irrelevant.

    Mental Daily balance? Sure. But a bit restrictive. Mental bi-weekly balance? Sure; but we tend to deal in terms of weeks as units. Monthly balance? I know some who use monthly rolling spreadsheets and with hormonal fluctuations maybe monthly makes sense. For me monthly is a bit far, the results are already evident in my weight trend for me.

    So goldilocks between too restrictive and less restrictive seems to be the week for me.

    And I'll come clean. Without a current focus on weight loss i actually don't even look at my averages unless I am about to write a post referencing something!

    I just make sure that most days I don't go more than about 400 Cal into the red. If I see my weight trend going up, I try to make sure I bring it closer to 0 to 200 in the red, most of the time.

    And leave it at that. (My target is set at about -350 based on my normal level of activity. To me red means slow down!!! :lol: )

    I don't have a time line. I just need to make sure that most of the time I am heading in the right direction.

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