Calorie deficit

Nope. Sometimes I eat under goal, sometimes I eat right near goal (most common), sometimes I eat over goal, and on the rare occasion I eat waaay over goal. And I own that. It's not "cheating", it's a decision. Sometimes it's a bad decision, other times it's worth it.

When I was losing, and for the first few months in maintenance, I logged every single day. Now, in almost year 8 of maintaining, I sometimes skip logging if I'm extra busy, or if I've eaten something that would be wild guess and hard to estimate. (I watch the body weight scale, though.)

I can't speak for you, but if I went off the leash for two days a week, I could easily eat enough to wipe out my calorie deficit for the whole week, and therefore not lose weight. (That's probably not eating "within reason", but who knows?)

If you're logging on the weekend, looking at your average daily calories for the week, and you're still in a deficit on average, you'll still lose weight. If you're not logging the weekends, eventually you'll find out the impact via the scale.

I do wonder if you're over-restricting during the week? Are you putting some foods totally off limits until the weekend, then looking at eating those foods (maybe still in calorie-appropriate amounts) as "cheating". If so, cheating whom, and how?

It makes me worried that you may be thinking of weight loss as a project with an end date, after which things will go back to normal. I hope not, because that's the standard recipe for long-term weight yo-yos. Yo-yo is the least healthy option, health-wise worse (statistically speaking) than just staying a little overweight.

During loss, I thought about experimenting and finding happy eating and activity habits I could live with forever that generally kept me in a sensible calorie range and reasonably well-nourished, then practiced those habits until they ran almost on autopilot. That's really helped me maintain a healthy weight, and the quality of life benefits of that are huge. I don't think everyone needs to go all through weight loss that way, but IMO it's a good idea to devote a few months to that habit-finding process before reaching goal weight.

Maybe cheating on the weekends is a good long-term pattern for you. If so, that's great. It wouldn't be good for me. Nowadays, I do calorie bank (eat a very small amount under maintenance calories most days), so that I can fit in some more indulgent eating now and then. That works for me.

Best wishes!

andrewkkilpatrick wrote: »

Does anyone else stick to a calorie deficit Mon-Fri then at the weekend eat what they want? (within reason).

I think if you posed the question as "stick to a calorie deficit Mon-Fri then at the weekend eat at maintenance" you'd get different answers.

"Eat what you want on the weekends" sounds like trouble, even with the "within reason" disclaimer.

Over the years, I've seen a number of people post that they bank calories during the week so that they can eat more on weekends.

No. My forever-way-of-eating includes weekends. It is what and how I need (and want) to eat daily. I do adjust the amount as my activity level fluctuates from week to week.