This is a real tricky time of year for me and my hubby. Over the next 6 weeks there 3 birthdays and 3 wedding anniversaries, so lots of opportunities for some cake and a cheeky Prosecco!
Now you could choose to ‘up the exercise’ try to burn off the calories in advance or indeed afterwards, but that isn’t always possible or practical, and in my case at the moment not possible until I’m ‘fixed’.
Have you heard of the term ‘Flexible Dieting’? For the longest time there has been the notion when trying to lose fat of the ‘magical day’ window. Previously it’s was thought that what you consume in a day and the deficit you make that day that mattered but we now know it’s actually the deficit over A WEEK that really matters not a single day.
This means we can use this to our advantage to plan for indulgent events or even after the fact to compensate for an unexpected tasty meal out.
So let’s look at an example……..using my husband. His TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) averages at about 3000 calories a day, meaning for him to be in a calorie deficit he aims for 2500 a day.
He knows on Saturday that we are having a BBQ with a lovely birthday cake and some drinks so he will be consuming probably about 5000 calories that day, 2000 above his TDEE.
He wants to ‘bank’ 2000 extra calories this week to stay on track. He could do two extra 12km runs, but that would probably kill him and if it didn’t then I’d step in because I’d have to referee the children while he tries to make up those 2 extra runs!!!!
But we have five days between now and Saturday so instead he will drop his calories down to 2100 a day from today for the rest of the week saving … 2000 calories for Saturday.
This means come next week (as it will take a day or two for his water levels etc. to drop from the extra salt, carbs and alcohol) he would have still been in deficit and his weight/fat percentage still will go down.
With all these events coming up I think we are going to be doing some serious flexible dieting for the remainder of the summer and it’s a strategy you can try out to help you with summer events without wiping out your progress or getting injured trying to burn off that extra glass of fizz!
If you’re tracking your calories & protein you’ll soon see where you can make those calorie ‘savings’ to help you stay on track.
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