How to zig zag cals properly/caloric cycling properly

This post is really old and it could do with some editing with research that I have done since, just remember that you need to pay attention to your biofeedback, if you have plateaued that is biofeedback usually meaning that you either need to start eating back your exercise cals if you are not eating them back or you need to eat more. Women usually being the worst offenders, but many men as well. Also remember a few key things here:

1) Not all calories are created equal, what your body does with the cals you eat greatly influences fat loss, and muscle gain, the old model of cals in vs cals out is flawed so its not a perfect system.
2) You did not get overweight overnight nor will you shed it overnight, it takes time, patience and effort.
3) You leaner you are the more likely you are to lose muscle with the fat loss if you are attempting a dramatic sustained caloric cut making you just as if not more unhealthy than you were at the start.
4) Its not always about the bloody scale weight, if you allowing this to mess with your head and goals then stop right now. Body re composition is not a quick fix overnight endeavor. You can be much trimmer, fitter and heavier than when you started but look 10 times better. if you are losing inches but not scale weight then you are heading in the right direction.

As a reminder here is how mfp is setup and remember that these are estimated numbers for you, you need to play with it to get it setup correctly for you. A person with a better body comp will require more cals than one with poor body comp at the same weight.

Mfp has already calculated in the deficit needed to shed your desired amount of weight without any exercise at all, this is why you get to eat back the calories. I did this for 9 months with zero plateaus same for my wife. You need to fuel the body properly to get to your goal.

Lastly a few key points:

Starvation mode (ugghh! I hate this word) takes a while to happen, it does not happen overnight, but remember that how quickly this happens is directly related to how lean you are, in the case of obese ppl it takes a lot longer than say a person whom is 10% bodyfat.
If cutting cals is simply not working for you anymore it may be time to take some time off of it. You need to make pit stops for your own sanity from time to time. There are many methods to shedding fat, some include not cutting calories at all and yes you can shed fat without cutting calories, I learned this first hand with experimentation.
Stop beating yourself up if you fall off the wagon from time to time, we are all human, we all make mistakes, its how often you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get back at it. If things are not working for you then its time to re-examine your efforts and find what works for you.

I am glad that many of you have found results with this method but please make sure that you read the post a little further up about your biofeedback, there are many methods towards fat loss this is just one tool of many to use. The program can be augmented by using carb cycling on the low days and slightly altering when you eat carbs on your high days, either way though pay attention to your biofeedback as this will be the compass for what your body is doing.