calorie cycling guide

Let’s talk about calorie cycling today.

So what is calorie cycling?

It’s when you alternate between eating high and low amount of calories in the days throughout the week. So for example let’s say a standard diet where you eat 1500kcal everyday, with calorie cycling you might eat 1200kcal on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday you eat 1800kcal. The amount of calories you end up eating at the end of the week stays the same, but you get some flexibility on the amounts of food you eat throughout the week.

It’s a common strategy for people that regularly workout as they might schedule to eat more during their workout days and eat less during non-workout days.

Are there extra fat loss benefits to calorie cycling?

Nope, none at all. It’s really just a convenience strategy. 

The way I look at it is if you understand the concept of calorie cycling, you can use it as a daily life strategy. Give yourself more calories on days where you might go out and hangout with friends, and eat less calories where it’s a normal boring day where you’re mostly on your own. It lets you enjoy life a little more without going off track at all with your weight goals.

It’s kinda like budgeting money.

Say you have a limit on how much to spend on weekly basis, you can definitely spend less on certain days of the week so you can spend more on others but still end up within the same weekly budget.

There are a lot of different ways to cycle calories. You could do alternate high/low calorie days. Or you eat less on week days, and more on weekends. Or you could save calories from certain days to spend on a big event day. There are countless variations to it. You don’t even have to follow the same variation week to week. Calorie cycling is simply a tool for you to use when you feel the need.

Personally I enjoy eating the same amount everyday more cos it’s just easier and more simple for me to track, but on weeks where there are special events that I know of in advance I’d use calorie cycling to make room for it without going over my weekly targets.

Calorie cycling also works on the same day.

You could totally skip breakfast and lunch for a huge dinner, or have a super huge breakfast and skip lunch and have a smaller dinner.

The one thing I want to point out is: use calorie cycling as a method to plan ahead, and NOT a method to punish yourself.

If you overate by accident, don’t use calorie cycling to make up for it. All that does is dig a deeper hole for you that eventually becomes irrecoverable. If you overate by accident, just move on to the next day as per normal. Accidents happen, it’s no big deal. Focus on the bigger picture. If the accident happens frequently, then there might be some changes you want to make to your diet as a whole cos that’s a sign that it’s not sustainable.

Do be careful with calorie cycling and make sure on your “low” days they’re not too low. I’d recommend 1200kcal would be the lowest for the low days cos going beyond that you may start risking nutrient deficiencies which seems like no big deal in the short term but in the long term cos be way more significant than you think.

Remember calorie cycling isn’t a necessity. It’s a tool. Use it if you feel there’s a need for it, if not that’s fine too.

I hope with a better understanding with calorie counting it opens more doors for your diet and makes hunger/cravings easier to deal with on a day to day basis.

That’s it for now, till the next one!

—Po