Remaining calories

saddia212 wrote: »

Thank you
I just wanted an idea, as I tend to eat more on Sunday. Is this ok to have a cheat meal once a week?

If we routinely have an unlogged meal once per week, it can be surprisingly easy to wipe out a good fraction of the calorie deficit from the rest of the week, or even all of it. If we eat over goal calories once per week, but log them, and look at our average weekly calories instead of each individual day, and have stayed at an average daily calorie level close to our goal calories . . . how or why would that be cheating?

The big point in all of this IMO is to find new eating and activity habits that will get us to goal weight (reasonably contentedly) then keep us there almost on autopilot long term when other parts of life get busy. That can involve some days with higher eating than others, sure. Maintenance definitely works that way for me.

P.S. Someone will come along and say that if the 700 calories in your OP is from exercise, a risk factor is how accurate the exercise calorie estimate is, because exercise can be over-estimated. That's true. If that's part of the "behind the scenes" here, you can also say what type/duration/intensity of exercise it was, at what current body size, and how many calories were logged for it, to get others' opinions on probable realism of the estimate.

But if it's reasonably accurate, sure: MFP may reset at midnight, but our bodies don't. We can eat the extra calories on a later day.

rdmitch wrote: »

i don’t carry them over. Start each day fresh and if you have left over calories consider it a bonus.
Too many people rationalize and try to justify overdoing it some times by calling it a cheat day, free day, non-logging day, whatever. If in your mind you feel that’s ok and your will power gives in just keep in mind it takes days to recover from a cheat day. Read the tons of posts that start with, “ had a bad day and ate over the limit…gained 2 lbs” I’m sorry but I personally don’t have empathy for most those. Obviously.. medical conditions are exceptions. but your aunts grandmothers first cousins birthday doesn’t justify blowing your day.
However you want to count….daily, weekly, monthly is up to you. It’s math and calorie deficit-loss, calorie excess-gain.

Many, probably most of those people are over-reacting to scale increase that's almost entirely water retention (from eating more carbs and/or salt than usual) and food waste still in the digestive tract on its way to the exit.

It's not mostly fat. To gain two pounds of fat, a person's going to need to eat around 7000 calories over maintenance . . . not over goal calories, over maintenance. While I'm technically capable of eating 7000 calories over maintenance (so something over 9000 calories), it would take serious effort. Most people catastrophizing about 2 pounds of gain overnight haven't done that.

Moreover, though the process may start within about 4 hours, it can take longer for the entire fat gain to show up on the scale: Gotta digest/metabolize the food first, and that takes some time. Quick multi-pound scale gains are almost always water/waste. The "days to recover" are then almost entirely about water weight and waste gradually exiting.

Over-reacting to water weight/digestive contents "gain" is IMO among the common things that discourages people and leads them to quit: They think they've wiped out a week or two of progress in one meal. It's not usually true.

They just don't understand what they're seeing on the scale. I do have empathy for them.

This would be a good read for anyone who's freaked out by scale fluctuations after an unusual meal/day (especially the article linked in the first post):

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10683010/the-weird-and-highly-annoying-world-of-scale-fluctuations/p1

I don't "cheat". That's nonsense. But sometimes I eat over maintenance. In the rare case, I eat way over maintenance. It's not a character fault, it's a decision. I know I need to balance things out over time when I make that decision. (I'm in year 8 of maintaining after a year of loss and around 30 previous years of overweight/obesity. I'm not speaking purely from theory here. https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10603949/big-overfeed-ruins-everything-nope#latest .)

Yes, eating over maintenance often will be a problem, unless also eating similarly under maintenance often. I don't empathize with treating good life balance - which can involve varied days - like a morality play. But wanting consistent rather than varied days is a fine individual choice, too. Figuring out what works for ourselves - given different preferences, strengths, challenges, lifestyle - is key.