Net calories under weekly goal

Congratulations on 4 months of successful maintenance: That's great!

7 days fixed or rolling, for averaging calories? I don't think it matters, honestly.

The underlying concept is that bodies don't reset at midnight, even if MFP does. A person could use more than 7 days, if they chose, and any reasonable short time period will have similar results . . . just maybe wider fluctuations if the time period is longer, and they eat in an extremely variable way (calorie wise).

In one sense, my 30 years (-ish) of slow weight gain, and my year of losing the excess weight, are calorie averaging to maintenance calories over the course of 31 years. Clearly, that's dumb from a health perspective.

But sensible maintenance weight isn't a single number, it's a range, as I'm sure you know. And healthy weight for a given individual is unlikely to be a super-tight range, besides. Average your calories over a period of time that works for you.

Personally, I also think of nutrition as an "on average over a day or few" kind of thing, similar to calories . . . but I think it's more important for nutrition to keep the time period in the few days range, vs. calories.

For myself, I try to keep maintenance weight within a few pounds of goal most of the time, with some seasonal fluctuation. But I don't really get excited about it until my jeans start to get a little snug, then I'm more focused on slowly creeping weight back down again. None of that process is panic-stricken extremes, more like slow up-creep, slow down-creep, which I don't think is any kind of health risk at all. I use a weight trending app (Libra, in my case, for Android), weigh daily, keep an eye on the trend.

When I was early in maintenance, I was a little more tight on the reins, and a little more worried about regain. (I think a lot of us have a paranoia that weight will suddenly leap up uncontrollably, which isn't necessarily true - won't happen, with reasonable self-management.)

I've been in maintenance 7 years now, with some mild ups and downs, and feel like I'm more comfortable with looking longer term, and confident that slow re-loss is an option that works easily and well for me. (Notice that in what I wrote above, my focus shifted from calorie averaging during loss and early in maintenance, to body weight monitoring and adjustment as I got more confident about maintaining. That may not be universal, but it was true for me.)

YMMV about what keeps you comfortable psychologically (which is mostly what's at stake here IMO, as long as we're not talking about averaging over that 31 years or something silly-long!). Regardless, I think it makes zero difference whether you average over 7 day fixed periods, or a rolling 7 days . . . especially if you don't try to game that to do calorically odd things.

Best wishes for a continuing happy and confident weight maintenance!

Doesn't matter, this is all happening on a continuum.

I’ve done both. The weekly allows you to know where you are on Friday morning before you go into the weekend, when I tend to splurge the most. The rolling gives you a better sense of where you are for the graphs. I really like looking at how many days I’m over and under. My goal is always to be under for the week even if I’m not for the day.

Tenshi187 wrote: »

mtaratoot wrote: »

I think it would be EASIER to not do a rolling average.

The reason I think so is that you have discreet chunks to look at over time. If you only have a rolling average, it will tell you where you stand today taking in mind the previous six days. That would still work if you could look at the data from each day's seven-day average and make some inference. If you just use a preset seven-day period, you get one number each week.

Another option is to also keep a spreadsheet (or export data from MFP) and run the average yourself. You could then see daily, weekly, and rolling average. I sort of do this. I log my estimated calorie allowance from MFP and my intake each day. The spreadsheet I use tells me what percentage I go over or under, and it includes a weekly average of all seven days of the week. In my case, it's not a rolling average, but I use it Monday through Sunday as a week.

I really like the idea of finer data - like daily. Then I can see not only how I'm doing each day, but also over time because it's over time that really counts.

Congratulations to getting to your maintenance goal! How big of a goal range do you allow yourself? As you've probably already seen, your mass will go up and down. That's normal. Keeping it in a range around a goal weight keeps your head from swimming when you look at what can be fairly large daily weight swings.

+/- 3 lbs. With the exception of overnight weight gain, like if I eat something salty, then I can go up 5 lbs. temporarily but it comes off a couple days later.

If you're vigilant, you will be able to maintain within a six pound range. I have two ranges. One is an "ideal" five-pound range, so even smaller wiggle room than you're giving yourself. The other is an "absolute" ten-pound range so I can be a little outside of ideal and still consider it maintenance. I'm on the upper end of that absolute range now, and I'm outside the ideal range.

Check back in after six weeks or so, and let us know how it's going!