We’ve always been told that we have to eat a specific number of calories each day in order to maintain a certain body weight. However, research has shown that “changing things up” a bit with your caloric intake may help you to shed pounds more quickly and keep them off more easily.
Calorie cycling refers to the practice of taking in a varying amount of calories each day, never eating the same amount of calories two or more days in a row. The logic behind this is that eating too few calories for too long (like most weight loss programs advocate) will force your body into “starvation mode,” where it slows down fat burning. When fat burning slows down, so does your weight loss. The calorie cycling approach is different.
See below for an example:
There are differing opinions on the best approaches to calorie cycling, but the most popular start by calculating how many calories you are allowed in a week’s time. Example: If you are currently following a diet plan that allows 1500 calories a day, your weekly total calories should be 10,500 (1500 x 7 days). Rather than consuming exactly 1500 calories a day for 7 days, the calorie cycling approach would have you break it up so some days you are eating more than 1500 calories, and some days you are eating less than 1500 calories.
Monday: 1200
Tuesday: 1700
Wednesday: 1100
Thursday: 1500
Friday: 2000
Saturday: 1300
Sunday: 1700
——
Total: 10,500
Staggering your caloric intake each day should help prevent plateaus and stalls as you steadily burn fat, always keeping your body guessing on how many calories it will take in each day. Some days less, some days more.
Another benefit to this type of eating plan is that you can easily make room for social functions where you will end up eating a higher amount of calories than your diet would normally allow. Just schedule your higher calorie days on the days you have special functions planned, and reduce your calories on the other days of the week to compensate.
The long-term effects of calorie cycling are not yet known because few studies have been done on it thus far. However, if you consider that the majority of people automatically “cycle” their caloric intake most of the time, even when they are not dieting, it stands to reason that few, if any, negative effects would result – provided you use common sense and don’t get too extreme with your calorie fluctuations.