I’m eating 1,200 calories a day and gaining weight?! 

Should I eat more? Someone told me I’m in starvation mode and that makes your body gain fat!

No. 

Yes we tend to to count day by day, but consistency matters as a whole. It matters what we do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

If you look at the graphic here, 1,200 calories M-Th can feel pretty low. You might feel very hungry, deprived of all your favorite foods, and petty frustrated and sick of ‘dieting’.

Friday rolls around… you stick to your M-Th routine and then after work you go out for drinks and have a bit more than planned. You were super hungry and craving fries!

Saturday morning… you think “I already blew the week. I’ll start again Monday.” And since you won’t be able to eat any foods you like starting again Monday, you eat all of your off limits foods.  

Gotta get em all in dude! Zero room for even a thought about moderation.

You totally blow past a calorie deficit, and even your maintenance calories. You end up eating in a drastic surplus the entire weekend.

Totally eliminating any deficit you had achieved M-Th. 

Now if this happened only one weekend. No biggie. 

But if this is a cycle that keeps repeating…well…It can feel like you’ve been dieting and eating at 1,200 calories for months and months with no progress. 

When in reality you’ve consistently been in a slight surplus when you look at all the calories for the time span.

Consistency matters. Long term.

Here’s the math for the fake person this graph was based on…

Maintenance calories: 1800-1900 calories

Possible sustainable deficit: 1500-1600 calories

Actual average daily calories: 2000 calories

Even though this person ate 1,200 calories “all week”, the weekend erased that and for the week this person ended up being in a 100-200 calorie a day surplus.

Again one week like this..no biggie. But if it starts to be most weeks…frustration, disappointment and a lack of progress are the result.

What to do?

Set a more reasonable goal for the week. And if needed figure in a bit more calories for your weekends.