It is extremely easy to eat more on the weekends. There are more social events, you are more likely to visit friends and family who present yummy baked goods (thanks grandma) and you are at home more and surrounded by food. But the calories matter on the weekends too. We all know that to lose weight we need to consume less calories than we are burning to place ourselves in a calorie deficit.
Let’s assume your current maintenance calories are 1800. By removing 200 calories, you are now in a deficit and dieting on 1600 calories per day which over the week, means you are now in a deficit of 1400 calories compared to your maintenance calories.
(1800 x 7) – (1600 x 7) = 1400
Now let’s say Saturday and Sunday come around and you end up consuming 2500 calories on both days. (Not hard to do when a large BBQ Angus meal from MacDonald's is 1459 calories and a large mocha from Starbucks is 370 calories just there, or chuck in a couple of alcoholic beverages).
This leads to you consuming 700 calories more per day or 1400 over the 2 days throwing you back out of your calorie deficit for the week.
If you look at the tracking spreadsheet above, you will see how the 2 days brought the weekly average back over the 1800 predicted calorie maintenance.
Now, this is okay occasionally, you do not need to spend your whole life dieting and living in a deficit. BUT, if you have specific goals you want to reach, this could be affecting your process more than you think.
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