Are trying to lose weight? Did you find this article by searching about calorie cycling for weight loss? Then hopefully you already know you need to be in a calorie deficit. In order to lose body fat, which is what most people mean when they say they want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. Simple enough. Also, incredibly complicated!
Now you throw calorie cycling into the mix to try to lose weight and it can start to feel overwhelming. Don’t worry, stick through the whole article and you will learn about some different options and be ready to choose the right calorie cycling plan for your weight loss journey!
Calorie Deficit options
There are many ways you can go about ensuring you are in a calorie deficit. I wrote about my sustainable weight loss plan, and outlined how I would ensure I am in a calorie deficit when I started a fat loss phase in January.
At the time of this writing, it is March. My original plan was to stay in a deficit until Spring Break, which for me starts March 16th. We are almost at that point. I have decided I am ready to shake it up a bit. My progress is slow and steady with the deficit I am in. I know I will continue to see steady progress if I keep doing what I am doing.
But I am bored.
Enter Calorie Cycling
I decided to switch to calorie cycling. Calorie cycling means that instead of aiming for the same calorie goal every day (straight deficit), I will switch it up, in a controlled fashion. My daily calorie amounts will differ. But the weekly amount will be the same as it was when I was doing a straight deficit.
Let’s look at a nice round number of 2,000 calories a day.
2,000(daily calorie target) x 7(days in the week) = 14,000/week
As long as your weekly amount still totals 14,000, you can split your calories up however you want and you will still lose fat. A good rule of thumb is that your high days should be around 300-500 calories more than your low days. The key is to make sure your low days are not too low!
Calorie Cycling options
Just like there are a lot of different ways to be in a calorie deficit, there are also different ways to calorie cycle. Ultimately, you will split your calories up to have high days and low days. Choosing which way to do it will depend on a few things.
The Straight Deficit
In the straight deficit method you will find your daily calorie target, give yourself a 200 calorie range to target, and aim to hit that range at least 80% of the time. You will use this same range Monday through Sunday.
The straight deficit is good for:
- Beginners to calorie counting. If this is your first time learning about tracking calories, then it can be incredibly helpful to keep a consistent goal from day to day.
- People with consistent daily habits: If you have a pretty steady life, where each day does not have a lot of variety in terms of travel or demands on your time.
- People working on overcoming Restrict/Binge issues: If you are working on healing your relationship with food, if you come from a background of believing there are good and bad foods, then keeping a straight deficit from day to day can be incredibly helpful.
The Weekender
The weekender or weekend warrior method uses higher calorie days on the weekend. In order to have a little bit more flexibility on the weekend, you keep calories a little lower during the week.
Even within this method, there is flexibility.
Choosing which days you would like to use as your high days is flexible. Do you tend to go out with friends on Friday and want more flexibility on Saturday as well? Perhaps on Sunday you cook at home, so it is easier to prepare a meal that meets your lower calorie targets. Or maybe Friday feels like another day of the week for you and you would rather keep that the same as the other work days. The beauty is that you can choose how you want to split it up.
If you want the ultimate in flexibility you can treat all three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday as high days. In this case, keep the calories on high days closer to the calories on the low calorie days.
Alternate days
The alternate days method of calorie cycling is just as it sounds. You alternate between high calorie and low calorie days.
You can also think of this as the hunger or workout driven cycling. Some people who are in a calorie deficit report that they get a lot hungrier around their workouts. For some, they are hungrier on the day they workout. Others report being hungrier the day after.
People who are in tune with their hunger can use this to their advantage. They can plan higher calorie days on the days they know they will be hungrier.
Choose how many high days you want to have. Then adjust your calories for high days and low days accordingly. You want to ensure that your weekly total meets your calorie deficit goal. Make sure that your high days are not more than 500 calories more than your low days. Too large of a difference may lead to too much restriction on the low days, which often backfires in the long run.
Keep it simple
In all of these examples there are two different calorie targets, high days and low days. While it is possible to target even more variety, I recommend starting with only two different targets. There is a lot of evidence that supports consistency in food choices while trying to lose weight. If you vary the days too much, it may become difficult to maintain that consistency.
My own journey
I decided to switch to calorie cycling for a little while because it provides more flexibility. I chose the weekender method. This will let me have more flexibility with food choice on the weekends. It will also allow me to practice eating in a slightly lower calorie range without changing my overall calorie deficit for the week.
Using calorie cycling will provide a sustainable way to continue seeing progress on my weight loss journey.
What will you choose?
Does one of these calorie cycling options strike a chord with you? Let me know if you are going to give it a try in the comments section below. Or reach out to me if you need help figuring out what your calorie range should be. I’m happy to help!
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